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Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers

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Seventeenth century Puritans produced some of the greatest preachers in Christian history. As far as I know, those preachers had nothing comparable to a modern seminary education. But what they did have was university training that required the careful reading of texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The Puritan minister was therefore the product of a language-based educational system. Far more than most modern pastors, including myself, he was at home with biblical texts. In addition to his university training, he likely served as a tutor to children of the affluent, and because of his pedagogical responsibilities, became a skilled expositor of ancient texts. All of this proved to be invaluable preparation for extraordinarily fruitful pulpit ministries.

Which brings me to T. David Gordon's Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, about the modern preacher and his ability both to read biblical texts and communicate compellingly their God-breathed truth. The minister's work is demanding: he must not merely assert the point of his sermon; he must fulfill "his duty of demonstrating that what he is saying is God's will." (18) Sadly, he often seems unaware of his solemn duty, and, even if he is, he finds himself woefully prepared to discharge it adequately.

Why Johnny Can't Preach is a pre-homiletics book. It has little to say about the how-tos of crafting a sermon but much to say about the literary sensibilities and habits of learning a preacher must possess - prior to undertaking the work of sermon construction. These cannot ordinarily be learned at seminary; the ministerial candidate must master them earlier as he studies in academic environments that prize the careful reading, interpretation and exposition of texts.

Gordon's assessment of the contemporary American pulpit is severe. Great preaching is rare, but that is not his fundamental concern: "What I care about is the average Christian family in the average pew in the average church on the average Sunday. And the problem there is not that we don't have `great' preachers; in many circumstance we don't even have mediocre preachers." (14)

The author, an ordained Presbyterian minister, teaches at Grove City College, and among his responsibilities, are courses in media ecology. As a media ecologist he explores our culture's movement from a language-based media to an image-based and electronic media, and how that movement affects the preacher and his preaching.

Two deficiencies mar contemporary preaching: Johnny, the preacher, can't read (texts) and he can't write.

That Johnny can't read doesn't mean that he is illiterate. But reading the sports page, or the latest John Grisham novel, or even a history book is not the same as reading a text - and, especially an ancient text - carefully. Too often readers read either for amusement or scan texts to acquire information. Speed-readers have learned to ignore articles, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs in order to quickly identify the main points. (43) In the process, appreciation for how the text is constructed is lost. (46)

This leads to a sad state of affairs, indeed. "Reading texts demands a very close and intentional reading. One cannot omit a single line of a given Shakespearean sonnet; each of the fourteen lines plays a crucial role. Those who are accustomed to reading such texts read each line for what it contributes to the whole and how it does so. But those not accustomed to reading texts closely just look for what they judge to be the important words, and the concepts to which they ostensibly point, and then give a lecture on that concept - ordinarily without making any effort to explain the passage as a whole, to demonstrate how each clause contributes to some basic overall unity." (48) The same careful attention to the text is demanded of any preacher who would faithfully discharge the duties of his office.

Sadly, the disciplined and careful reading of texts is no longer prized by much of our culture, and is beyond the immediate reach of many pastors. The text is not treated like a door that ushers us into the author's world, enabling us to examine it from his vantage point. Rather, the text becomes a tool to confirm our own biases about reality. (49)

As I read, I thought about books that claim the life of Jesus as the model for the successful CEO, salesperson or guru of human potential. That kind of author approaches the New Testament with predetermined and cherished ideas, and to no one's surprise - the very ideas he expected to discover in the text are waiting there for him, apparently undiscovered by earlier readers, now ready to be exploited and made into a cutting-edge book. Far from these best-selling authors' minds is the need to make the trek from our world back to the first century; to enter the mind of God as revealed through the words of the inspired gospel writers. They penned their accounts amidst the sorrows of God's suffering people, their words capturing the aspirations of the faithful, who waited patiently for the advent of the coming Messiah. Little or no time is devoted to how the words of the gospel writers fit into the grand story of God's redemptive work in preceding revelation, as proclaimed in the law and by the prophets. Our self-help author has no time or proclivity for that kind of study. "To employ C.S. Lewis's way of stating the matter, they `use' texts but do not `receive' them."(50)

