Preaching Lab 1

About this course

This workshop introduces foundational skills for effective preaching by focusing on communication, structure, and listener engagement prior to advanced work in biblical interpretation and exegesis. The course is designed to help students recognize and address common barriers to hearing and understanding the preached word, and to develop habits of proclamation that are clear, hospitable, and attentive to the lived experience of listeners.

Attention is given to identifying rhetorical, structural, and delivery practices that unintentionally inhibit communication, including abstraction, over-explanation, lack of narrative movement, and assumptions about listener knowledge. Students are introduced to several sermon frameworks that support clarity and engagement, including the Homiletical Loop and the Four Pages of the Sermon, as tools for shaping sermons that move faithfully from text to life and back again.

The workshop emphasizes preaching as an act of communication in service of the gospel, not performance or information transfer. Through guided practice, discussion, and reflection, students begin to develop preaching instincts that are listener-aware, theologically grounded, and pastorally responsible.