One Year to Better Preaching

Book excerpt: One Year to Better Preaching provides preachers with fifty-two hands-on exercises that sharpen their homiletical skills. The book is designed particularly for those who preach each week—and have been, perhaps, for some time—to help them get out of the rut of the routine and infuse their preaching with new sparks of creativity, fresh approaches to sermon preparation and design, and sharpened verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Novice preachers, also, will find the exercises useful in developing their preaching abilities. Each chapter includes instructions for an exercise, tools and suggestions needed for the exercise, comments from preachers who completed it, and recommended resources for further study The exercises address eight categories of homiletics: • Prayer and Preaching • Bible Interpretation • Understanding Listeners • Sermon Construction • Illustrations and Applications • Word Crafting • The Preaching Event • Sermon Evaluation Readers can complete the exercises in the order presented, which address different categories week to week, or they can sharpen their skills in a particular category over a period of weeks by using the chart provided. They might also work through the exercises in collaboration with other preachers. One Year to Better Preaching will leave a preacher reinvigorated and better equipped to proclaim the Word of God skillfully, passionately, and effectively.