The phrase “new homiletic” was first introduced by David James Randolph.70 In his The Renewal of Preaching (1969), which was honored with a thirtieth anniversary edition in 1998, he argued for a “new homiletic” to go along with the “new hermeneutic.” The basic thesis was as simple as it was brilliant: what if we designed homiletic presentations that dovetailed with biblical formats? For example, if the text is story, the sermon ought to be in narrative form. If the text is poetry, so too the sermon, one which “does not so much state a thesis as create an effect.” If the biblical form is an
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