MY CHOICE OF BOOKS
Herschel H. Hobbs shares some thoughts on books and reading.
Herschel H. Hobbs
July 1, 1981
"If a preacher can exhaust his sermon material in thirty minutes, either he hasn't done his homework, or he's just not reading good books."
I look for books that challenge me with positive truths about Christianity and faith. We hear too much of the negative speakers and writers singing their doleful jeremiads about the decline of church and faith. Such books seldom bring out anything new; they simply restate old facts in new words. The mark of a good book, for me, is that it has a depth of scholarship to challenge the thinking believer. At the same time, it should be written in positive, understandable language/ which puts it in the domain of every reader, regardless of educational experience.
A book I've found very helpful in my preaching ministry is Preaching and Preachers by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Zondervan). The author, an Englishman, gives us a thorough study of the art of preaching. It develops with candor and insight the preparation and delivery of sermons, the congregation and how it should be regarded, and the careful use of imagination and illustrations. In one section dealing with preparation for the preacher, Lloyd-Jones discusses reading. He says the preacher should not read to gather ideas; he should read to help himself think. "What we preach is to be the result of our own thoughts. We do not merely transmit ideas."
Another book I think is essential to the preacher's library is Sermons in American History (Abingdon). Edited by DeWitte Holland, the book presents one of the best studies of the history of American preaching I've found. Preachers such as John Cotton, Roger Williams, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and Harry Emerson Fosdick have given some of the best sermons we've heard or read. But the book is ...
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