Jack Roeda

Adjunct Professor of Preaching (1997)
A.B. (Calvin College, 1967)
B.D., Th.M. (Calvin Theological Seminary, 1970, 1971)

For a long time, Jack Roeda has been asking questions about sermons such as, "What makes a good sermon?" or "How do you put a sermon together?" Jack has now been preaching for thirty years - and it is this experience which informs his teaching. Here is what Jack says about preaching:

Good preaching is not an easy or a simple thing. It requires our best efforts, our keenest thinking. More, it demands holiness. There is no foolproof recipe, no guaranteed method, and no step-by-step account that will always deliver an excellent sermon. All that we can do for each other is point the way and warn against wrong turns. I agree with homelitician John Killinger, who wrote, 'The making of the sermon is actually a moment of revelation, a trip into the holy mountains - and the delivery of the sermon is such a moment for the congregations. Good preaching galvanizes men [and women] -upends them, probes them, haunts them, follows them into their most remote hiding places and smokes them out, drives them out coughing and sputtering and crying into the open light of new grace and new freedom and new love. The withered are made whole, the lame leap for joy, the dumb find articulation, the confused discover direction, the harried find resources for slowing down-in short, there is an apocalypticism about such preaching, an immediate grasp of what is yet distant and still to come, a taste of what is promised.' It is toward the preaching of such sermons that we work and pray.

Jack Roeda is the pastor of Church of the Servant Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is the author of various articles on preaching and applying the biblical text. He has also written educational materials for Christian Reformed Church Publications. Jack is married to Carol, an artist, and they have three children and two grandchildren. Jack and Carol enjoy long walks in the woods with their dog.