Subscribers have the opportunity to participate in discussion forums, post sermons and offer helpful critique to others. Archived feature articles will also be available to subscribers.
A six-month free subscription is available through a key that can be found on the CD bundled with Kent Anderson's Choosing to Preach. >>
This past year saw the release of a fine handbook on preaching published by Moody Press. The Moody Handbook of Preaching is a comprehensive compilation of articles on preaching written mostly by faculty and alumni of Moody Bible Institute and edited by John Koessler. As one might expect from a Moody publication, the book champions a classic expositional approach to preaching from a conservative evangelical perspective.
The book is built around four sections. Part One is about the forming of a “philosophy of preaching,” featuring articles by Koessler, Winfred Neely, Joseph Stowell, and George Sweeting, among others. This section offers the expected rationale for preaching, with a couple of helpful surprises. The article by Pam McRae on “How Women Hear the Sermon” was particularly helpful. A woman “may eventually want help,” she writes, “but what she really wants is to feel validated in her experience and then perhaps hear something soothing and comforting (p. 100).” Dan Green’s piece on “preparing yourself spiritually for the message,” was also of value.
The second section focuses on the “mining” of the text. Here we find hermeneutical guidance from a genre perspective. The section focuses specifically on historical narrative, didactic literature, the poetic books, and the prophets. I was particularly pleased to find a chapter on the use of Hebrew in sermon preparation by Andrew Schmutzer and another on “the use and abuse of Greek in preaching” by Gerald Peterman.
The third section had to do with illustration. That Moody would dedicate a quarter of the book to this subject might say something about their understanding of sermon form, but it also is a nod to the image-hungry nature of contemporary life. There is a good chapter by William Torgeson on storytelling, a helpful chapter on the use of technology by Paul Butler, a piece by Kelli Worrall on drama and the sermon, and a particularly helpful article on the use of film in preaching by Michael Orr. This section alone is worth the price of the book.
The final section focuses on the development of methodology. I was pleased to see that the authors were able to champion some creativity in sermon form without compromising their fundamental commitment to exegesis. Winfred Neely, for example, picks up on David Buttrick’s homiletic of “moves,” while Michael Milco challenges the preacher to exegete the audience, though it isn’t clear whether Milco understands his debt to Fred Craddock for this principle. It’s a good moment for homiletics when Moody people can encounter people like Buttrick without rancor or compromise. The final chapter by James Coakley and David Woodall on the use of Bible Software in the exegesis of a text is an example of the practical nature of this handbook’s offerings.
Kudos to Koessler and to Moody for providing a resource with this kind of breadth and practicality.