Celebration is the essential element in the sermonic experience for hope and restoration in the midst of brokenness. The experience of celebration in the hearts of God’s people has always been an effective motivating tool for change. The African-American church is especially known for celebration. The “already, but not yet” is at its very core. The foundation of celebration is faith in God, who will enable his people to be agents of change for the better, both inside and outside of the church. Thus the church must be a people of faith who believe that they have already won, though they are still in the midst of the battle. In transforming any group of people, the church must introduce a homiletic that both inspires and encourages the congregation to confront the broken areas of the neighborhood in which they reside and also to rebuild those areas. In order for that to happen, the congregants must experience hope and restoration in their own lives before they can extend hope and restoration to others. The church must celebrate hope and restoration through a theological and hermeneutical framework in order to effectively combat the epidemic of hopelessness in our inner cities. Celebratory preaching affirms and empowers those who are experiencing brokenness to become active participants in rebuilding their lives and the lives of others through discipleship. This thesis project began by studying the areas of brokenness within Bread of Life Missionary Baptist Church (BLMBC) and the West Englewood community of Chicago. The biblical text was incorporated into the study in order to experience how God dealt with brokenness and how he restored his people. A series of sermons was preached, taken from Scripture texts that specifically confronted those areas of brokenness in the biblical days, in order to identify the areas of brokenness in BLMBC and the West Englewood community. Identifying those areas of brokenness in both the past and present situations helped the congregation to understand that what God did in our past, he will do also in our future. Two methods were engaged in the preparation and preaching of these sermons—incarnational translation and the celebration model for preaching.
