Baptist Preaching: A Global Anthology

1. Live to Be Remembered for Good

9 a b PART I AFRICA 1 Live to Be Remembered for Good (Nehemiah 5 and 13) Stephen K. Asante Osokowa Baptist Church Kumasi, Ghana BIOGRAPHY Asante has pastored Osokowa Baptist Church in Kumasi, Ghana, since 2005. He also ministered to the church from 1986 to 1994, before becoming the national director of the Ghana Evangelism Committee (1994–2002). Asante has also served as the president of the Ghana Baptist convention. He is married to Evelyn Salome Asante, and they have four daughters. Asante describes himself as “an Evangelist to the core.” Apart from his ministry responsibilities and service as an international conference speaker, Asante enjoys reading, soccer, and watching wildlife documentaries. SERMON COMMENTARY Asante contributes a sermon proclaimed on a most specific occasion, the send-off service in Nigeria for Solomon Ademola Isholah, the general secretary of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. Isholah also has a sermon in this collection. Thus, the sermon is somewhat specific to the venue and occasion. Asante uses selected passages from Nehemiah as a means to consider the ministry of Isholah. Asante devotes a significant portion to the historic background of Nehemiah and his times, providing the biblical history, timeline, and geography 10 Baptist Preaching without choking the pace of the sermon. At just the right time, the historical background is rescued from becoming laborious by his use of an apposite aphorism from George Bernard Shaw concerning the sin of indifference. Asante then turns to the expansion of his clearly stated focus statement in a deductive style. In the first move he presents Nehemiah and Isholah as burden-bearers. They are both positive and motivational leaders who avoid the minor key of cynicism. He sets alongside these two a lineup of similarly passionate leaders in Europe, America, and Africa, indicating a global reach of illustrative culture. As in each of the four moves, he directly comments on the qualities he sees in Nehemiah that are reflected in Isholah. The message does an exceptional job of commending Isholah without going over the top or being saccharine. Throughout his sermon, Asante presents brief, didactic lists of textual references that reinforce his concern. He pins the point to the practical with a direct address to the listener: Are you a burden-bearer? In the second move he uses Nehemiah again as a backdrop for Isholah’s personal sacrifice in leadership. He reinforces his remarks with references to Mandela, Beecher, and O. P. Clifford, calling them like witnesses to his point. In this move Asante makes the first remarks related to prosperity preaching, upon which he will expand in great length in his fourth move. He deliberately contrasts Isholah with the assumptive attitude of prosperity preachers. With the staccato point-by-point method characteristic of each of his moves, he directly rivets the reality of his exposition to the incoming leadership of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. In an adroit third move Isholah again uses Nehemiah as a sounding board for Isholah’s courage. He particularly deals with the willingness to risk enmity and criticism. Of particular charm is his quotation of an indigenous Akan proverb: “It is the fetchers of water from the river who break the jar.” This provides a common touch of shared indigenous experience that balances his other theological observations. Another especially appealing point of an intensely hortatory sermon is Asante’s telling of “an old Indian fable.” Part of getting a sermon heard in many cultures depends on the preacher’s awareness of how to balance didactic, dense, hortatory, and admonishing material with the relief of anecdotes, aphorisms, and humor. Just as a minor chord is only one half-step at its third tone from a major key, so also just the right step at the right time can make a hortatory sermon effective. In the fourth and final move Asante widens the scope of the message to discuss which leaders get remembered. In this fourth move he ranges from the presence of the Holy Spirit in ministry to a long quotation and reflection Part I—Africa 11 on John Piper’s critique of the prosperity gospel. From this move one senses again the seemingly ever-present specter of prosperity preaching that other sermons in this volume confront. The Baptist confrontation with ubiquitous prosperity preaching is one of the discoveries in this collection. SERMON ANALYSIS Of Reid’s four voices, Asante speaks in the teaching voice, imparting information .1 In McClure’s four...