HOML101: Homiletics

Year 1 • 3 Credits • Weekly Syllabus

HOML101 is a 3-credit course in the Year 1 program at Sozo Bible College.

12-Week Course Outline

1. Week 1 What Is Preaching? — The Theology of Proclamation

   Before learning technique, students must understand what preaching actually is — and what it is not.

2. Week 2 The Preacher's Life — Character Before Content

   What a preacher says on Sunday is shaped by who they are Monday through Saturday. This is not cliché — it is the consistent testimony of Scripture and every serious homiletics tradition.

3. Week 3 Finding the Text — Exegesis and Sermon Selection

   Every great sermon begins before a word is written — in the preacher's encounter with Scripture. This week covers the discipline of exegesis: how to read a biblical text in its context, understand its literary form, identify its main point, and determine what it was saying to its original...

4. Week 4 Understanding Your Audience

   The same truth must be communicated differently to a village church in East Africa, a suburban congregation in Canada, a university campus, and a prison chapel. Great preachers are not simply great with words — they are attentive listeners to the people they serve.

5. Week 5 Sermon Structure — Expository, Topical, and Narrative

   There is no single right shape for a sermon, but there are tested shapes that work. This week covers the three main structural approaches:

6. Week 6 The Introduction — You Have Ninety Seconds

   The introduction of a sermon has one job: earn the right to preach the rest of it. If people disengage in the first ninety seconds, the best material in the world will be delivered to a room that is no longer truly listening.

7. Week 7 The Body — Developing Your Main Points

   The body of a sermon carries the theological weight. This week covers the construction of main points — how many (usually 2-4), how to state them clearly, how to develop each one with explanation, illustration, and application, and how to signal movement from one point to the next without losing...

8. Week 8 Illustrations — Making Truth Visible

   Charles Spurgeon said illustrations are the windows of a sermon — they let light in. An abstract theological truth that cannot be illustrated will not stay in most people's minds past the car park. An illustration that makes the truth visible — that gives it a face, a story, a concrete shape —...

9. Week 9 The Conclusion and the Appeal

   The conclusion of a sermon has one job: land the plane. Everything that was built in the body must come to a clear, decisive landing — not a gradual fade, not a series of false endings, not a summary of everything already said.

10. Week 10 Voice, Delivery, and Presence

    The same words delivered with energy and clarity land differently than the same words delivered into shoes. This week addresses the physical and vocal dimension of preaching: pace, volume, pause, eye contact, gesture, movement, and the use of silence.

11. Week 11 Preaching in the Spirit — Anointing, Not Performance

    Technique is necessary but not sufficient. The final frontier of preaching is the one that cannot be fully taught — the anointing of the Holy Spirit that makes preaching more than skilled communication.

12. Week 12 Your Sermon — Prepare, Deliver, and Receive Feedback

    The final week is purely practical: students prepare and submit a complete, original sermon — written introduction, developed body with 2-3 main points, illustration for each, conclusion, and appeal. If the college setting allows for video or audio submission, students deliver it; otherwise the...