What's the Matter with Preaching Today?

by Mike Graves

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0664226329
• ISBN13: 9780664226329
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Length: 182 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Decent Monograph

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.

Provocative, Well Written Treatises on Preaching Today

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