Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching (Baker Book House, 1994), 374 pages, $24.99.

Twenty years ago, in connection with some graduate studies, I reviewed the many hundreds of biblically-oriented homiletics texts produced in the previous 175 years and found 90% of them to be repetitive and mundane. Of course some of the "classics" stood out as fresh and highly significant. These included the many volumes by A. W. Blackwood and by W. E. Sangster, John A. Broadus' Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Phillips Brooks' Lectures on Preaching, H. Grady Davis' Design for Preaching, together with a handful more. These all well deserve the continued interest they have sustained over the years. Now, over this latter half of the twentieth century, we continue to profit from contemporaries such as Haddon Robinson, Thomas G. Long, and Fred B. Craddock. Bryan Chapell's new Christ-Centered Preaching may well be destined to join their illustrious ranks.

In our era, only James S. Stewart in his A Faith to Proclaim has dared boldly to confront the all-too-common pulpit distortion of the age first noted by Brooks as "preaching which must be called preaching about Christ as distinct from preaching Christ," a malady which tends to spread in unfortunate proportion to an otherwise worthy focus on the impactive dimensions of Christianity on our needy society.

Bryan Chapell has now tackled the virus that robs so much contemporary preaching of its virility and dulls its confrontational character. This innovative discussion of the authority and redemptive power of the Scriptures when exposed uses all the insights gleaned from contemporary studies in communications dynamics. But he contends that the determination of a sermon's subject remains only half-done when the preacher has merely discerned what the biblical writer was saying. Chapell thus affirms that only a clear understanding of each specific passage's purpose can facilitate an unclouded capacity to proclaim its truths effectively.

He offers a therapy which centers on what he calls "a redemptive approach to preaching," and displays how this particular purpose may vary from passage to passage. But he also insists that true applications of any such specific biblical substance can only proceed authentically within the over-arching theological concern of a "fallen condition focus" and its power to reveal the sub-Christian character of much that passes for authentic pulpit proclamation. This focus he defines as "the mutual human condition that contemporary believers share with those to or for whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage" (p. 42).

This principle, only barely hinted at in most homiletics texts, is herein adroitly analyzed, carefully clarified, widely applied, and well illustrated. The centrality of this idea to the whole of Chapell's volume, and its position as integral to everything from introductions to conclusions -- along with his attention to transitions, structures, applications, illustrations, and presentations -- makes this volume not only contemporary but also unique, and will assure its influence for many years. For our disillusioned and frustrated "post-modern" world it offers a comprehensive yet concise and well-proven approach to relevance for today's preaching tasks.