Matt O'Reilly, PhD

Simplify the Message: Multiply the Impact is a brand new book from my friend, Talbot Davis, pastor of Good Shepherd Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. I don’t recall when our paths first crossed, but in 2014 (and in a new appointment for me) Talbot’s influence led to a major shift in my approach to preaching. I did not change my commitment to serious engagement with the scriptures. I did not change my commitment to preaching the gospel. I did not change my commitment to pre

I recently posted a few reflections on John Wesley’s instruction that Methodist preachers ought to preach the doctrine of holiness (or Christian perfection) “constantly, strongly, and explicitly.” Following Wesley’s advice, my January sermons were focused on the topic of Becoming Holy. Take a listen, if interested, and let me know what you think. If you are a preacher, how do you work the call to holiness into your sermons? How much homiletic time do you give to the topic? Wh

I’ve got a new article up at Preaching.com. Here’s the intro: No one likes a sermon about money. The people in the pews don’t like them for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because they have felt manipulated or scammed by a preacher trying to line his own pockets. Other times they feel convicted because they don’t give as much as they should and hearing a sermon on stewardship only reminds them of their sin. Preachers don’t like giving sermons on money because we know mem

After attending part of the review panel for Richard Hays’ new short book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Baylor, 2014), I knew I had to get a copy and read it. So I did, and took the long plane ride from California as an opportunity to dig in to this treasure trove of accessible and robust biblical scholarship on the Gospels. Hays is currently the Dean of Duke Divinity School and is well known for his work on the interplay between Old

http://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/5312367/url/http%253A%252F%252Fstmarkumc.podbean.com%252Fe%252Fsaved-all-the-way-phil-21-18-92814-rev-matt-oreilly%252F/initByJs/1/auto/1 One reason I love Philippians is the constant attention Paul gives to applying the gospel to all of life. He really wants to see the light of the grace of God shine into every crack and crevice of the human heart. He wants to see us work out the grace that God has worked in us. One way he doe

Two of my top interests are combined in the title of this book. So, I’m very glad to have the opportunity to draw attention to it here, and many thanks to the team at IVP Academic for providing a review copy. With Preaching the New Testament, Ian Paul and David Wenham have pulled together a strong team of scholars all with varying degrees of experience in preaching to create a fine handbook that will guide preachers into the many challenges of relating the ancient text of the

Leading the church into an ever deeper understanding of the Bible-as-a-whole is no small task, and all who devote their lives to the ministry of the Word know the weightiness of this responsibility. Like Paul, who told the Ephesian elders that he had not refrained from preaching to them “the whole counsel of God”, we long for our congregations to be nourished by every word that God has spoken (Acts 20:27). This means, however, that we must resist the natural drift to preach o

Books on preaching abound. And those of us who make a regular practice of reading such books must sift through the available volumes to decide which ones merit our attention and which do not. Full of homiletic wisdom and insight, Preach: Theology Meets Practice, co-authored by Mark Dever and Greg Gilbert, most assuredly falls in the former category. The subtitle of the book is reflected in its three-part division: Part One: Theology, Part Two: Practice, and Part Three: Sermon

“When we hear the ancient bells growling on Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! this, for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God’s son. The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed – whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions – is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who

“There is a host of different ways in which contemporary believers can be tempted to feel that the basic gospel message is inadequate and that it needs to be supplemented by additional religious rites or disciplines, more sophisticated knowledge, or some compelling experience, if they are to be accepted by God or to reach their full potential as human beings. They need to hear that, although the gospel has riches that are yet to be fathomed and implications for all areas of l

#BookReviews #Preaching

The task of the preacher is to proclaim the glory of the triune God, revealed in the cross of Christ and experienced in the communion of the Spirit, such that the Church gains an ever-enlarging vision of the trustworthiness of God, in order to foster a constant increase of confidence among the people of God, which results in obedience that transforms the world and fills the earth with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. #Preaching #TheologyinBrief

The new issue of Preaching is out and contains my article “Evangelizing the Church”. Here’s the intro: If you are like me, there may have been a time in your preaching ministry when you thought the gospel was really only for evangelizing unbelievers and did not need to be a part of every sermon on a weekly basis. After all, aren’t we to be moving on from the milk of elementary teachings to mature spiritual meat? If we address the basic gospel on a weekly basis, are we not hin

The new issue of The Princeton Theological Review is now available online and contains my article, “Faith Comes from Hearing: The Scandal of Preaching in a Digital Age.”  The article considers whether contemporary proposals for new homiletic forms is faithful to a biblical understanding of preaching.  Here’s an excerpt: Not only is Christian preaching to be content specific, it is also often counter-intuitive. Our discussion of the factions in Corinth demonstrated just this p

What is the role of the pastor? This topic has garnered quite a bit of attention around the blogosphere as of late.  I first came across a post by Gavin Richardson on how congregational perception of the pastor’s role has changed over the course of church history.  Gavin suggests that the early church was marked by pastors as theologians.  And this was probably the case up into the Enlightenment period.  As the 20th century came along, the role of the pastor transitioned into

The quickest answer is simply: because that’s how I have received them.  The triune God has sovereignly chosen to preserve the scriptures as a collection of books.  It seems quite obvious then that he intended they be read as whole books which means they should be read and expounded publicly as whole books.  As a preacher, I am a man under authority.  It is my responsibility to pass on the deposit of truth which I have received.  I don’t have the right or authority to mess wi

The record of Paul’s visit to Athens in Acts 17 provides an informative glimpse into the religious culture of the first century Greco-Roman world.  Paul’s time in Athens was marked by deep distress at the extensive idolatry which he observed there.  The city, Luke indicates, was full of idols (16).  Beyond all the temples for devotees of the various false gods, there were the philosophers of the Areopagus, who worshipped reason and exalted it as authoritative.  Make no mistak

Here’s a quote on Calvin and preaching from Gerald McDermott’s The Great Theologians: a Brief Introduction (IVP, 2010): “Despite his enormous reputation as a theologian, Calvin seems to have considered his preaching to have been more important than his formal theological works.  He preached, on average, 170 sermons per year, which is more than three a week.  When he was recollecting his accomplishments on his deathbed, he mentioned his sermons ahead of his theological work” (

The Fall 2009 issue of the Princeton Theological Review is online and contains my review of T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Preach: the Media Have Shaped the Messengers (P&R, 2009).  Scroll down to pp. 96-98 for the review.  Gordon applies the discipline of media ecology to homiletics by asking two main questions: (1) how has the move from language-based media to image-based and electronic media shaped our sensibilities and (2) how has this change of sensibilities changed

The new issue of Preaching (25.6) is now online and contains my article: “Five Things You Need to Know About Preaching Through the Books of Scripture.”  The article provides five suggestions aimed at clearing away some of the intimidation that may be associated with preaching all the way through an entire book of the Bible, line upon line and precept upon precept. #Articles #Preaching