Preaching Books of the Year 2007

Crosswalk’s Preaching Books of the Year 2007.  Have you read any of them?

Recommended Book Chapters for Preachers to Read

In February, about 100 Sovereign Grace pastors gathered in Gaithersburg for our Pastors College Preaching Conference. They heard from Jeff Purswell (dean of the Pastors College), Mike Bullmore (longtime homiletics professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and now senior pastor of CrossWay Community Church in Bristol, Wisconsin) and myself [C.J. Mahaney]. As expected, the pastors left the conference with a list of recommended books on this most important topic.

But pastors can be easily overwhelmed when they hear someone recommend numerous books on a topic. It can be hard to know where to begin.

Over the last few years, rather than just recommending books, I’ve begun recommending specific chapters of books. I do this for a number of reasons. Obviously, it’s easier for a pastor to read a chapter than an entire book. Reading one excellent chapter can create an appetite for the entire book. And some books contain helpful chapters but are not worth reading in their entirety.

Rather than recommending a small library of books on preaching, today we are featuring the five favorite chapters from each of the three speakers at the conference. I think this list will serve pastors and create realistic and achievable reading assignments on the important topic of preaching. Consider creating a reading plan for the next month developed around these chapters.  Read the list…*

by, C.J. Mahaney

*Also included on the books page of this site

A Book You Should Have

Preacher, do you have this? You should.

Driscoll’s Sermon Prep and Reading Habits

These are some notes from the final session at the National Resurgence Conference 2008: Text and Context.

• Mark studies all the time, but doesn’t get around to official sermon prep until Thursday mornings. He enters the pulpit on Sundays (he preaches 5 times each Sunday) with his sermon only one-third to two-thirds prepared. He comes up with the introduction, conclusion, much of the body, the humor, and the cross references while he’s in the act of preaching.

• “I’m always reading 40-50 books at a time…I don’t sit down and read a book…I read parts of books…I read very fast…I don’t know if I have a photographic memory, but it’s something like that…It doesn’t matter how much you read, provided you read the right stuff…If you’re an elder in a church, give your preachers a really good book budget…My elders have given me, basically, an unlimited book allowance.”

from Buzzard Blog

Preaching to a Post-Everything World

Here’s a blurb from Tim Keller for the forthcoming book, Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons that Connect with Our Culture, by Zack Eswine of Covenant Theological Seminary:

“Zack Eswine moves the Christ-centered preaching movement forward with this volume. He not only calls us to carefully contextualize our message to various cultures, sensibilities, and habits of heart, but he also gives us a host of practical tools, inventories, and guidelines for doing so. All the while he assumes and strengthens the foundational commitment to preaching Christ and his restoring grace from every text. A great contribution.”–Tim Keller, senior pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City

Here is the book description from Amazon.com:

Zack Eswine starts this unique pastoral resource with a captivating question: Could I now reach who I once was? Challenging the idea that today’s preachers must do away with biblical or expository preaching if they are to reach non-Christian people, Eswine offers a way of preaching that embraces biblical exposition in missional terms. Recognizing all of the different cultural situations in which the gospel must be preached, he gives preachers practical advice on preaching in a global context while remaining faithful to the Bible. Pastors, seminarians, and church and ministry leaders who speak in various contexts will welcome this fresh, thoughtful examination of bringing the Word to today’s multi-everything, post-everything world.

from Justin Taylor