Daniel Ligon

“In investigating the lumpings that have shaped societies past and present, we should, I believe, be charitable toward those who merely inherited the classifications that were dominant in their own times. But we should be less patient with those, like Calhoun and Sanger, who pressed to enforce their preferred categories, to encode them in law and make them permanent. Such people are immensely dangerous, and for the health of our public world we need to become alert to the compelling power of lumping: having seen the ways lumping helps us manage information overload and create group solidarity, we should become aware of the temptations it poses to us—to all of us.”
― Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

“Theological reflection…is a rigorous and prayerful discipline of taking the time to meditate on my text and how it relates to God’s plan of redemption. It is an exercise that asks how my passage relates to the Bible as a whole, especially to the saving acts of God in Jesus.”
― David R. Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today

“Expository preaching is empowered preaching that rightfully submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of a biblical text. In that way, it brings out of the text what the Holy Spirit put there…and does not put into the text what the preacher thinks might be there.”
― David R. Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today

“A faithful preacher starts the sermon preparation process by paying attention to a biblical text’s original audience and a text’s purposes for those readers. He 1) gives the biblical context control over the meaning of the text; 2) listens intently until he knows how the text fits within the overall message of the book; 3) sees the structure and emphasis of the text.”
― David R. Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today