David L. Allen

Dr. David Allen is the Dean of the School of Preaching, Distinguished Professor of Preaching, and Director of the Southwestern Center for Expository Preaching
at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Learning to Preach from Charles Spurgeon

“Give the people something worth hearing and they will listen like a woman hearing a will read or a condemned man hearing his sentence given by the judge.” The man who said that was preaching to thousands weekly by the age of 21 and had already preached mo... Read More »

How to Make Your Sermon Interesting and Memorable Pt. 2

In his classic On Christian Doctrine (Book 4), Augustine extols rhetoric as the handmaid of truth. Rhetoric must never degenerate into the role of court jester in preaching. We have all witnessed the preacher who “with conjuring adroitness keeps pr... Read More »

How to Make Your Sermon Interesting and Memorable Pt. 1

“Some people preach for an hour and it seems like twenty minutes, and some preach for twenty minutes and it seems like an hour. I wonder what the difference is? I think I’ve spent my life trying to answer that question.” So said the Dean of Evangelical h... Read More »

Plenary Session: David Allen

Dr. David Allen’s plenary session at the 2018 Text-Driven Preaching Workshop. Read More »

Narrative and Memorization: What Role Does Memorization Play in Storytelling

Everyone loves a good story, and Scripture is filled with them! Noah and the flood, Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, Ruth, and Jonah come to mind. Much of the Bible is written in narrative genre. All narratives have certain things in common: setting, character... Read More »

The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked

SWBTS Chapel sermon called The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked by David Allen. Read More »

A Word to Young Preachers about Pride

NOTE: This post is slightly revised from David L. Allen, 1-3 John: Fellowship in God’s Family, in Preaching the Word, R. Kent Hughes, ed. (Wheaton: IL, 2013), 275-77. If you are in a leadership position in someone’s church, and especially if you are a past... Read More »

Four Types of Meanings in Texts

The text-driven preacher must recognize that there are four basic types of meaning conveyed in every text and context: referential, situational, structural and semantic. Referential meaning is that which is being talked about; the subject matter of a text. Sit... Read More »

Why Inerrancy Matters in Preaching

Eighteen years ago, I wrote about the negative impact a low view of biblical authority, rejection of propositional communication, and the focus on creating an experience, had on preaching. (David L. Allen, “A Tale of Two Roads: Homiletics and Biblical Autho... Read More »

Plenary Session: David Allen

Dr. David Allen’s plenary session at the 2018 Text-Driven Preaching Conference. Read More »