Keith Willhite – Photo courtesy of Denver Seminary

In 2003 the Evangelical Homiletics Society established the Keith Willhite Award in memory of Dr. Keith Willhite, the late cofounder and second president of our guild. The award recognizes an outstanding paper presented at the annual gathering of the EHS, reflecting the highest of standards in research, analysis, insight, critical thinking, passion, and professional standards in evangelical homiletics, as demonstrated in the life of our friend, colleague, and visionary cofounder. These papers are published in the Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society.

Past Award Winners

2022 – Wright, Nathan and Gerber, Alison. “What’s Our Big Idea?: Analyzing the Academic Literary Corpus of the Evangelical Homiletics Society”
2021 – Barton, Casey. “On the Willows we Hung Our Harps: Preaching the Lament and Hope of Psalm 137”
2020 – Hoffman, Paul. “Preaching That Heals Our Divides: A Model for Addressing Ethnocentrism and Reconciliation from the Pulpit”
2019 – St. John, Russell. “Big Ideas and Bad Ideas”
2018 – Hollifield, Greg. “By 2050: Preparing Students to Preach Effectively in an Emerging Secondary Oral Society.”
2017 – Heather Joy Zimmerman. “No Longer Second Class Sermons: Redeeming the Topical Sermon’s Reputation through Application”
2016 – Randal Pelton and Jeffrey Arthurs. “The Rewards and Challenges of Teaching Robinson’s Big Idea Method”
2015 – Jared Alcántara. “Church in the Wild: Preaching in an Age of Americanized Secularization and Biblical Illiteracy.”
2014 – Greg R. Scharf.  “The Pulpit Rebuke: What is it? When is it appropriate? What makes it effective?”
2014 – Timothy Warren.  “Exploring Precursors to and Benefits of Abe Kuruvilla’s ‘Pericopal Theology’”
2013 – Jeffrey Arthurs. “The Lord’s Remembrancers”
2012 – Vic Anderson.  “Nuts and Bolts of Culture-Sensitized Sermons”
2011 – Randal Emery Pelton.  “Creatively Moving to the Cross: Adopting the Goal while Adjusting the Method of Early Christian Preaching”
2010 – Stephen Tu.  “From Pulpit to iPod: Disconnecting Preaching from Worship”
2009 – Andrew Thompson.  “Community Oracles”
2008 – Ken Langley.  “When Christ Replaces God at the Center of Preaching”
2007 – Dave McClellan.  “Mapping a Sermon: An Alternative Model of Homiletic Preparation”
2006 – Kent Edwards.  “Stories are for adults: Equipping preachers to communicate Biblical Narratives to Adult Audiences”
2005 – Dave McClellan.  “Recovering a Sense of Orality in Homiletics”
2004 – Jeffrey D. Arthurs.  “Short Sentences Long Remembered: Preaching Genre-Sensitive Sermons from Proverbs”
2003 – Kenneth Smith.  “Preaching the Psalms with Respect for Their Inspired Design“