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This is a book a good friend of mine already read to
me in the pages of his life. In our day to day conversations and meals together
he is open about his struggles and how the Gospel speaks to him. So when he preaches
Sunday morning, I know he is retelling me how the passage of the day spoke to
and changed him. He has read the text, he has wrestled with the text using all
his hermeneutical skills. He is telling me the Gospel story from the inside
out. This is one way to quickly summarize the book.
This book is not an easy read, but it is a worthwhile
read for those who do any kind of public speaking or teaching. The author spends a good deal of the book
developing the case that there is something unique about the sounds of the
spoken word that resonates with the way the Bible was delivered by God and the
prophets and Apostles.
The book is divided into two parts: Preparing the
Preacher and Developing an Orally Based Model of Preaching. In Part One he
introduces us to several key people active in teaching rhetoric; St Augustine,
Aristotle, and Roman educator Quintilian. The premise being developed is that
the written word is an efficient way of recording what was spoken, but that the
written word has different purposes than the spoken word. Therefore,
preparation for an oral presentation of the truth needs to conceived and grown
in a different way than one would prepare something for reading. He presents
this methodology in detail in Part Two.
In Part Two we are introduced to Jesuit scholar Walter
Ong. Chapter’s 7 and 8 get down to where the rubber meets the road and the
author spells out the method he uses for preparing a sermon. Instead of the typical 5 step literary process
usually used in sermon preparation, he proposes more time be spent recreating
and verbalizing the flow of thought in the text for today’s audience. Significant
time should be spent in internalizing the text for yourself and then attempting
to articulate that insight for the audience at hand. In some sense the sermon is not done until it
is delivered, until the words are spoken and shaped in the context of a
listening congregation.
I think the author is on to something. The most
effective messages I have heard, are the ones where the preacher or speaker has
really wrestled with articulating the flow of thought in the text itself, and
was practiced in the expression of it. I would recommend this book to those
who preach or are training to preach. And it would be a good read for a Bible teacher who does a lot of directed Bible studies.
I received this resource for free from
Weaver Book Company via Cross Focused Reviews for this review. I was not
required to write a positive review.
