Schedule
July 21:
Sermon: “Less of Me, More of Thee”
6:30 P.M.
Andrew Hodge Chapel
Pastor’s School
Beeson Divinity School
Birmingham, Alabama
July 22:
Conference Workshop: “Preaching To Postmoderns: Connecting to a New Generation”
Pastor’s School, Beeson Divinity School
Birmingham, Alabama
PART 1: 9:30 A.M.
PART 2: 1:45 P.M.
Description:
Fact: 7 out of 10 young adults will drop out of church after leaving high school.
In this workshop, we will explore how your preaching can best connect with a postmodern generation.
In Part 1, we will investigate the history, definition, and theology of postmodernism. What do postmoderns value? How is postmodernism affecting your congregation? We will discuss the future of younger evangelicalism, the emerging/emergent church movement, incarnational theology, ancient/future Christianity, and how “quasi-modernity” is revolutionizing the task of preaching.
In Part 2 of this seminar, we will explore practical strategies for preaching to postmoderns. Some of these strategies include inductive sermon construction, narrative preaching, metaphor, and transparency. At the end of this seminar, you will be better equipped to encourage a new generation of Christians to stay active in the life of the church through informational, reformational, and transformational preaching.
August 2-4:
Conference Workshop: “Postmodernity And Evangelism”
Annual Prayer and Discipleship Conference
Spring Baptist Church
Spring, Texas
September 30:
Paper: “Between the ‘Now’ and the ‘Not Yet’: A Critical Analysis of Realized Eschatology in the Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon”
Oxford, England
Abstract:
As part of a new perspective on Spurgeon, this paper investigates nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s theology of ‘the present moment.’ Though Spurgeon posited an historic premillenial position, a recent interest in his theology of time takes into consideration an ‘eschatology in tension,’ situated between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet.’ Spurgeon’s eschatology is realised when future theological realities penetrate present-day manifestations of God’s Kingdom, resulting in what Spurgeon identified as prevenient and postvenient grace. To this end, Spurgeon’s unique retro-theological / proto-theological contribution is better understood. That Spurgeon reached back into seventeenth-century English Puritanism to re-animate antiquated doctrines of eschatology is certain. However, this paper also acknowledges Spurgeon’s proto-theological contribution in that he blazed a trail for neo-conservative eschatological movements that would gain traction in twentieth-century British and North American evangelicalism. Through an examination of his sermons, writings, lectures and letters, this paper offers a critical and original perspective on Spurgeon as theologian and his theology of ‘the present moment.’