Conspiring against the careful reading of texts is the omnipresence of electronic media - inconsequential, distracting, confronting us mostly with the trivial, and robbing us of the "sensibility of significance." (51) Gordon observes: "a culture that is accustomed to commercial interruptions every six or seven minutes loses its ability to discuss significant matters because it has lost the patience necessary to consider them." (54) Such a culture produces ministers "who are not at home with what is significant; ministers whose attention span is less than that of a four-year-old in the 1940s, who race around like the rest of us, consequently distracted by sounds and images of inconsequential trivialities, and out of touch with what is weighty." (58-59)

Life drives a hard bargain: the emergence and use of a new technology demands that we spend less of our time doing what we once did. We have fewer face-to-face encounters with our conversation partners - those occasions which require not just speaking, but also listening and looking, studying visible reactions to our words. Sadly, "ministers today seem especially blind to the visible response of the congregation because, as a culture, we get used to telephone conversations in which there is no visible response."(64)

Diminished, too, is the time spent composing letters. (61-63) Disciplined letter writing demands unity, order and movement," (66) all of which are invaluable to good sermon construction.

Where does this leave us? "A once-common sensibility (close reading of texts) is uncommon, and a once-common activity (composition) is now comparatively rare." (67)

How can Preacher Johnny be taught to preach? Prior to entering seminary, he should study where he learns to read the word of God, and where he is taught the skill of "composed speech." (96) A degree in English literature might be a wise choice for undergraduate students pursuing ministry. (101)

If Johnny is already in ministry, Gordon proposes:

1. An annual review which thoroughly evaluates the preacher's sermons according to unity, intelligibility, and so forth. (98)

2. The continual cultivation of the sensibility of reading texts closely. In addition to studying the scriptures in the original languages, the reading of poetry is most helpful in cultivating literary sensibility. (99-102)

3. The continual cultivation of the sensibility of composed communication through note and letter writing and through writing for publication. Joining a club devoted to honing public speaking skills and soliciting feedback from seasoned preachers are good uses of a minister's time. (103-105)

Although it is not a preaching "how-to" manual, Why Johnny Can't Preach does contain a very helpful review of Robert Lewis Dabney's seven requisites of preaching (23-28) and an extended reflection on the content of preaching (69-93). Gordon argues persuasively that "the content of Christian preaching should be the person, character, and work of Christ." (70) "Christian proclamation properly includes a declaration of those character traits that equip Christ to effectually fulfill his redemptive office. His love, mercy, compassion, and other traits equip him in specific ways to accomplish his works; therefore, the proclamation of such traits nourishes the faith of those who come to God through him."(71) Seriously deficient alternatives to Christological preaching include: moralism, "how-to" preaching, introspection (namely, preaching that constantly suggests to hearers that they might not be believers after all), and "Social Gospel/So-Called Culture War" preaching. None of these alternatives are helpful in cultivating biblical morality. "No; preach Christ, and you will have morality. Fill the sails of your hearers' souls with the wind of confidence in the Redeemer, and they will trust him as their Sanctifier, and long to see his fruit in their lives. Fill their minds and imaginations with a vision of the loveliness and perfection of Christ in his person, and the flock will long to be like him. (78)

I cannot recommend this book too highly to preachers. As I read, deficiencies in my own preaching and preparation came to mind, but along with them, suggestions for improvement.

Since good preachers are ordinarily the products of homes and/or churches that cultivate literary sensibilities, I believe that anyone who cares about children, education, and the future of pulpit ministry would find reading this book exceptionally beneficial.

This book is only 105 pages - and I read it last night - but boy does it pack a punch!

