Book Review: Preaching Grace

Information about the book

Kennon L. Callahan.  Preaching Grace: Possibilities of Growing Your Preaching and Touching People's Lives.  Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1999. (Amazon link)

Summary

From the book cover:  This is an age of mission.  This is a time when our gifts and strengths can truly touch people's lives - often for the first time.  In Preaching Grace, Kennon Callahan... shows pastors how to develop an approach to preaching that builds upon their unique gifts and strengths and gain the confidence and assurance to grow their preaching.

The structure of the book is to devote a chapter to each of eight strengths or gifts a preacher could develop in order to grow her preaching in a way that increases sermon's helpfulness to the members of the congregation.  The chapters outline what each strength is, why it is important, and suggestions of  how to develop it.

Impressions

I liked this book and plan to use the content in summary fashion in the curriculum for our Conference CLM Course.  I am usually wary of books that are more than 20 years old because church life and ministry has changed in the past two decades.  I was impressed that this one begins with the thesis that the church has changed - we are no longer preaching to church members who feel an obligation to be present; we are not even preaching to bring absent members back.  We are preaching to a mission field with the goal of reaching those who have never been in church.

I like the author's approach that perfection is not the goal.  He urges readers to release the guilt of what they "think" they should be doing, and find the methods that work for their personality and their congregation.  Smart and helpful.

I like the systematic approach to eight possibly ways to grow preaching with the goal of increasing sermons' helpfulness to the congregation.  I many cases, the strengths were not what I anticipated form their name.  For example, Resources is not the books on your shelf.  It is counting the time you spend in ministry - reaching people, working in mission, providing pastoral care - and using that time to not only increase the helpfulness of your sermon but also your connection with the congregation so that they are more receptive to your preaching.  In other words, sermon prep and pastoral care are not competing for time on your schedule - they are interwoven so that pastoral care and mission work are resources for your preaching.  This makes sense when you consider that a sermon should address a human issue - how will you know the issues people face unless you are working with them to face the issues?

Posts concerning the book

If I've written any other posts with information from this book, they will be tagged as Kennon Preaching