Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets and Journalists - Softcover

Plantinga, Cornelius

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802870775 ISBN 13: 9780802870773

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013

Synopsis

In Reading for Preaching Cornelius Plantinga makes a striking claim: preachers who read widely will most likely become better preachers.

Plantinga -- himself a master preacher -- shows how a wide reading program can benefit preachers. First, he says, good reading generates delight, and the preacher who enters the world of delight goes with God. Good reading can also help tune the preacher’s ear for language -- his or her primary tool. General reading can enlarge the preacher’s sympathies for people and situations that she or he had previously known nothing about. And, above all, the preacher who reads widely has the chance to become wise.

This beautifully written book will benefit not just preachers but anyone interested in the wisdom to be derived from reading.

Works that Plantinga interacts with in the book include

• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario
• Silence, by Shusaku Endo
• "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy
• "Narcissus Leaves the Pool" by Joseph Epstein
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo

. . . and many more!

About this title

About the Author

Cornelius Plantinga is president emeritus of Calvin Theological Seminary and has also served as a senior research fellow at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. His many publications include Beyond Doubt, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Engaging God’s World, Reading for Preaching, and Morning and Evening Prayers.

Reviews

To the preacher's weekly challenge of needing "something intelligent to say on an intimidating list of topics raised by biblical texts," Plantinga, systematic theologian and former president of Calvin College, presents practical and spiritual motivation for cultivating a habit of sophisticated reading. Contending that preachers have as much to learn from Victor Hugo, Robert Frost, and Thomas Friedman as from Augustine, Calvin, and Barth, Plantinga argues that such exposure not only tunes the preacher's ear and offers choice sermon illustrations, but aids in the pursuit of wisdom. Urging caution with illustrations to avoid emotional manipulation, and careful consideration of congregational context and one's own pastoral identity, he reviews excerpts from sermons of well-known preachers, examining the "attentiveness and reverence" of Barbara Brown Taylor's writing; Will Willimon's use of "a single, quotable line"; and William Sloane Coffin's clever quip at Yale, which might have flopped in a different setting. Plantinga's sympathetic understanding of the preacher's "daunting task," combined with his concrete guidance for enhancing homiletic skill, makes this a valuable resource for new and veteran preachers alike.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802870775
• ISBN 13: 9780802870773
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 147