2008 Produced an Array of Helpful Volumes on Preaching

If the number of books on a subject are any indication, then preaching must be alive and well in America.

The past year has been a good one for books on preaching, with excellent volumes published dealing with a variety of issues relating to the proclamation of God’s Word. Our Book of the Year (see below) is simply one of the outstanding books claiming space on the preacher’s bookshelf.

Many of the year’s best books in homiletics have already been reviewed in recent issues of Preaching, including one of the most wide-ranging titles of the year: The Moody Handbook of Preaching (Moody Press), edited by John Koessler of the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) faculty. Written by members of the graduate and undergraduate faculty of MBI—along with three of the school’s presidents—the Handbook explores a variety of preaching-related topics under four major headings: Forming a Philosophy of Preaching, Mining the Text, Illustrating Truth, and Developing Methodology.

As we said of this volume in our review in the July-August issue: “The Handbook is not a comprehensive survey of the preaching task, but the topics it does deal with are handled well. The fact that all the contributors come from the MBI community means that the Handbook does not reflect a wide diversity of thought, but it does give the collection a strong and unified voice. Those who preach will find The Moody Handbook of Preaching to be an interesting and useful resource filled with solid and practical insights that will encourage effective biblical preaching.”

Addressing the growing interest in the first-person narrative sermon, Stephen Chapin Garner’s book Getting Into Character: The Art of First-Person Narrative Preaching (Baker) offers practical advice for preparing and presenting first-person narratives that will be fresh and engaging. Pastors who don’t have much experience with such sermons will find this a helpful resource and an encouragement to try such sermons from time to time.

As we noted in our review in the May-June issue, “First-person narrative brings characters to life in ways that can illustrate memorable gospel messages, thereby increasing effectiveness. Garner draws the connection between first-person narrative sermons and the dramatic monologue in theater, then uses those insights to help preachers develop their own work. He discusses selecting characters and using dialogue, how to plot your narrative, and other vital elements in crafting such messages.”