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Review Summary: How to tell that people listen? |
Date: 2008-10-24 |
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Details: This book tells how you can make people listen as long as you speak, rather than that they finish listening before you stop speaking.
And it does so in an interesting way, so the author knows his case.
Time reading this book is well spent if you ever speak in public. |
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Review Summary: Thought provoking approach |
Date: 2008-08-19 |
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Details: For me this was an excellent and timely book. Suggested by another pastor I highly regard, I have been looking for ways to challenge myself and grow in my preaching abilities. This book did just that. The author does away with the more traditional "three points and a prayer" exposition and introduces the reader to the idea of taking your audience on a ride. He wants you to think of the sermon as a type of mini-drama, where a tension is introduced, different efforts at relieving that tension are explored before it is truly relieved (through the Gospel), and then the follow-up of how we are to live now that this tension is gone. It is a story-telling model that is modeled after the story-tellers in Scripture and is appropriate for modern audiences.
Overall the book is well-written and easy to read. It is not a "revolutionary new technique" that will bring revival to your camp. But it does bring a few "Aha!" moments that you should be able to apply to your own sermon prep and delivery and get out of the same ol', same ol' rut. |
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Review Summary: It changed my preaching |
Date: 2007-03-30 |
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Details: The propositional, three point sermon. That's what I learned in seminary. I was good at it, but I soon got bored. I started checking into other forms. Thus I read the Robinsons' "It's All In How You Tell It", which explains first person preaching. My Biblical characters visiting our church were great successes.
Then I found this little gem and I was able to develop into narrative preaching. I have no plans to go back to the three point sermon. As soon as the narrative starts, people hear and pay attention. My last endeavor was so succesful, people approached me afterwards thanking me for the form and the content that touched and moved them (they even applaud, don't ask me why though).
If I have one complaint, it's this. As a total neophyte, with no idea what narrative preaching looked like, I would have liked to see a few samples in the book. The Robinsons included about seven sample sermons in theirs, so I was expecting the same. But then again, this book is much older.
Still a great book that I credit for putting me on a completely new path. I thoroughly enjoy preparing and preaching these sermons (much more than the traditional ones) and people respond more eagerly to them too.
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Review Summary: Preaching Sermons where You Don't Resolve the Tension Until the End |
Date: 2007-02-14 |
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Details: Eugene Lowry says that each sermon ought to begin with the human predicament, then it should be diagnosed, then the sermonic idea should come as it intersects with the gospel answer. Lowry believes that the sermon will best hold the attention of the hearer if you proceed inductively and do not resolve the tension until the Weee!!! and the Yeah!!!! stages.
He compares the sermon to a Columbo episode where you know who dunnit, but you are wondering how in the world Columbo is going to figure it out. In the same way, we know that the gospel is the answer to man's problems, but we don't know exactly how and in what way it is the answer to a particular problem.
He also discusses how the movie High Noon holds the viewer in tension until the end, and he wants preachers to follow suit. Giving away your proposition at the start of a sermon is like giving away the punchline of a joke before you tell the joke!
Lowry takes us through the five stages of the Homiletical plot and makes a compelling case why we ought to make our sermons compelling. He is realistic, he knows that preachers cannot weave a thriller every Sunday, but he does give us the way in which we can plot out the sermon in a way which will it will intersect with the lives of our listeners.
I agree that this is a valuable way to preach, and looking back on my old sermons, I have been inductive and have begun with the issues in people's lives about 95% of the time.
Yet it should also be stated that there are times and places and passages where the deductive method can be effective. Perhaps you can begin with the sermonic idea and then make it your goal to explain how this idea can be applied to our lives. I can certainly see parts of James and 1 John being preached deductively.
But this is a very helpful primer on preaching as a narrative art form. Recommended. |
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Review Summary: A Must Read for the Serious Preacher |
Date: 2003-01-05 |
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Details: This book is for anyone who is serious about preaching; even if you have been preaching for a while! For the new preacher, Lowry explains how to make your sermons interesting, Biblical, relevent, specific and memorable! For the seasoned preacher he illuminates several ideas that you may already be aware of subconciously by using in depth analysis of the five parts of "the sermon as preached" and by giving excelent examples and analogies. Even if you do not adopt his specific format this book enables you to make your style more effective and crisper. This book should be in every preacher's library! |
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out of 10 Reviews
