Preach the Word – May/June 2011

Volume 14, Number 5

Key Issue #4: Making the Most of Time in the Word

Strengthening our personal devotional lives and mirroring such personal application of the Word in our “professional” study – strengthening/renewing original language skills.

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As a companion to the May/June 2011 issue of Preach the Word, we offer these resources for further study by individuals, study groups, or circuits:

Study Aids

In response to a request from a pastoral circuit, Pastor Daron Lindemann and the author are partnering to put together a set of application and discussion questions to accompany each issue of Preach the Word. We hope this added resource can help both individual pastors, as well as study groups or circuits, to gain even more from each edition of the newsletter.

Book Reviews

Grace upon Grace is a thoroughly Lutheran treatment of spiritual growth that focuses on the power of the gospel in the means of grace, along with prayer and the spiritual testing that unfailingly comes along with that, as the keys to that growth.

Helpful Articles

In this excerpt from Luther’s Works (Volume 34), Luther gives us a summary of the threefold way God grows theologians: oratio, meditatio, and tentatio.

  • Meditation by John W. Kleinig, Reprinted with permission from Logia Vol X, No 2. [Note: This file is currently missing.]

Readers will need to “look past” a bit of mysticism in Kleinig’s meditation that seems to suggest that visions seen and voices heard may be part of our devotional life as well as the rather unusual understanding of the account of Mary and Martha. Yet beyond that, there is much helpful food for thought in this brief article that can be applied to our devotional lives.

John Kleinig traces Luther’s approach to meditating on God’s Word.

The Pastor’s Bible Study by Daniel Deutschlander

On February 21-22 of 2011, Professor Deutschlander gave a seminar entitled The Pastor’s Bible Study (PDF Format). For many years he faithfully taught what it means to be a Lutheran pastor, preacher and Seelsorger. We are pleased to be able to offer the original study guide and a three part recording of Professor Deutschlander’s presentation for your benefit. The audio can be found below:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Making the Most of Time in the Word

August Pieper touched a sensitive nerve as he encouraged pastors to immerse themselves more in the Word. My heart easily becomes defensive and raises objections. Chief among those objections is often this: If I approach preaching as a week-long textual feast, am I not daily confronted and comforted by law and gospel? Answer: “This is most certainly true!” It draws a false “either/or” to paint personal devotional study as utterly different from devotional sermon study.

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Gospel-Focused Lutheran Devotional Piety

Luther’s “practice of evangelical piety” revolved around God’s three-part curriculum for raising up true theologians: oratio, meditatio, tentatio.

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Spanning Two Worlds

“The preacher who is not a pastor grows remote. The pastor who is not a preacher grows petty” (Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, 77). Sermon study’s challenge is being pastor-theologians thoroughly engaged in the lives of our people and thoroughly immersed in the life of our text. We all lean to one side or the other.

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Guarding Another Rich Heritage

Let’s encourage one another to reclaim, maintain, or strengthen these language skills! Hold high how much we gain for ourselves and our hearers when we ponder the original languages’ patterns and pictures. Who can measure the question-mark-removing impact as we grow in the pathos-and-ethos-building conviction to proclaim: “This is what the Lord says!”

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