Delight in preaching

I had a physical education teacher who had the unenviable task of teaching sex education to us sixth graders. One day she held up a worksheet with various parts of the anatomy labeled, and apologized: “I know this is sort of unromantic.”

Books on preaching can leave us similarly cold. The authors I’m reviewing agree that the real goal of such books is sermons that glorify God and edify the church and world—not sermons that fit someone’s worksheet for preaching.

Timothy Keller’s Preaching is, like the sermons he preaches at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, full of both homespun wisdom and academic rigor. Martin Marty once said that the best wisdom in the church comes from the left of the right and the right of the left—which is not the same as the middle. Keller is on the left of his right-wing church, the Presbyterian Church in America, and is one of the best sources of wisdom in the church today.