Customer Reviews

A Complete Guide to Sermon Delivery

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Preachers and public speakers will find this book useful. Fasol discusses the body language and pathos aspects of communication by giving the principles of proper vocal production and articulation, effective facial expression, eye contact, posture, gestures, etc. This book is written with preachers in mind, but certainly any public speaker would find it effective for bringing to mind these often-forgotten areas of communication. I don't think the title of the book ("Complete Guide...") is entirely accurate, but it is a helpful book none the less.

The book has some damage but it is good, fast sipping and would have no problem ordering from them again

Al Fasol's book, A Complete Guide to Sermon Delivery, contains useful information for any public speaker, but requires careful reading. His thorough treatment of frequent mistakes might alone be worth the price of the book, I suppose. Unfortunately he tries very hard to be all things to all people, resulting in a book that differs little from any book on public speaking. This, however, is not what makes it bad. What makes it bad is the title and the stated purpose of the book. If the book were stripped of its references to the Bible, God, and Christianity, it might merit my endorsement, albeit with a strong warning about Fasol's opinions on the use of multimedia, radio, and TV.

Fasol's introduction begins with the stated purpose, "The purpose of this introduction is to present a basic theology of sermon delivery." While I contend that theology is theology and "theology of" anything is a misuse of the word, I recognize popular misuse of the word has all but muted my reactionary contention. He attempts to fulfill his purpose by quoting people like Karl Barth and Schleiermacher but not the Bible! (It is ironic, too, that he would quote Schleiermacher after Barth, given the latter's repudiation of the former.) Fasol offers these quotes ostensibly in support of his working definition of preaching, "Preaching is a word from God applied to a contemporary congregation, communicated by a God-called person in a way that maximizes the message and minimizes the messenger." By this definition, an anonymous PowerPoint slide on the internet that related a Charismatic prophesy to a current issue would qualify as preaching. (The internet is chosen for this example based on the apparent inclusion of radio and TV audiences in the "congregation" in chapter six.) It neither refines "communication" to mean the spoken word, nor does it qualify "a word from God" to mean the Bible, nor does it apply "applied" to mean a "moral ought." (To address superfluous wording like "contemporary" and "maximizes . . . minimizes" I simply point to Richard Mitchell's "Less Than Words Can Say.") Our sermons should all begin far better than page one of Fasol's book!

Page number 2 is unfortunately no better than page number 1. The section titled, "Who Should Preach: A God-Called Person," contains two paragraphs that say absolutely nothing related to this section title. This astonishing development in the book was particularly disappointing since I looked forward to reading some defense of the fanciful idea that a distinctive "calling" to preach is Biblical. (The New Testament describes all believers as called.)

The chapter on "Achieving Full Vocal Production" has some boilerplate text available in most books on speech and singing, though there are some digressions that diminish its value. For instance, Fasol's digression on oxygen displays ignorance of biochemistry and physiology. Another example of a fanciful leap in logic, "A cheerful person usually has a pleasant voice because there is no tension on the vocal bands," (p. 23) leaves me a bit mystified. More humorous is the profound observation, "Sermon delivery has been called `the most dynamic moment of the preaching experience.'" (p. 25) What other moments of the preaching experience might there be?

Fasol redeems himself with an outstanding chapter on articulation. That it is a bit hard to follow, like reading a description of how to tie a shoe, is no fault of Fasol's. In fact he does a good job of it. If this book sold with a CD that contained demonstrations of the many examples he has compiled, it would be worth double the price!

Likewise the chapters, "Improving Vocal Variables," and, "Improving Body Language," are well done. Fasol's suggestion that we transcribe our already-preached sermons is outstanding. In fact it sounds like such an effective technique to highlight deficiencies that I am daunted by the prospect!

Space does not permit adequate treatment of chapter six, "Delivery for Radio and Television." It is fitting that it is preceded by a quote from the liberal par excellence Harry Emerson Fosdick! Suffice it to point to Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and Richard Weaver's "Ideas Have Consequences." Those who have read these two books and are interested in the conversation may be intrigued by one sentence in Fasol's book, "Television gestures [sic] must be slow and deliberate, never made directly toward the camera." Two aspects of this statement are fascinating: 1. Television is used adjectivally, indicating a different class of gesticulation, which seems to suggest that the television "world" is not like the non-television world. 2. Why never toward the camera? Is it because the viewer is engaged not as a participant, but as a voyeur? While I am prepared to hear arguments that television and radio might be redeemed by broadcasting in the very way Fasol excoriates, e.g. as "talking heads," I utterly reject the suggestion that preaching should adopt the forms of television entertainment. At best it "maximizes" the messenger while "minimizing" the message. At worst it trivializes the Word of God in the imagination of the viewer and debases that which we must exalt.