Book Review: “One Year to Better Preaching: 52 Exercises to Hone Your Skills”

Many preachers would love a book that will instantly make them preach like Charles Spurgeon or John Piper—-without doing any work. Because preaching is a skill continually to be honed, no such book truly exists.

And this book is no different. This book will not give you seven secrets to amazing preaching overnight, but rather 52 exercises that will help you develop a wide range of skills and habits that will add depth and body to your skills at proclaiming God’s Word.

In One Year to Better Preaching, Overdorf sets readers on a practical trajectory to develop the heart God wants for preaching as well as 52 skills that fall into the following eight categories:

Prayer & Preaching
Bible Interpretation
Understanding Listeners
Sermon Construction
Illustration & Application
Word Crafting
The Preaching Event
Sermon Evaluation

A sampling of the chapter titles include: Commissioning a Sermon Prayer Group, Balance Your Biblical Diet, Tell a Story, Hang the Sermon on an Image, Include Immediate Application, Make a Bee-Line to the Cross, and Critique a Video of Yourself.

This book is not to be read straight through, but rather digested step-by-step with thoughtful practice. It is an exercise book rather than a book on how to preach.

Pros: Chapter length (about five pages) is a quick read and gives preachers enough guidance to make the exercise very profitable without wasting their time. Each chapter contains encouraging quotes from preachers who have tried the tip along with a list of recommended resources for further study. Many of the additional resources are available online, which adds to the value provided (here is an example of resource). The exercises suggested cover a wide range of exercises covering a wide number of basis (see bullet points above).

Cons: Although many of the exercises are very helpful, I doubt most readers will work through every chapter. This is not a major concern, nor something unexpected.

Overall, I suspect many beginning preachers and even intermediate ones will profit from many of the ideas and exercises presented in One Year to Better Preaching. The exercises are immensely practical and wide ranging, covering a wide gamut of ideas related to preaching and the preacher while providing encouragement from others who have walked the same path to better preaching.

This book was provided by Kregel Publishers in exchange for a fair and honest review.

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Kevin

I serve with Unlocking the Bible. I blog for the glory of God, to nourish the church, and to clarify my mind. A lover of Christ first, people second, and random things like coffee, books, baseball, and road trips. I wrote When Prayer Is Struggle. Soli Deo Gloria