1 TOWARDS THE CONCEPT OF AN AFRICAN CHRISTIAN PREACHING: PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS AND BUILDING BLOCKS Ezekiel Adewale Ajibade 1 The Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso revzikky@gmail.com Ronald J. Allen made some very interesting observations after his informal research trip to Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, Zambia back in 1990. 2 There he was opportune to listen to 40 sermons in two months from preachers, which, according to him, were fairly representative of all the corners of the African continent. He was also able to listen to eight other sermons as he visited Sunday congregations and other meetings. His discovery was that the content and form of the sermons placed the preachers in a position of either neo-orthodoxy or “naive fundamentalism.” 3 They simply preached the way they were taught in the seminary and there was not much of an attempt to “Africanise” their theology and homiletics. 4 If worship in Africa is increasingly becoming rooted in the culture of the people, preaching cannot be less. The position of Allen, even when it is now over a decade and a half, remains a starting point for the thoughts on African Christian Preaching because nothing much has changed over time. Preaching fundamentally is preaching God’s Word. Carter, Duval and Hays define a biblical sermon as “one that carries with it high biblical authority. In such a sermon the biblical text serves as the basis of the sermon, and the message communicated 1 This work is a documentation of thoughts arising from my studies in the Hekman Library of Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, as A Visiting Scholar between June 1-12, 2015. 2 Ronald J. Allen, African Homiletic: A Soft Report.” in Homiletic. vol. 16 no 1, 1991. 3 By naive fundamentalism, Allen meant “a fundamentalism which is not critically appropriated and which people adopt, at least in part, because they are not aware of other theological options.” 6. 4 Allen, 8.