Best resources for preaching application

I always recommend counseling resources combined with the collections tool.

Here are two great resources on sale for this:

• Right now in the Pastor's Appreciation Month sale the JBC is marked down.
• Right now in the October Monthly Sale the Journal of Modern Ministry is marked down.

My weakness in preaching is application. So, I am always on the lookout for resources/guides/books that help with application.

If I may say so, you will not improve by depending on resources to give you ideas of what might be the applications of a passage you want to preach on and your sermons will lack the power of personally "owned" exhortation. It is better to learn strategies for working out valid contemporary applications and then you can compare what you come up with to what other authors suggest. Generally, I find applications in commentaries disappointing. They either err on the side of wanting to be too trendy (the application is so tightly connected to current events that several years later it is already "aged") or for those that are more discipleship oriented, often lack in scholarly depth (reading modern spirituality back into the text and not working enough with what it might have looked like first in its original setting).

The starting point of application is application to self. If you are "weak on application," it may indicate that you spend too much time in exegesis relative to pondering the implications for yourself and others of the passage/topic. You may find helpful as a starting point, Haddon Robinson's developmental questions, especially:

• "Is it true?" Well, of course it is true if it is from the Bible, right? But the question really is about what obstacles there may be to belief or tensions with other doctrines. You could rephrase it as "Do I/we really believe this?"  Or "how does this fit with what I believe?" This will help you identify obstacles and challenges to belief and therefore to application (how would believing in this affect my approach to life?).

• "Does it matter?" Again, of course it matters if it is from the Bible, but here the purpose is for the preacher to wrestle with why this is significant. What is at stake? This can help you think about what spheres of life it is supposed to affect in relation to the present societal climate and day-to-day challenges.

I don't have the last edition of Robinson's (the link above). As I recall, the link to application was not always so clear in how he described these questions as opposed to working your way from an exegetical to a homiletical outline for your sermon. This being said, many preachers I hear make the (imo) mistake of preaching essentially an exegetical sermon and then trying to tack on a bit of application at the end. While I have long walked away especially from Robinson's emphasis on crafting punchy lines and working from a carefully written manuscript, the value for application of developing a (soundly and strongly exegetically-derived) homiletical outline remains a solid contribution of his method.

As alluded to earlier, an essential starting point to wrestling with application is to deepen one's learning on what application of a given passage/topic might have looked like originally. For instance, what did it mean for ancient Jews to leave father and mother to follow Christ? What did carrying one's cross actually mean in their context? This kind of questions help us crystallise meaning and implications behind the surface words. Then we can ask what differences there are between the original context and ours and how the same principles can be re-applied today.

I know there are other works out there that focus on application but I do not know enough of most of them to be able to recommend them with confidence. It may be worth taking a look at these. I would caution against the trap (seen in some of them) of defining application as some form of "how does this relate to Christ and the Cross?". However important these questions also are, if used as an end-all for "application," they often result in putting more emphasis on rehearsing belief in the gospel (and a certain version of it at that) than on practical applications and issues of discipleship.

The Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series are surprisingly useful for this (surprising because they're technical commentaries). They have a section headed "Theology in Application", which is usually very useful.

My weakness in preaching is application. So, I am always on the lookout for resources/guides/books that help with application.

I have the NIV Application series as well as the Sermon Outline bible......what other resources would you recommend...or have you found helpful?

The NIVAC is helpful for application if you read the "Bridging Contexts" section. IMO that is where it should have stopped . I have found very little of use in the "Contemporary Significance" section for reasons that Francis has pointed out. As Mark as written the ZEC is helpful as well as the New Interpreter's Bible, which has a "reflections" section along the same lines as the ZEC "Theology in Application" section.

I'm with Francis on this. (Where's the "like" button?!)

I'd also say that a great resources for application is the folks in the pews. Many of them are already living the truths we preachers preach about. How do they do it? What do they do?

But I'd also like to challenge you to ponder the question: "What is application?" For some it means that you need to do something: pray, give, evangelize (for example). But that's not all there is to application. Sometimes the text challenges not our actions but our attitudes toward ourselves, others, or God. Sometimes the text evokes praise and adoration, or genuine heart-felt gratitude, where the outward action is only an approximation of how the heart should respond.

Also, I prefer to weave application into the message, rather than saving it for some special place near the end (usually), where it sounds, much too often, like an afterthought. I've heard those kinds of sermons, and found them disappointing.

For that matter ask the question: "What is preaching?" In my understanding preaching is application; it's proclaiming the Word in a life-changing way. Yes, we need to unpack the truths we find in Scripture, but to what end? If at the end of a message all we get is people who nod in agreement, and then go on their way, we haven't preached. We may have taught (though I'd challenge that too), but we haven't preached. The Gospel is after our transformation, not our intellectual ascent. (Often recent seminary graduates fall into this trap, because too often seminaries are overly interested in what we know, not how we live out what we claim to know. But that's another rant.)

Sometimes, a good preacher, will take some time to unpack some truths, hidden like gold dust, among words that may be overly familiar. But we don't (or shouldn't) do that for the sake of showing our intellectual, linguistic, or exegetical prowess. We should do so, because those truths are life-changing truths, and we ache for our brothers and sisters to live by them.

God bless you as you come to terms with weaving life-change and life-challenge into the messages you're bringing. And may you never be so confident in your abilities that you stop desperately relying on the help of the Holy Spirit.