The title is a take on the famous books by Rudolf Flesch is the 60's Why Johnny Can't Read: And What To Do About It & Why Johnny Can't Write: How To Improve Writing Skills.

This book does not mince its words - and there is a reason for this. David GOrdon was diagnosed with cancer and his initial prognosis of survival was 25% chance. As a professor and former church pastor he felt he could not die until he had written about the poor preaching which is prevalent in our church today. He wrote this during the 11 months of treatment he received for the cancer - hence it is blunt and deliberately so.

For Gordon, less than 30% of ordained church ministers can preach at best, a mediocre sermon. The other 70% simply cannot preach. He recounts a story of a humble, godly elder who, having been asked by Gordon if they realized the new pastor they had just hired could not preach, replied "of course we know he could not preach." He went on to say that in the 30 years of being an elder he had never met a pastor who could preach - and that his rotary club has better public speakers.

This challenged Gordon - who in his own experience has generally found the same experience.

Now, this is not about the 'stars' of preaching. This is not trying to say we need to be George Whitefields, or Jonathan Edwards, or Charles Spurgeon. Gordon's point is that in the average church, with the average congregation, the average pastor is unable to deliver even a mediocre, competent sermon.

Gordon argues that there have been presentations, films, plays or concerts where we have watched without once looking at our watches or thinking "when will this end". This is because the presentations were well done. Gordon's argument is that sermons today are listless, rambling, disorganized - which will make even a 10 min sermon endless!!

Gordon rates a sermon by asking the following questions: does the significant point of the sermon arise out of the significant point of the text? If ten people are asked after the sermon what was the sermon about, will at least eight of them give the same answer? Does the sermon significantly engage the mind or is it full of commonplace-cliches, slogans and general truths? Do the earlier parts of the sermon contribute to the latter parts? Could the hearers compare notes and reproduce the outline of the sermon?

The reason for incompetent sermons? - the lack of being able to read texts. The average American reads 9 book annually. There has been a decline of literary reading in 20 years of 10%. Our modern culture is illiterate - not just biblically but generally.

Gordon makes a distinction between reading for INFORMATION and READING a TEXT. The first is to scan for information - the second is to read slowly, drinking in the style and composition of the text - noticing the small things - taking the book line by line. You simply can't read Shakespeare's sonnets for information - you'll miss the point of the sonnet - you have to read the text - slowly and deliberately.

This is also the problem with Bible reading - we have a culture and a habit of reading the Bible for information - not to read the text, slowly, deliberately, drinking in the words. That is why so many can read the bible through year after year and never be changed.

Preachers today read the Bible as they read everything - speed reading. This means they cannot write - and have lost the art of composition. Which means sermons are not based on the text, lack a main point and have applications which do not come from the text.

Gordon implores the church to change. Start learning to read slowly, deliberately - drink in some classic texts - learn to read not just for information.

While I think that Gordon paints the problem with a broader brush stroke than necessary the problem is real. I have met very few competent preachers in the church - even the ones who are hailed in our own diocese as good preachers I have found to be less than mediocre

This is a good book - and should be on the MUST READ for all ministry training courses!

Nineteen sixty-six saw the publication of a book titled Why Johnny Can't Read. Its author, Rudolf Flesh, explained in it that societal changes were leading to illiteracy; children were increasingly unable to read, at least with the effectiveness of the children of years gone by. By the 1980's, Linden and Whimbey had followed with Why Johnny Can't Write in which they showed the similar societal trends were now keeping Johnny (a generic name used to refer to any child, male or female) from expressing himself in writing. T. David Gordon has self-consciously titled Why Johnny Can't Preach after these books because he uses it to argue that the same societal trends that kept Johnny from being able to read and write have kept a generation of ministers from being able to preach. Johnny just can't preach and Gordon just can't take it anymore.

