John Mark Comer has quickly become among the most popular voices concerning Christian life and ministry. In 2021, Comer, with a few colleagues, launched The Art of Teaching, a so-called “Masterclass” on preaching and teaching. The program is marketed as a “homiletics course for the modern age.” Throughout Comer’s ministry and writing, one will find an eloquent man who draws from a broad spectrum of sources for his theology, including current-day pastors and ancient monks. Comer’s popularity, especially with younger Christians, necessitates understanding his methods and content. Comer’s writing draws from various sources, from Pentecostals to Catholics, Irenaeus to Moltmann, and Mystics to conservative historians. His eclectic approach to sources and popularity in quick sound bites on social media creates uncertainty about his theological and homiletical principles.
This paper will analyze Comer’s work in The Art of Teaching to determine the homiletical principles and put him in conversation with the various trends in homiletics in the modern era. The paper will primarily interact with Comer’s instruction in The Art of Teaching and seek to understand how it fits into the field of homiletics using popular and classic works on homiletics, including H. Grady Davis’s God’s Design for Preaching, Haddon Robinson’s Biblical Preaching, Timothy Keller’s Preaching, and the Yale Lectures on Preaching.
This paper will have two major sections. First, The Art of Teaching will be analyzed for its content, methodology, and contribution to homiletics. Then, the analysis will be placed in the historical context of homiletics to understand the explicit and implicit influences that shape the contribution to homiletics that Comer and The Art of Teaching bring to the field.