Murray Capill > Quotes

“If our walk with God is slight and superficial, most likely our dealing with biblical texts will be slight and superficial.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“We teach the Bible not only so that people have their theology right. We teach it so that they will live right theology.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“If preaching really only addresses the mind, it leads to arid intellectualism, with its attendant dangers of pride, hypocrisy, and hardness of heart. Mind-only Christianity, without an awakened conscience, changed behavior, and godly passions, makes for cold, heartless religion. It also makes for quite boring preaching!”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“The law doesn’t show us so much how bad we are as how good we are not.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Once we stop growing, our ministry ceases to have an impact.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Keller recommends reading in five core areas: the Bible (he advocates reading the Bible at least once a year and also studying books of the Bible for ourselves), theology, church history, sermons and “experimental” works (which he says are “an absolute must!”), and cultural analysis and apologetics (including reading magazines on contemporary trends and viewing key movies).75”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“The New Testament word for “shepherd,” poimēn, has typically been translated as “pastor” because that is the Latin word for “shepherd.” This means, then, that all”
― Murray Capill, The Elder-Led Church: How an Eldership Team Shepherds a Healthy Flock

“Churches need to encourage members to dig deeply into the Scriptures, read good Christian books, undertake short courses in theology, and learn how to handle Scripture responsibly. Training ministries need to be part of the fabric of church life so that from teenage years onward, people are learning to exegete accurately, discuss theology intelligently, and distinguish truth from error.”
― Murray Capill, The Elder-Led Church: How an Eldership Team Shepherds a Healthy Flock

“Preaching the gospel . . . is not about overlaying every passage with your favorite gospel outline, but rather seeing how the gospel illuminates each passage that we preach and how the passage itself illuminates the gospel.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“The preacher’s life is the laboratory in which biblical truth is tested.”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Four Sources of Applicatory Material”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Leadership is about taking people somewhere. Leaders see where we need to go, and they work out how to get there. They have a clear sense of what God wants, they make plans for how to move toward that, and they lovingly and clearly help people go there. They will cast a vision, determine the strategy, ensure adequate resourcing, engage people’s gifts, constantly encourage and motivate people, work at unity, solve problems, and celebrate blessings.”
― Murray Capill, The Elder-Led Church: How an Eldership Team Shepherds a Healthy Flock

“The secret of relevant preaching is that the message of the gospel and the situation of the listeners are related to each other in such a way that the listeners discover that its message really concerns their life as it is. Relevance occurs at the intersection of the unique message of the Bible . . . and the unique situation of the people in the pew.37”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Cotton Mather, an American Puritan, said, “The great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher [is] to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men.”145”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

“Diagram 2: The Preaching Process”
― Murray Capill, The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text