It is important to the context of this book to realize that, when he wrote it, Gordon believed he had only months to live. He had stage III colorectal cancer and had roughly a 25 percent chance of survival. "Having been concerned about the state of preaching for three decades, I believed that it would be irresponsible to leave the world without expressing my thoughts about the matter, in the hope that better preaching might be the result." So this book has the air of a missive penned from a dying man and directed to dying men (though, happily, Gordon's cancer is now in remission). As he says, "The manuscript is, therefore, at a minimum, heartfelt."

I can think of at least a handful of books that have called contemporary preachers to task for their weak sermons or the unbiblical focus of their ministries. But this is the only one that comes to mind that takes on conservative preachers in conservative churches--the kind of men who preach expository sermons and who have ministries based on verse-by-verse exposition. Says Gordon, "I don't intend to throw stones at others; it is the conservative evangelical churches and conservative Reformed churches with which I am primarily acquainted." This is a look inward, then, and not a look outward.

The reason men cannot preach today, says Gordon, owes not to a lack of caring or a lack of effort; instead it relates primarily to societal changes. The book's subtitle is instructive: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers. In this context media does not refer to mass media, but rather to the many ways in which information or data is communicated to us, the foremost being television.

How bad is the problem? According to Gordon, it is epidemic. "I would guess that of the sermons I've heard in the last twenty-five years, 15 percent had a discernible point; I could say, `The sermon was about X.' Of those 15 percent, however, less than 10 percent demonstrably based the point on the text read. That is, no competent effort was made to persuade the hearer that God's Word required a particular thing; it was simply asserted." Ouch. At the very least, this guy tells it like he sees it. He does not allow the preacher to wiggle out by using shortened attention spans as an excuse. "Ministers have found it entirely too convenient and self-serving to dismiss congregational disinterest on the basis of attenuated attention spans or spiritual indifference. In most cases, the inattentiveness in the congregation is due to poor preaching--preaching that does not reward an energetic, conscientious listening. When attentive listeners are not rewarded for their energetic attentiveness, they eventually become inattentive."

Societal trends, the foremost of which is the dominance of the picture over the word, have led to Johnny's inability to preach. The problem is the condition of the typical ministerial candidate when he arrives at the seminary. The reasons he cannot preach are twofold: he cannot read and he cannot write. Each of these receives a chapter-length treatment. In the first, Gordon demonstrates that Johnny has never been instructed in the reading of texts. He has been taught to read to gather information, to read as a means to an immediate end, but he has never been taught to read with a view to how a text is formed. He reads for content while ignoring construct. "Culturally, then, we are no longer careful, close readers of texts, sacred or secular. We scan for information, but we do not appreciate literary craftsmanship. Exposition is therefore virtually a lost art." In the second, he channels Neil Postman and other writers in demonstrating that Johnny is fast losing the ability to communicate well with the written word. In fact, by relying so heavily on technologies such as the telephone, he has stunted his ability to communicate with others in face-to-face contexts. Where the written word, carefully constructed, is a valuable medium for weighty content, the spoken word, especially over the telephone or other media, gives itself to levity and to thoughtless discussion.

After offering a few words on content, Gordon gives the beginnings of a prescription, a cure for the ills. He suggests that for Johnny to learn to preach he must, at the very least, have an annual review in which the church will tell him how effective they deem his preaching, he must learn to read texts closely and he must learn the sensibility of composed communication. These may not make him into this generation's Charles Spurgeon, but at the very least they will give him the tools he needs to preach the Word of God well. "Our culture, at this moment, will not develop these sensibilities, and so Johnny will cultivate them only if he makes some self-conscious and deliberately countercultural choices about how he wishes his sensibilities to be shaped."

