A Review of One Year to Better Preaching

One Year to Better Preaching, cover photo from Kregel.com

One Year to Better Preaching is an excellent book for pastors and communicators who want to improve their preaching, communication skills, and teaching. The book provides the reader with fifty-two experiential exercises designed to hone the craft of preaching and communicating the gospel effectively.

As communicators and teachers of the gospel, we must take our calling and craft seriously and seek to improve and do our jobs with excellence. Continued professional development is essential. This book offers fifty-two helpful exercises, one for every week of the year, to help develop the necessary skills needed to execute an effective sermon or teaching time.

Communicating and preaching is an art, but is also a skill that can be developed. One Year to Better Preaching provides an assortment of engaging, diverse and creative exercises, tools, suggestions and resources for the following eight categorizations of preaching: Prayer and Preaching, Bible Interpretation, Understanding Listeners, Sermon Construction, Illustrations and Applications, Word Crafting, The Preaching Event, and Sermon Evaluation.

The versatility of the book’s use is described on the publisher’s website; “Readers can complete the exercises in the order presented, which address different categories week to week, or they can sharpen their skills in a particular category over a period of weeks by using the chart provided. They might also work through the exercises in collaboration with other preachers.” The author, Daniel Overdorf, really seeks to serve pastors with this work and caters to their need for versatility.

The author, Daniel Overdorf, who has a Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and over ten years of pastoral experience, is well positioned to speak with authority, clarity, accuracy and skill on the subject of homiletics, the art of preaching. He presently teaches preaching and pastoral ministries and is a member of the Evangelical Homiletical Society. He has also previously written on the subject of preaching in his book Applying the Sermon.

Kregel Publication, the book’s publisher, has the following description of Overdorf’s book, One Year to Better Preaching, on their website:

The book is designed particularly for those who preach each week—and have been, perhaps, for some time—to help them get out of the rut of the routine and infuse their preaching with new sparks of creativity, fresh approaches to sermon preparation and design, and sharpened verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Novice preachers, also, will find the exercises useful in developing their preaching abilities.

I highly recommend One Year to Better Preaching and think it is a wonderful resource that will serve any pastor, Bible teacher or communicator well and agree with the publisher that “One Year to Better Preaching will leave a preacher reinvigorated and better equipped to proclaim the Word of God skillfully, passionately, and effectively.”

In exchange for this non-biased review, the reviewer received a free copy of the book, One Year to Better Preaching. This review is also published on My Two Mites, Examiner, Amazon, and Christian Book.

A Review of Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul

Cover of Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul, 

from Kregel Publishing

One of the best kinds of Bible study helps, or tools, are chart books. Chart books can be extremely helpful in condensing complex and exhaustive information into bite-sized chunks of readability and easy comprehension. The assimilation of valuable information into clear, easy to read and visually appealing formats is so important. Many people learn visually and the structure of a chart becomes very helpful in seeing the flow of important concepts and information.

This being said, Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul should have been a great addition to so many other chart books that are out there on the scriptures, which help us discover and to better understand the Bible. However, this book is more plain text than it is charts and it reads more like a dry commentary than a visually appealing chart book, leaving the reader disappointed and busy sifting through an over abundance of text. There are over 100 charts in this book, but they are small, not always self-sufficient in the information they present, they are secondary to the text, and are not the primary content of the book.

The concept of covering the letters of Paul in a chart book is a great idea, but it does not appear that the author has met the goal of covering the letters of Paul solely using charts. If you are looking for a chart book on the life, letters, and theology of Paul, you will be disappointed with this book. However, if you are looking for a great survey of Paul’s life, letters, and theology and background information and contextual information concerning Paul’s letters, and some commentary on Paul’s letters, and you do not mind a lot of reading, then this book could be for you.

Here is what the publisher has to say about Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul:

Paul's letters have fascinated and challenged most every reader of the Bible. As a result, many general introductions and specific studies on Paul are available, but none are like Charts on the Life and Letters of Paul, which provides over 100 charts to explore the apostle's background, life and ministry, letters, and theology. The charts visually offer clarity on:

1. Basic insights (e.g., "Autobiographical Information")
2. Comparisons (e.g., "Parallels between Acts and Paul's Letters")
3. Advanced tools for further study (e.g., "Key Words in Romans")
4. Analysis (e.g., "The 'New Perspective' on Paul")
5. Research (e.g., "Key Texts and Their Interpretations") 

Comments on the charts and discussions of significant theories-with leads for further exploration-are offered together with an extensive bibliography that includes references to past and current Pauline scholarship.

Interested Bible readers as well as students of Paul's life, letters, and theology will find plenty of material to deepen their understanding. Teachers will find the charts to be a valuable teaching resource. This book is an excellent supplement to any general introduction or specific study on Paul.

In exchange for this non-biased review, the reviewer received a free copy of the book, Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul. This review is also published on My Two Mites, Examiner, Amazon, and Christian Book.

A Review of Charts on the Book of Hebrews

Cover photo of Charts on the Book of Hebrews 
from Kregel Publications

Kregel Publications’ has just put out Charts on the Book of Hebrews, by Herbert W. Bateman IV, as part of their series of Charts of the Bible and Theology. If you have not used chart books before, they are very helpful in seeing main theological ideas and in getting an overall sense of a book of the Bible. Chart books are perfect for the visual learner and help systematize concepts in a clear and tangible way.

As a High School Bible teacher, distilling complex ideas into simple visuals is very important. Communicating overall themes, authorship theories and theological concepts, in easy to read and understandable charts, helps Bible readers to be able to better decipher the scriptures and to see the structure of a book more clearly as they study it.

Hebrews is an excellent book, which connects the Old Testament with the New Testament, and this book of scripture is a great tool to study the Pentateuch and the tabernacle. Charts on the Book of Hebrews has detailed charts, which map out the tabernacle and connects the book Hebrews’ passages with the Pentateuch. Charts on the Book of Hebrews is an excellent resource for teaching and for understanding the book of Hebrews.

Charts on the Book of Hebrews is very detailed and comprehensive and offers a scholarly, yet simple and accessible, approach to studying the book of Hebrews. As a teacher and as a student of the scriptures, I highly recommend this book.

For more information on Charts on the Book of Hebrews, or to purchase a copy of this book, please visit Kregel Publications’ website here. This book is also available on Amazon.com here.

Kregel Publications’ website also offers the following description of Charts on the Book of Hebrews:

The book of Hebrews presents interpretive challenges and theological comparisons unrivaled in the New Testament. Charts on the Book of Hebrews puts this demanding yet rewarding information in an accessible and useful format. The charts fall into four categories:

1. Introductory matters (e.g., authorship of Hebrews)
2. Influences in Hebrews (e.g. Second Temple messianic figures)
3. Theological issues (e.g. words of exhortation)
4. Exegetical concerns (e.g. figures of speech)

Students will find this an invaluable companion to classes on Hebrews. Pastors and teachers will benefit from these insightful charts to quickly clarify difficult concepts while teaching. And all visual learners will find that these charts make Hebrews more comprehensible.

In exchange for this unbiased review, I received a free copy of Charts on the Book of Hebrews, by Herbert W. Bateman IV, from Kregel Publications.