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Preachers are typically uncomfortable with marketing language in the context of the church and the sermon and for good reason. There is something unseemly about the attempt to sell the gospel. And yet, realistically, this is the preacher’s challenge, at least if we care about moving our message outside of our walls. This, of course, is exactly what Miller is counselling. Preaching cannot preach only to the committed. The message of the gospel is for the world at large. In order to speak effectively to this "market," the preacher will need to learn to speak its language. Miller offers plenty of advice toward that end. While not everything in this book will strike the reader as "seminal." There is plenty of help here for the preacher who cares.
Table of Contents:
1. Back to the Marketplace
2. The Audio-Video Sermon
3. TelePrompting the Text
4. Indicative and Inductive Truth
5. Packaging Preaching: Worship in the Marketplace
6. The Image-Driven Sermon
7. Crafting the Marketplace Sermon
8. Ten Indispensable Elements of Form and Style
9. The Form of the Marketplace Sermon
Excerpt: The Edsel may have been a great car, but it finally went out of existence and quit being manufactured. It lost out not because it was a fine automobile but because it was no longer a car that the world wanted. The Edsel was too big and too luxerious in a world wanting smaller, more economical cars. Ford lost the Edsel because it kept asking the wrong questions. Every year they asked themselves how they could make the Edsel better. They just never asked, "Do people want Edsels?" the church itself is always in danger of going out of business if it cannot learn to ask the right questions. The question we should be asking is not how to make our worship services better or our sermonss more interesting. The church needs to know what the world wants to hear in a sermon, and also find a way to give it what it needs to hear in a sermon. (pp. 30,31)