While Gordon is prone to overstate his case at times, and while he may occasionally put preference in the place of law, he has certainly penned a book which stands as an urgent call for men to give themselves anew to the task, the calling, of preaching. It points them to several skills which will, without doubt, help them in their task of faithfully communicating the truths of God's Word to the ears and the hearts of God's people. I do think any preacher will benefit from reading Why Johnny Can't Preach, though I would urge caution in handing it to your pastor--such a gift could easily be misconstrued. And do guard your heart as you read it as I think there is the potential that it could cause you to look unfavorably on your own pastor. Having said that, I think this is a valuable book and one that ought to be widely read.

"I would guess that of the sermons I've heard in the last twenty-five years, 15 percent had a discernable point; I could say `The sermon was about X.' Of those 15 percent, however, less than 10 percent demonstrably based the point on the text read." So says T. David Gordon in his book Why Johnny Can't Preach. Those are fighting words to a pastor. Throughout history, strong churches have been identified by the strength of their pulpit. Whatever a pastor's giftings may be, if he did not feel the call of the Holy Spirit to teach the Word he would not have become a pastor. The one qualification for elders that is not demanded of the rest of the church is the ability to teach. When the Apostles were confronted with the problem of Greek widows being neglected in the early church, they delegated the task to others, saying that they were called to devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Gordon's statement is a strong statement indeed.

Gordon's premise is that during the last 50 years our culture has shifted from being text based to visual-media based. Visual media (television, photography, film, video games, etc.) deals with motion. Texts deal with thoughts and ideas. The overwhelming majority of what is important and substantial within the human existence takes place "between the ears." And yet, complex thought is what visual media is weakest in communicating.

As America has made this transition it has eroded the ability of individuals to discern between what is substantial and what is trivial. Visual media naturally deals with what is trivial. Even if it deals with a serious subject, it is not employed to deeply explore the issue. This has produced individuals who are immersed in a culture that is content to live with sound-bytes and shallow surface understanding. How are we to expect individuals who are literate but choose to pursue entertainment rather than education to faithfully exposit a divinely inspired text, asks Gordon. If our students have never been forced to diagram out English sentences, how will they be able to grasp the nuances of an inflected language such as Koine Greek?

Many of Gordon's points are sound. My time spent chairing a pastoral search committee confirms for me much of what he says. The average communication (especially in writing) ability of those who submitted resumes and doctrinal questionnaires was tragically low. We received one questionnaire with 22 typos, another with only a handful of sentences that were over eight words long. Finding a candidate who could write clearly and concisely was the overwhelming exception among those with a MDiv degree.

Yet, many of Gordon's points suffer from being overstated or in conflict with one another as well. My first question would be why less than 1.5 percent of the sermons he hears are cohesively based upon the text. Is preaching so poor that we can only expect one solid sermon every two years? I personally have consistently been in 4 different churches during my lifetime, and solid preaching has defined each church. (The preaching being defined as "solid" by Gordon's own standards.) At one point Gordon goes so far as to states "I'm not sure there ever was any great preaching" (14).

At another point in the book he insists that congregations do not have shorter attention spans (28-30), but rather lose interest in sermons because of their lack of cohesiveness. Yet, in another place (58-59) he asserts that students who come to seminary have the same attention span as a four year old in the 1940s. If the sorry educational state of seminary students is a product of their environment, then the same would have to be true of the congregations.

For all of its overstatements, this is a good and important book to read and consider. The thesis is true and a message that needs to be heard. While this would not be a good book to hand to a pastor (as it would probably be misunderstood!) it offers an important message to men my age who are looking to enter into pastoral ministry. I would highly suggest that Gordon's suggestions on how to teach Johnny to preach be employed by those of us who want to grow in our ability to communicate the truth of God in all the clarity and passion it is worthy of.

Nate Brooks
[...]

