Excellence in Preaching
Learning From the Best
by Simon Vibert
Paperback
Price: £8.99
Publisher:IVP(Inter Varsity Press)
Published:09 September 2011
ISBN:978-1-844-74519-7
GoodBookStall Review:
Any preacher, young or old, experienced or new, wanting to increase their skill in the art of preaching will be helped by Simon Vibert’s book. It examines twelve preachers, whom he regards as ‘experts’ (all men, and almost exclusively from the Western hemisphere) He doesn’t suggest copying them, but just learning from their excellence. There is variety among them as regards such things as technique, humour and illustrations. They are certainly not all ‘showy’, but they do satisfy Vibert’s ‘priorities’ for preaching, which are that it should be ‘pervasively biblical, both Christ- and gospel-centred and urgent and applied’.
The book’s opening chapter concentrates on Jesus Christ the preacher, the supreme standard, and the devices he used in the Sermon on the Mount. Thereafter, each chapter focuses on one of Simon Vibert’s selected contemporary preachers and on one particular sermon he has preached (Simon appears to take these off the internet, rather than having been in the congregation himself). Three or four ‘Lessons for preachers’ are spelt out at the end of each chapter. In the closing chapter Simon concludes that the power of preaching is found in the ‘intermarriage between Word, Spirit and the godly preacher’. He finally paints ‘a composite picture of a good preacher’, which comprises ‘twelve things good preachers do well’. He never denigrates the thousands of us who preach week by week without ever becoming superstars, but this book will be a valuable resource ‘for those who seek to prepare and deliver biblical, applicable and illustrated contemporary sermons.’
Reviewer: Barry Vendy (29/11/11)
Any preacher, young or old, experienced or new, wanting to increase their skill in the art of preaching will be helped by Simon Vibert’s book. It examines twelve preachers, whom he regards as ‘experts’ (all men, and almost exclusively from the Western hemisphere) He doesn’t suggest copying them, but just learning from their excellence. There is variety among them as regards such things as technique, humour and illustrations. They are certainly not all ‘showy’, but they do satisfy Vibert’s ‘priorities’ for preaching, which are that it should be ‘pervasively biblical, both Christ- and gospel-centred and urgent and applied’.
The book’s opening chapter concentrates on Jesus Christ the preacher, the supreme standard, and the devices he used in the Sermon on the Mount. Thereafter, each chapter focuses on one of Simon Vibert’s selected contemporary preachers and on one particular sermon he has preached (Simon appears to take these off the internet, rather than having been in the congregation himself). Three or four ‘Lessons for preachers’ are spelt out at the end of each chapter. In the closing chapter Simon concludes that the power of preaching is found in the ‘intermarriage between Word, Spirit and the godly preacher’. He finally paints ‘a composite picture of a good preacher’, which comprises ‘twelve things good preachers do well’. He never denigrates the thousands of us who preach week by week without ever becoming superstars, but this book will be a valuable resource ‘for those who seek to prepare and deliver biblical, applicable and illustrated contemporary sermons.’
Reviewer: Barry Vendy (29/11/11)
