PEOPLE IN PRINT
April 1, 1983
The Homiletical Plot, by Eugene L. Lowry, Knox, $4.95; Between Two Worlds, by John R. W. Stott, Eerdmans, $12.95; Building the Word, by J. Randall Nichols, Harper & Row, $9.95. Reviewed by Ralph L. Lewis, chairman of preaching and worship, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. Preaching good sermons today is tougher than ever. Listeners, once passive, now feel free to question, challenge, disagree, or boycott. Their great expectations pressure the preacher to improve yesterday's best efforts. But how? Answers come from many directions. No single expert can hope to provide all the creativity required for effective communication in today's ministry. But three recent books make helpful contributions, each confronting preaching from a different angle. Of the three, The Homiletical Plot covers the most new territory. Eugene Lowry's innovative book is also the shortest and least expensive. Lowry, associate professor of preaching and communication at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City and for thirteen years a local church pastor, questions practices considered almost sacred by traditional homiletics. "I was taught to 'tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them,'" says Lowry. "Nothing could be more fatal for a sermon!" That's like giving the punch line first, he says, or like a novelist telling "who done it" on the opening page. He confronts the common "assumption that sermon organization evolves out of the logic of content." Formal education has often squeezed preachers into the mold of scientists who scrutinize content to the neglect of craft, culture, and human condition. Preaching, he says, is more than a lecture put together on an assembly line. Preachers are not Ford ...
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