David Gordon tells us in his short but powerful book that Johnny can't preach. It is not the fault of Johnny's seminary. It is not that Johnny is lazy or is insincere, but he is failing in the basic task of preaching. This failure results in sermons which are not true to the text, which have no unity of content and little or no momentum. This failure results in the impoverishment of the gathered people of God who are hungry to hear solid preaching. Gordon tells us that Johnny's problem is that he has been shaped by a shift change in the dominant media which has taken place in the last 60-70 years. We have moved from being a society of the printed word, of reading and writing, to being a society of the visual, television, movies, internet and the like. Gordon tells us that this visual culture has not only affected the average hearer of a Sunday morning sermon, it has profoundly affected the preacher. Gordon asserts that most preachers are out of their depth in dealing with the profound because they are breathing the air of a banal culture. He points out that the basics of careful reading and clear writing are lost on most of the preachers he has heard and this lack of precision in preparation leads to lack of clarity in the pulpit.

While Gordon lays out his major premise of cultural influence in the first three chapters, chapters 4 and 5 are helpful in their own way as Gordon in chapter four speaks about the content of the sermon, making a plea for Gospel-centered preaching which avoids errors like moralism, pragmatism and politicism in the pulpit. Chapter 5 is a plea to return to cultivating skill in reading and writing as well as an encouragement to pastors to seek constructive feedback from their congregants.

This is a short but thought-provoking work which will shed new light on preaching in our day.

While at the Acts 29 boot camp in November, Justin Anderson gave a great message on preaching. In his talk, he referenced this book Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media have Shaped the Messengers over and over. The book is a really quick read and one you won't want to put down.

The premise of the book is what is wrong with preaching, how culture has shaped our communicators and how to rescue preaching. One of the things I appreciated about the author was his forthrightness and bluntly saying what he thought. I found myself laughing out loud a number of times and cringing when I thought of the things I have subjected people to in some of my sermons. I definitely left challenged to be a better preacher.

He starts off by talking about how pastors no longer no how to put a sermon together. Because few pastors write or read outside of magazines and the internet, they don't know how to form sentences and thoughts. They don't know how to put a sermon together that has unity and order. They are often thrown together and it leads to sermons with no point and it ends with the pastor talking about whatever he wants to talk about.

So what makes a good sermon? According to Gordon, "If the hearer's duty in listening to a sermon is to be willing to submit one's will to God's will, then one can only do this if the preacher does his duty of demonstrating that what he is saying is God's will." Namely, someone pays the price, pastors, it is supposed to be you.

Paying the price means you put in the work, in the word, in commentaries, in preparing your heart and preaching the text to your life: "A pastor is an ambassador, who represents another, declaring the will of that Other. Therefore, he is not entitled to preach his own insights, his own opinions, or even his own settled convictions; he is entitled only to declare the mind of God revealed in Holy Scripture. Since the mind of God is disclosed in Scripture, the sermon must be entirely faithful to the text - a genuine exposition of the particular thought of the particular text." This is one of the reasons I love preaching through books of the Bible, it forces me to stay on topic, to preach what the book and context actually says, not my opinion or hot button issue that I want to talk about. It also doesn't allow me to skip topics.

One of the things Justin shared that came from this book was how long to preach. When I first discovered Mark Driscoll, I made it a goal to preach an hour. In fact, I held this up as a good thing if I got there, that I somehow served my church better by talking longer. While there is a lot of talk about shortened attention spans, and that is true to a degree, Gordon points out that "bad preaching is insufferably long, even if the chronological length is brief." This is huge: "Sermon length is measure not in minutes; it is measure in minutes beyond interest. The amount of time a preacher preaches past his listeners interest."

But how does the media and our culture shape our pastors? Is it bad or good? Gordon said (this section is worth the price of the book), "In 1968, a presidential soundbite was 42.3 seconds, compared to 9.8 seconds in 1988. In 2000, it shrunk to 7.8 seconds. This means, pastors today are not at home with what is significant. Pastors today have attention spans less than that of a 4 year old in the 1940's, who race around like the rest of us, constantly distracted by sounds and images of inconsequential trivialities, and out of touch with what is weighty. It is not surprising that their sermons, and the alleged worship that surrounds them, are often trifling, thoughtless, uninspiring, and mundane. It is not surprising that their sermons are mindlessly practical, in the "how-to" sense. It is also not surprising that their sermons tend to be moralistic, sentimentalistic, or slavishly drafted into the so-called culture wars. The great seriousness of the reality of being human, the dreadful seriousness of the coming judgment of God, the sheer insignificance of the present in light of eternity - realities that once were the subtext of virtually every sermon - have now disappeared, and have been replaced by one triviality after another.

