Fred Brenning Craddock Jr. (April 30, 1928 – March 6, 2015) was Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament Emeritus in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
He was the director of the Craddock Center, a non-profit service group which operates in rural Appalachia.
First, instead of using a traditional deductive approach, in which three points are named and illustrated, in his sermons, Craddock advocates an inductive style.
While Craddock does not require that a sermon slavishly adhere to the biblical form—a psalm need not be preached entirely as a poetic sermon—he argues that various biblical forms seek to accomplish a variety of rhetorical aims; as such, the sermon should attempt to "do what the text does" in both the "what" (content) and the "how" (rhetorical strategies) of the text.
Craddock was the 2007 Founder's Day speaker at Johnson University, where he completed his undergraduate degree, and taught in the fields of Bible and Homiletics.
[7] Craddock married Nettie Dungan in June 1950, upon his graduation from Johnson Bible College.