What's the Matter with Preaching Today? [Paperback]

Mike Graves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2004

Seventy-five years ago, renowned preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick asked in Harper's Magazine, "what's the matter with preaching?" Fosdick's question is even more relevant today, as both pastors and laity acknowledge the need for improvement in Sunday morning's sermons. And who better for pastors and students to learn from than those who already do it well? The contributors to this book are a some of the best and most thoughtful preachers in the church and classroom today. In their essays, they assess the state of preaching today, identify a variety of issues that challenge effective preaching, and offer helpful suggestions for what can be done to improve preaching. In the process, they help to define what effective preaching is.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mike Graves is William K. McElvaney Visiting Professor of Preaching and Director of Continuing Education and the Saint Paul Institute at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. He is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press; 1 edition (August 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0664226329
• ISBN-13: 978-0664226329
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, Well Written Treatises on Preaching Today, July 21, 2006

By 

Marc Axelrod (Potter, Wi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What's the Matter with Preaching Today? (Paperback)

This book was prepared in recognition of the 75th anniversary of Harry Emerson Fosdick's book by the same name. There are 13 chapters written by mostly mainline Protestant homileticians about issues relating to the subject of what is wrong with preaching today.

The first article is a reprint of Harry Emerson Fosdick's enthusiastic and interesting 1928 article on what he thought was the problem with preaching in his day. It turns out that his message is quite timeless. He concludes that many sermons are just plain boring and not very practical to everyday life. He contends that a sermon's objective should be to help people to solve a spiritual problem in their lives.

What truly bothered me about the chapter was Fosdick's disdain for expository preaching. He is absolutely convinced that people are not interested in having the Bible explained to them and having it applied to their lives. It cannot be underscored strongly enough how wrong Fosdick is on this point. Perhaps he has not had occasion to hear any really good expositors.

On the other hand, Fosdick has an equal amount of disdain for those who preach topical sermons from the newspaper and use no scripture at all.

What Fosdick does advocate is preaching for life change. In other words, "don't just preach about joy. Talk about it in such a way that the people walk out of church more joyful than they were before. That I believe, can be done more profoundly and more lastingly with an exciting exposition of holy writ.

David Bartlett and Mike Graves have essays where they basically say that we should make mercy tangible and visible and real in our sermons.

David Buttrick begins his essay with a defense of the pulpit, asserting that both good preaching and no so good preaching at least bring God into the forefront of the public consciousness.

He then critiques (and occasionally skewers) biblical preaching, the therapeutic preaching model of Fosdick, and African-American preaching, which he regards as the best preaching in America today, though it may have lost a little of its prophetic edge.

Buttrick concludes by saying that if preaching is going to thrive in the 21st century, then it will need to emphasize what he calls the empire of God and the presence of God. Preachers will also need to preach against the principalities and powers which hold people in bondage today (materialism, selfishness, etc).

Ernest Campbell follows with an article called "A Lover's Quarrel With Preaching." He starts out by sharing some of his own conviction about Christianity, namely that Jesus might be the only way for us, but not the only way for others. He also says that the Bible doesn't have to be taken literally to be taken seriously (a loaded statement which makes me want to ask "What definitions of literally and seriously are you working with?" I confess that at this point, I was ready to skip this chapter and move on. But I stayed the course.

He also thinks that preachers often ignore issues of justice in order to placate people. Isaiah the prophet would definitely shout "Amen!" to that and so would I.

He says that we have allowed preaching to become a dull defense of the past way of doing things instead of proclaiming of living Christ. He also says that we have become too dependent on the lectionary, which in its three year cycle, only covers a small portion of scripture? How can preachers of the whole counsel of God be content with leaving out huge parts of the canon? I thought that this was a really good point!

Fred Craddock's article talks about how scripture can touch the deepest places in our lives, while Marva Dawn says that all too often, we get in the way of what God wants to do through us. We forget our place, we forget to spend time each day with God, we forget to let the text prune us before we present it in church to prune others, we forget to take prophetic risks, and rely on the Holy Spirit for the words and the wisdom.

She concludes the chapter by declaring that even though she is the problem with preaching, God still loves her. God still wants to use her. God still wants to speak to all of us. "What's the matter with preaching today? I am. What's right about preaching today? The great I AM."

Wow, what a powerful article! This is the best article in the book so far!

Anna Carter Florence has a thoughtful reflection on the importance of preaching the text, really the first article in the book to mention this as vital. Yet she warns against torturing the text and squeezing out of it more information than what people need. She also warns about spending lots of time defending what is in the text, noting that Jesus did not need the apostles to use swords to defend Him. She wants us to live the text before we preach it.

Cleophus Larue reminds us that in spite of all the praise heaped onto black preaching, there are still ways that black preachers can better engage those who enjoy listening to them, and that both white and black preachers can profit from each others' strengths and weaknesses. But as it is, they are like two ships passing each other in the night.

Thomas Long's meditation is about how we may have gone too far into need based, therapeutic preaching, and now the pendulum needs to come back the other way. We need to emphasize the news of what God has done through Christ on our behalf and what God IS doing in our world and in our lives.

Eugene Lowry's contribution discusses how our preaching often resorts to petty problem solving rather than articulately and poetically gesturing toward the God of grace and glory.

Barbara Brown Taylor has the final article in the book. She says that is impossible to please everyone with everything we say from the pulpit, and that we should focus on doing the best we can and being in volved with their lives, that the people will connect with us as we work harder to connect with their humanness.

As an evangelical preacher, I would have naturally liked to have seen more of an emphasis in this book on what Fosdick refers to as the "old-fashioned" idea of expounding and applying the Bible to people's lives. Contrary to what is sometimes stated, people DO want to hear the Bible preached. They WANT to know how God's word works and applies in our modern world.

We don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We can have exciting, exhilarating, biblically sound preaching today that touches people's lives and makes them more interested in relating to God and the world around them.

But the book was an inspiring meditation on the struggles and the joys of preaching, and I give it a thumbs' up!

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent Monograph, September 29, 2008

By 

Clint Walker "Friar Tuck" (Hot Springs, SD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What's the Matter with Preaching Today? (Paperback)

This book is a monograph of different leaders in the academic field of homiletics sharing their thoughts about the state of modern preaching. Some essays are really good, some fall flat for me.

Mike Graves was my preaching professor, and he did a good job at putting this together.