Overall, the way forward according to T. David Gordon is for preachers to be better prepared. Not only in their craft and in what they say, but personally. That they preach to themselves and allow the word of God to seep into their bones and then preach. I remember being challenged by someone once when he asked, "Are you preaching because it is the weekend or because you have something to say." I can tell in my own preaching when I am preaching because it is the weekend and I am not spiritually prepared, mentally prepared or just don't know my stuff. And then I can tell when I am prepared, my heart is right, my sins confessed, I am studied up and ready to preach because I have something to say.

(for more, see my other reviews at[...]

The quick answer to why Johnny can't preach is this: "The average American adult reads fewer than nine books annually, and spends seventeen times as much time watching television as reading" (35).

I heard the author on The White Horse Inn podcast a few months ago, and I was eager to read this book. Mark made it easy when he bought it and lent it to me. See his review here. After reading my last book on preaching (Today's Gospel), I thought this would be a perfect follow-up.

T. David Gordon makes a case in this book that the reason preaching in America is so flaccid is that those preaching lack skills to read and write well. Because of the culture around us switching from print-based to image-based, we are not reading well or much at all. We have become what he calls "aliterate," in that we know how to read but choose not to. When men are not reading well or learning how to write in an orderly fashion, is it any wonder that our sermons are filled with banalities, trivialities, and disorder?

Gordon's advice to fix the problem makes me as an English teacher smile: get a degree in English literature before moving to seminary. If we are to teach the Word, we need to know how to read words well.

I've met many young men and women recently who are passionate about ministry, and I have suggested to take literature and writing courses before going to online programs from Moody or Liberty. Nobody seems to listen, as they think there is a divide between sacred and secular. This is not the case, as we must toil at improving our minds so that we can accurately present the Word of God to His people.

If you are in full-time ministry, or you think that you want to be someday, please order this book. Do it right before enrolling in an introductory literature course. Your congregation or your youth group will benefit from this training.

A book this tersely and concisely written deserves a review that strives for the same goals.

I agree with the earlier reviews in essence and in most details. This book is an excellent choice for inclusion in a lay study or a Seminary class. It does not provide the full development needful for an in-depth study but rather is of a "wake up call" nature which lays bare the fundamental principles toward which preaching rhetoric and substance should be directed.

I believe the pendulum swing has already commenced in the conservative Evangelical churches toward a more penetrating and forceful brand of preaching, but we have much more ground to cover. The lackluster Christian witness that the milk toast messages and compromising discipleship that so characterized the previous decades has had its inevitable effect. People are looking for the real thing and preachers are discovering that a solid exegetical and homiletical foundation is necessary before church growth proves stable. This book will help those who feel the growing pressure and are motivated to respond as they ought.

Good book... reasonably priced... easy read.

This is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Professor Gordon's book covers a topic that I have not come across, and I found it fascinating and straightforward. It is clearly evident to me why all 13 Amazon reviewers of Why Johnny Can't Preach gave it five stars. Professor Gordon explains the causes of the disappointing preaching that is found in many churches across America. What I really liked about the book is that it is not simply a book for seminarians and pastors, but it is a book for all Christians. Gordon tells us how we can be more effective communicators. I would like to improve my reading, writing and speaking skills, and Gordon provides simple and clear answers to what we do and do not need to do. If you desire to direct others toward Christ in your speech, I recommend Gordon's analysis on the state of preaching in America and how the electronic media culture affects it.

