Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

1992

Document Type

Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

Norman K. Miles

Second Advisor

Benjamin D. Schoun

Third Advisor

James J. North, Jr.

Abstract

Problem. Preaching without a purpose is contrary to biblical preaching. The Seventh-day Adventist message is a message that calls people to specific action to follow Jesus and His teachings. This call to action should characterize Adventist preaching. The purpose of the study was to provide a preaching course to prepare lay persons of the Southampton Seventh-day Adventist Church in Bermuda to preach evangelistic sermons.

Method. A preaching course was designed and used over a three-month period to teach lay persons how to preach. In addition to developing a sermon and preaching it on two occasions in class, each student of the class had to preach during a three-week tent crusade. Evaluation instruments included a sermon critique form for class evaluation, a form to valuate the course, a sermon evaluation form for crusade converts and members who attended the crusade, a new-member survey to measure the effectiveness of preaching that led to decisions to follow Jesus as compared with other contributing factors that led to decisions, and an instrument to measure church attendance follow-up to the crusade as an indicator of continuing commitment to decisions made.

Summary. Twelve students graduated from the course and preached during the crusade. The graduates gave favorable ratings for the course content, methods, and manner of teaching. Church members who attended the crusade and converts of the crusade affirmed that the sermons preached by laypersons contributed to their commitments to follow Christ. Evaluation of the project gives rise to recommendations for improved training of lay persons to preach evangelistic sermons.

Subject Area

Evangelistic work--Jamaica, Laity--Seventh-day Adventists--Bermuda Islands, Seventh-day Adventist preaching

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/172/

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