Quote of the week: The proper response to biblical preaching

"The proper response to biblical preaching does not lie in pronouncing the pastor a skilled communicator but rather in determining whether God has spoken and whether or not He will be trusted and obeyed."

- Haddon Robinson, Making a Difference in Preaching, 71.

Sermon of the Week: Case Study of a Mugging by Haddon Robinson

This sermon is from a series Haddon Robinson did for the Dallas Theological Seminary. All four sermons from the series are available on DTS's website. Each is worth hearing. Dr. Robinson excels at several levels of preaching, but I am always most impressed in his ability to say succinctly what the sermon is about. 

Watch for the lines: "Your neighbor is anyone whose need you see, whose need God put you in a position to meet" and "What you are determines what you see."

Can't attend a preaching conference this year? Watch one online.

I enjoy listening to other preachers talk about the craft, but I can't always take the time away from family or church to travel to one of the many conferences offered around the country. The good news is that, now, with the Internet, you can find more resources than you could ever work through. One that I have great affection for is the work being done at The Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at George W. Truett Seminary. They've started hosting several events a year. When I can, I attend.  When I can't, I watch online. Currently they have the entire Will Willimon and Haddon Robinson Lectures available with more on the way.

To listen to the first Willimon lecture, click through the jump.

What are your favorite books on preaching?

I try to read at least a couple of preaching books a year.  Thanks to doctoral studies, I've read more than that in this past year.  While not every book on preaching is helpful towards the task, several have proved immensely rewarding.  I'm currently reading Fred Craddock's now classic work Preaching.  In the first chapter he advocates the reading or rereading of older books on preaching:

"Let us not be uncritically enamored of the new.  Some older volumes on preaching could profitably be reissued, not as a sentimental return to old paths but as confession that part of the malaise in the discipline is due not to a stubborn refusal to move beyond tradition but to a thoughtless failure to listen carefully to that tradition.  One becomes a concert pianist not by abandoning the scales but by mastering and repeating that most basic exercise. Who could say, after all the centuries, that reading Aristotle's Rhetoric or Poetics or Augustine's instructions on preaching is no longer of benefit to the preacher?"

So the question of the week is this: What are your favorite books on preaching?  These of course, don't have to be books about preaching.  Some books my be very influential on one's preaching even if they are only indirectly about the topic.

Here are some of mine:

Favorite how-to on preaching: Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages by Haddon Robinson.  This basic text isn't glamorous, but it reminds me of the "scales of preaching" quite well.  The updated addition (2001) includes a greater emphasis upon different forms of preaching than the first (1980) plus more gender inclusive language.  It's a text I'd recommend to anyone wanting to learn to preach or to review their "scales." 

Most inspirational book on preaching: This is usually whatever book I happen to currently be reading.  But a lasting favorite is Barbara Brown Taylor's Preaching Life.  Not only does she paint a beautiful portrait of the preaching task as only she can do, a third of the book includes sample sermons which are themselves worth the price of the book.

Favorite collection of sermons: OK, this is cheating a little, but I'm going with 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, a thirteen volume set edited by Clyde Fant and William Pinson.  I inherited this from a mentor and have found it a true delight.  I freely admit that I have not read the entire thirteen volumes.  But I do occasionally pull a volume down and read through the sermons by a famous preacher.  All the heavyweights are there, but so are many that I have never heard of before.  Not every sermon is great, but many are.   

Favorite non-preaching book that has influenced my preaching:  Again, this one changes frequently. Most recently it has been Marilyn Chandler McEntyre's Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.  This isn't a book about preaching, but a book about loving words, both written and spoken.  I don't reread many books, but this is one I can envision picking up and reading again and again.

Five minute preaching tune-up.

I've read a lot of preaching books. I've listened to a lot of classroom discussions on preaching. Truth be told, I've forgotten most of it. You might be able to, but I just can't hold all that good information (and most of it is good!) in my head. So good ideas that I once had while reading or listening to some mentor in the faith never get applied. Instead, I keep doing the same things over and over again, things that are comfortable, things that are safe, things that I can do without thinking.

Enter the Preaching Points podcast from Gordon-Conwell's Center for Preaching. Found in the ItunesU section of Itunes, these weekly 4-6 minute segments, often by Haddon Robinson, give you one idea to think about. One idea, not twenty, not ten, not even five. One. That I can work with . . . this week. I listen on the way to a hospital visit, or while I'm waiting for an appointment, or while I'm staring at a blank page wondering when the words will start to come.

It's a resource that's helped me. It might help you. It only takes five minutes to find out.

What are some of the resources you've found helpful in keeping the basics of preaching fresh in your mind?

Sermon of the week: Haddon Robinson

This isn't a first person narrative sermon. Haddon wrote the book on those, but I can't find an example online of him doing it. He is an excellent narrative preacher, though. He didn't start out that way, but through the years his preaching has shifted in that direction. This is a marvelous biographical sermon on the person of Philemon. I love how he is able to make the ancient world come alive. What would you say is the secret to making that happen?

The introduction is about 3 minutes if you want to skip past that.

CPC Special - "Put That on Master Charge" Philemon, by Haddon Robinson from Steve Toler on Vimeo.

Haddon Robinson on Preaching from WorkingPreacher.org