Hard Work in Search of the Prize: looking toward a resurgence in text-driven preaching

By Julie Owens | Photos by Kathleen Murray and Neil Williams

Kyle Walker has a deep passion for the outdoors— “enjoying God’s creatures”—and using outdoor activities as a platform to introduce generations of men to the Gospel. “Like hunting, living life is a pursuit. Both involve a pursuit that can be very challenging, but very rewarding,” he says. “God made man to pursue Him. God has never stopped pursuing man. That is the Gospel.”

Hunting “clearly parallels the ministry,” Walker says, “to be patient and intentional, understanding the situation, putting yourself in an advantageous position.” And both involve “hard work in search of the prize,” he adds.

Like sharing the truth about Christ from a pulpit, sharing the Word of God with his hunting partners is a beloved mission. “It gives me a platform for dialogue and conversations. It’s where discipleship takes place,” Walker says.

Walker’s eye has been on preaching for nearly as long as he can remember. Through his life’s twists and turns, Walker has been unswerving in the single most important thing—service to God, which has pervaded his life since the age of 9. He was dutifully walking the path to a career of preaching when God steered him to another role, that of vice president for student services at Southwestern Seminary. Today, all who pass through Southwestern benefit from his devotion to this service.

A 2007 graduate of the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership, Walker first sensed God’s call to preach as a teenager. That call led him to Southwestern as a student in 2007.

“God had called me to preaching, and I needed training,” Walker says. When visiting Southwestern as a prospective student, “God gave me a peace about this place,” he recalls.

When Walker enrolled in Southwestern in pursuit of a Master of Divinity, he was “fully convinced that eventually [he] would pastor a church.” But God had other plans and would call him to a different type of service. “I said, ‘God, show me my people,’” Walker says.

Pursuit of a fast-track academic career path was never his goal, but Walker’s leadership, enthusiasm, and loyalty proved invaluable to Southwestern. He completed his M.Div. in 2010, and he was named Southwestern’s director of admissions that same year. Three years later, Walker was appointed to the newly created position of dean of students. Then, in 2015, he completed his Ph.D. in preaching and systematic theology and joined the Southwestern faculty as assistant professor of preaching.

In 2017, Walker was called to serve as vice president for student services and was unanimously approved by the executive committee of the board of trustees. “It was then that I said, ‘God, I’m serving here until you call me elsewhere,’” he says. The new role allowed him “to continue along the path the Lord has ordered for me.”

Though not pastoring a church as he had anticipated, Walker nevertheless speaks frequently at local churches, revivals, and student camps. Earlier this year, he traveled to Myanmar after a pastor from that country visited the Southwestern campus and requested that Walker come and help train pastors there. Local people were instructed in textdriven preaching—preaching that adheres to the substance, structure, and spirit of the biblical text “and its credibility as the inerrant Word of God,” Walker says.

Walker and Shane Kirby, an M.Div. student at Southwestern, also went hunting with the local men. “Hunting allowed us to speak to a lot of men who normally wouldn’t have come to church,” Walker says. (Read more about Walker’s trip here.)

Walker’s role in academia has also allowed him to influence the preaching of the next generation. In addition to his role as teacher, Walker has penned a new book entitled Let the Text Talk: Preaching that Treats the Text on its Own Terms.

This work is an extension of Walker’s devotion to preaching. Its purpose is twofold: It details how text-driven preaching changed him, and it fills a critical niche in teaching text-driven preaching.

“There are other resources available, but nothing that codifies what we are teaching at Southwestern,” Walker says. Let the Text Talk is intended as “a practical manual for students” that outlines Southwestern’s approach to text-driven preaching and walks readers through the construction of a text-driven sermon.

Furthermore, Walker says, “It’s meant to give people an idea of whose shoulders we are standing on.” The book is an update and revision of a work by Southwestern’s first preaching professor, Jeff Ray, that was published in 1940. The principles of letting the text of Scripture drive all aspects of the sermon are as applicable today as they were in 1940, Walker says.

In his role as a preacher, a preaching professor, and a writer on the subject of preaching, Walker now sees his God-given task as the pursuit of a resurgence in text-driven preaching in churches around the world. “It’s a return to the Word of God,” he says. “Scripture is the authority.”

Like hunting, such service unto the Lord is challenging but may ultimately prove rewarding, and Walker predicts that this resurgence is on the horizon for Christianity.