One Year to Better Preaching: 52 Exercises to Hone Your Skills Paperback – September 6, 2013

I am satisfied with quality of the product and the excelente seller. I note that the seller takes great care in shipping the product. thank you!

Complete theme + exercises.

Great book. Arrived on time.

thanks

one year to better rpeachignMy wife and I have been to countless number of churches throughout California and along the Front Range of Colorado. We both have various reasons for picking the church we attend now. She enjoys the worship and freedom allowed for the Holy Spirit and I pick churches for the preaching. I want to have the Bible expounded when I sit among the flock and I want it to be applicable. Some of the sermons I have heard are great and wonderful and some were, not so great.Daniel Overdorf has written an excellent companion for pastors in a simple devotional style layout. One Year to Better Preaching: 52 Exercises to Hone Your Skills (Kregel, 2013) is a resource sorely needed in a time of denominational decline and a reorganizing of religion in America. Preachers are seen as old and out of date so new methodology and research is being done instead of returning to the pulpit and teaching the unadulterated word of God. Preaching is pushed aside as new ideas are pouring into the walls of Christendom. Worship is generating concert-styled services and preaching is geared toward one avenue of ministry instead of the whole.In one simple year preachers can take back their churches with exercises Daniel Overdorf has compiled. Overdorf is an ideal candidate to compile such exercises, knowing the ins and outs of pastoral ministry. He has written numerous books, including those regarding sermon prep and a book on the Church. A DMin from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary sure doesn't hurt either.After a short section on the use of his book, Overdorf jumps right into the material. Some of the ideas are practical and easily put to use, but others require more strategic planning. For example, compiling a Sermon Prayer Group would be easy to do for most pastors but having a pastor come and preach in your stead and you in his may need a little more time and work. Both ideas are beneficial but require the pastor and the church staff to be a little more flexible.Overdorf includes several helpful sections at the end of each chapter including, resources for further study and testimonial section from pastors who have applied these exercises in their situations. Some of these exercises are impossible for inter-denominational uses but would fit well in satellite churches or campuses. These exercises would also be useful for a pastor to bring his associate pastors up to speed and give them a little more time in the pulpit.The exercise the stuck most with me were Thinking Apologetically, Reading Classic Preachers, and Utilizing the Five Senses. Overdorf urges readers in the intro to step out of their comfort zones when trying some of these exercises and has provided plenty of opportunity for the preacher to do so. I would never feel comfortable analyzing a movie or going to work with a church member but the testimonials have much to say about the positive effects these specific examples have had on them.Overall this book is well written with specific application points which translate well to the ministry of preaching. For a guy like me who is not a preacher this book serves well in the areas of general communication and church relations. Many of the exercises can be applied outside the pulpit with a little modifying. I am thankful for books like this which urge the preachers under God's command to sharpen the tools which may have been flattened by their prolonged lack of use.

A weary pastor sifts through a mountain of advertisements. Keeping up with these ads is about as daunting as conquering all the fruit in your Fruit of the Month box. Apples rot and the pastor's desk gets overwrought with the next best thing. On one particular Monday--it's always a Monday--a particular advertisement appeals to this pastor. It's in the area. It's affordable. It seems like a breath of fresh air. He signs up.A few months later he files into the conference hall with a thousand other pastors. Why are they here? Something within them knows that they need to improve in their preaching. Perhaps this conference will do the trick. And it will help. He'll get a shot in the arm, he'll be jazzed up a little, his preaching will improve for awhile, then on a particular Monday a few months later he'll be looking through that stack of advertisements again.Faithful pastors plod. While riding conference roller coaster can help, at the end of the day what makes a faithful pastor are lengthy seasons of plodding. It's being dedicated to improvement week after week after week, more than it is attending a boat load of conferences. That is why I am thankful for Daniel Overdorf's new resource One Year to Better Preaching.Overdorf centers his book around eight broad categories of improvement for preachers: prayer and preaching, understanding listeners, illustration and application, the preaching event, bible interpretation, sermon construction, word crafting, and sermon evaluation. The idea is that the pastor would dedicate himself to one chapter per week. Each chapter comes with illustrations and helpful exercises for improvement. Overdorf also supplies a list of resources for further study.This would be a great book to go through with other pastors and/or staff. There are very interesting exercises and things that you would not normally think of. As an example, in chapter 32 the preacher is encouraged to assign biographies to children. This exercise is meant to help the pastor with his ability to give illustrations and application. The book is packed with fun and helpful exercises that even the busiest of pastors could apply.There is, in my opinion, one glaring weakness in the book. The best way to improve your preaching is to be in love with Jesus. Or to put that another way piety makes better preachers. I would have liked to have seen one of the eight categories be personal piety. That is the foundation of all the other components of homiletics. This book alone could make a skillful preacher but not necessarily a holy man.There are sections about praying. But I do believe that many pastors can pray for the preaching event, pray for usefulness, etc. and never pray for their own souls. There needs to be a chapter on personal piety for this book to be more complete.Having said that I do not think this weakness is enough to not heartily recommend this book. I plan on going through this book with my lead pastor. We plan on trying one of these exercises every week. It should be interesting doing this with another person. This is a great book and I'm confident that 52 weeks through this book would improve the preaching of any pastor.Perhaps you should purchase this book and save your Monday's for doing one of these exercises instead of looking for the next best thing in that mountain of ads.

Only good if you preach every week. Not good for Pastors who only preach intermittently.

It is very practical book for preachers!