The Old Rugged Center: The Role of the Cross in the Preaching of Rev. Dr. Billy J. Hill - Why Every Sermon Must Come Hom, (Paperback)

<p><b>"They all come home to Calvary. Whatever text I am given, wherever a sermon begins, it is going to the cross and out the other side of an empty tomb."</b></p><p>I have spent a lifetime preaching - in pastorates in Ohio, Detroit, and Virginia, in prison chapels and hospital wards, in sanctuaries and on pavements - and I have one confession to make before anything else: I already know where every sermon is going to end before I open my mouth. It is going to end at the cross. And then just past it, at an empty tomb.</p><p>This is the book where I finally stop to explain why.</p><p>I call it <b>the old rugged center</b> - the cross of Jesus Christ, which is not the decoration at the end of a sermon but the center of gravity that holds the whole thing together. A wheel without a hub is a pile of spokes. A sermon without the cross at its center is a pile of good advice, true observations, and moving stories that do not finally hold together, because nothing is holding them. Put the cross at the center and the spokes find their hub: the comfort has a reason, the command has a power, the warning has a mercy, and the celebration has a ground.</p><p>I have written this book on two levels at once. I want it serious enough for the seminary - a real account of a theology and a method. And I want it plain enough for the preacher who never went, the one called out of a hard life with a Bible, a burden, and a Sunday coming. I kept my own voice. I kept my own sermons. I would rather show you the cross being preached than only describe it.</p><p><b>Ten chapters of theology and craft. Six full sermons set into the pages.</b> Each sermon is followed by an honest account of how I built it and drove it home to Calvary - not a description of preaching, but preaching itself, opened and examined so you can see exactly how the turn is made. We cover the full range: a theology of the preached Word, Jesus as the content and goal of every sermon, the two words that turn a text toward grace - <b>But God. But Jesus.</b> - the grammar of Calvary, the necessity of the empty tomb, the craft of the resurrection turn, the pastoral care it takes to preach the cross to hurting people, the cross and the celebration, and what it costs a preacher to stand at the foot of the cross week after week.</p><p>Every chapter closes with a word for the daughters of the cross - for the women God has called to preach, who were the first to carry the news of a risen Lord from an empty tomb. I have written this book for them as much as for anyone.</p><p><b>For the seminary. For the street preacher. For every preacher who has ever stood up with a text and wondered where it was going.</b></p><p>It was always going to the cross.</p><p><i>"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." - 1 Corinthians 1:18 (ESV)</i></p>

• The Old Rugged Center: The Role of the Cross in the Preaching of Rev. Dr. Billy J. Hill - Why Every Sermon Must Come Hom, (Paperback)
• Author: Dr Billy J Hill
• ISBN: 9798951397133
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-06-29
• Page Count: 136