Question of the Week: What are you reading?

With all the gift giving now behind us, I am sure you have at least one or two new books in your hands. What are you reading these days that you might recommend to other preachers?

I'm almost all the way through Annie Dillard's, The Writing Life. It's a delightful, meandering piece about what it takes to write a book. Much of it resonates with the task of writing a sermon.

Take for instance, this advice on writing as if you were dying.

"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality" - Annie Dillard.

So, what are you reading?

What can preachers learn from poets?

Gary Charles briefly explains how reading helps preaching. I especially like his reasoning for reading poetry. "Most good poets," he explains, "are forced to make something that is fairly mundane, imaginative, and do it in few words. And most preachers would really benefit to learn how to say what they say in fewer words."

Amen.

Thanks again to the folks over at www.workingpreacher.org for these videos. Keep them coming.