Tap resources for understanding and explaining the Word of God.
- Introduction (show | hide)
Seminary President Neal Plantinga often talks about "The Stek-Estee Lauder Method" of sermon preparation. John Stek is an Old Testament scholar with few peers who taught at CTS for many years. His exegetical insights were sharp and he inspired his students to have reverence for the text. Estee Lauder is the fashion expert who produced world-class perfumes but who always counseled women not to overdo it lest it be overpowering. Lauder suggested women spray a puff of perfume into the air and then walk through the mist, thus allowing just the right amount of fragrance to stick.
Plantinga says that this image works for preaching: all sermons must begin with a well-exegeted, well-researched text. So here the Center provides you with lists of some of the best commentaries and research tools available. But no sermon is written in a cultural vacuum. Preachers need to know the times by "exegeting" also the cultural setting. So here the Center is providing links to also many sources of news, cultural commentary, and statistics.
The core of the sermon remains the Stek-like exegeted text through which we access some of God's truth for our lives. But we need then to pass that text through the Lauder-like "mist" of relevant cultural facts and current events knowing that something homiletically fragrant will stick yet without overpowering the passage itself. Excellent preaching needs both text and context. We hope these resources and links will provide both.
- Prayers for Encountering the Text
- Recommended Commentaries
- Sermons
- Expanding Cultural Awareness
- "What I Have Discovered"