The Evangelistic Emphasis in the Pastoral Preaching of Adrian P. Rogers
Johnny Derrick Yelton, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013 Chairman: Dr. J. D. Payne This dissertation examines the evangelistic content of the pastoral preaching of Adrian P. Rogers during his thirty-two years of ministry at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis and explains the purpose, goals, limitations and methodology of this study. Chapter 2 examines the significant events and people in the life of Rogers that influenced and shaped his passion for evangelistic preaching. This chapter provides a brief biography of Rogers that discusses his conversion and call to the ministry, his education in college and seminary, his pastoral ministry, his broadcast ministry, and his denominational leadership. It also identifies the characteristics demonstrated by Rogers that contributed to his effective evangelistic preaching ministry. Chapter 3 examines the sermon preparation, organization, and delivery skills of Rogers. The objective of this chapter is to identify the homiletical style of Rogers' sermons with a focus upon his expository methodology. This chapter provides a study of the functional elements of Rogers' sermons, and identifies nine characteristics of evangelistic preaching reflected in Rogers' preaching. Finally this chapter considers the hermeneutical integrity of the sermons of Rogers in order to determine if he forced an evangelistic meaning into a text and thereby twisted the intent of the original author of the text. Chapter 4 examines the evangelistic invitation of Rogers. This chapter provides a brief background regarding the origin of the evangelistic invitation and the criticism of some evangelicals regarding its historical and modern usage. The focus of this chapter, however, is upon the methodology of Rogers. This chapter addresses any problems and concerns regarding the evangelistic invitations of Rogers and it identifies the components and characteristics of Rogers' evangelistic invitation. Chapter 5 is a study of the evangelistic content of Rogers' sermons. The goal of this chapter is to determine how often Rogers actually preached an evangelistic sermon from the pulpit of Bellevue Baptist Church. This chapter begins with a definition of evangelistic preaching, and provides a methodology for measuring the evangelistic content of Rogers' sermons based upon this definition. Next, this chapter offers an evaluation of the evangelistic content discovered in the sermons of Rogers, and gives a critical analysis of the evangelistic preaching ministry of Rogers based upon these findings. Finally, this chapter provides recommendations for an effective evangelistic preaching ministry. Chapter 6 gives a conclusion to this study. This chapter addresses the importance of evangelistic preaching in the church. Furthermore, it introduces the discoveries made from this study and gives a summary of those discoveries. It also outlines an application of the strengths of Rogers' evangelistic preaching ministry. Finally, it identifies areas for further study in the future. This dissertation also contains two appendices. The first appendix includes significant material regarding one hundred sermons by Rogers including an outline of each sermon and an assessment of the evangelistic content of each sermon. The second appendix provides an example of a gospel presentation and sinner's prayer used in the publication materials of Love Worth Finding Ministries.
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