I read Dr. Gordon's new book Why Johnny Can't Preach last night (it is a quick read - 108 pages) as I am in the preaching business and wanted to see what he had to say about why my profession is broken. I actually started to read the book about a month ago but put it down after 20 pages when I felt like I had been caught in the vortex of a complaining retired seminary professor. However, late yesterday as I was working on a sermon putting some books away, I picked it up again and started skimming his later chapters. What I found was encouraging and challenging.

Dr. Gordon's basic premise is that today's preachers (who have grown up in a media-saturated generation) struggle to preach because we struggle to read and write - the necessary basics of preaching well. His chapter on reading basically makes the argument that most preachers do not know how to sit with texts for long periods of time and wrestle with metaphors and poetry (which the Bible is full of) and this negatively impacts our ability to preach the Scriptures. I was challenged by his conviction that most preachers start with a short list of Christian convictions that they have been taught through the years and then look for those principles in every passage they read (technically known as eisegesis - reading intended meaning into a text). This stands in contrast to how we should preach - built on exegesis (looking for the text's actual meaning). Dr. Gordon says that preachers should regularly be challenged (in their worldview) by the texts they are working on if they are doing actual exegesis - because after studying the actual texts the concepts are different than what the preacher thought they were going in. I totally agree with this!

His second concept is that modern preachers struggle to preach because they are ineffective writers. Instead of growing up writing long-hand (which forces thinking ahead, clarity, and brevity), my generation has grown up with limited writing experience and even then, only in the context of email and word-processing (which is very forgiving to errors - thank you "delete" key). Dr. Gordon's main point is that my generation has grown up in a media-saturated environment (where we spend a ton of time with video-imagery) where we spend more time with TV, movies, video-games, and the computer than we do with reading and writing. This obviously has a major impact on preaching, causing most preachers to struggle with not only understanding texts but with articulating their ideas in coherent and cohesive ways. Hard to argue with that!

While these two chapters were insightful, his final one was actually the most helpful in this short book. He writes about four alternative concepts of preaching from the Reformation view of preaching as gospel-centered and Christ-exalting. The first is moralistic preaching, where the sermon is a call to some kind of ethic living separated from the redemptive narrative of Christ's death and resurrection. This is not new to me - Tim Keller has shaped my views in this area over the last year - but Gordon connects moralistic preaching to the birth of Protestant liberalism in the early twentieth century. I have never made this connection (that ethical preaching separated from Christ and the gospel is another version of classical Protestant liberalism) but think it is accurate and common. The second alternative that Gordon describes is "how-to" preaching which is very similar to moralistic preaching (he calls is a subset), but is built even more on the assumption that people can obey God is they simply know the right strategy to take - the problem is lack of information, but the condition of the heart. The third alternative is introspective preaching or what Gordon calls "you think you are saved, but you're really not" preaching where the focus is constantly on the commitment level of the listener rather than the glory and perfection of Christ. He likens this to standing at the edge of a bridge crossing a canyon and discussing the person's level of confidence in the bridge rather than the trustworthiness of the bridge. What people need is not continuous self-reflection but rather to hear the beauty and glory of Christ's perfections. The final alternative that Gordon addresses is culture-war preaching where the communicators spends all of his effort addressing cultural and political issues in an attempt to increase the Christian flavor of the overall culture. Gordon calls this misdirected patriotism that seeks to coerce the masses rather than convert the individual with the gospel of Christ.

In all of this, Gordon is focused on the skill of preaching. And for this contribution to my thinking I am grateful. I would recommend this work to stir your thoughts more than anything else. However, Gordon leaves off one very-important piece of the puzzle - the character of the preacher. As important as the skill of crafting and delivering a fully biblical, gospel-centered sermon is the character (read godliness) of the man who delivers that message. We are all guilty of preaching better than we live, but we need to continue to pursue an incarnational model of preaching that demonstrates that we believe what we are saying.