The renewal of the pulpit over the past several years has produced some of the best works on preaching to be seen in any period. Major works by James W. Cox, John Killinger, David Buttrick, Fred Craddock and others have contributed much to the current dialogue on the art and craft of preaching.

In addition, the contributions of other developing fields of study has enriched the study of preaching. The development of narrative exegesis has informed narrative preaching styles. The contemporary concern for hermeneutical issues has led to a new understanding of the role of speech, the function of texts, and the role of the reader/hearer. Similarly, the rediscovery of classical rhetoric has added new dimensions of meaning to the preaching task.

Nevertheless, in the midst of these clear developments and the many promising volumes which relate them to preaching, there remain the classic books on preaching which have demonstrated their service over many years.

A classic, said one busy preacher, is "any book still in print by the time I find an opportunity to read it." Nevertheless, some books on preaching have earned a much deserved reputation for greatness, and are genuine 'classics' in the preaching world.

This list would include P. T. Forsyth's great Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, H. H. Farmer's The Servant of the Word, and George A. Buttrick's Jesus Came Preaching. Many of these classics are out of print and available only in libraries.

In this issue we review three classics still in print, two of which have been in print for over 100 years. Though dated and worn, they have stood the test of time, and speak powerfully over the decades.

John A. Broadus, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Fourth Edition, Revised by Vernon L. Stanfield [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979 (1870)], 332 pp., $14.95.

From its first printing to the present, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons has been among the most popular and influential volumes on the preaching task. First published in 1870, the volume was the product of one of the most remarkable preaching ministries of the nineteenth century.

The life of John A. Broadus is inseparable from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, of which Broadus was the second president and one of four founding faculty. Broadus was the logical choice for the homiletics position, with his nation-wide reputation for scholarship and preaching already well established.

By the time of the Civil War, Broadus was one of the most famous preachers in America, and his reputation took him into the great pulpits of the North and the South -- even during the war years.

His greatest book, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, grew out of his classroom lectures on preaching delivered in 1865-1866. In that academic year, the first session after the war, Broadus had only one student -- a blind man -- in his preaching class. Nevertheless, out of that session a classic volume on preaching emerged.

Preaching, suggested Broadus, is a determining characteristic of Christianity. "No other religion has ever made the regular and frequent assembling of groups of people, to hear religious instruction and exhortation, an integral part of divine worship." This unique emphasis on the centrality of preaching within the worshipping community marks Christianity as a fellowship of preaching.