Some Books That Have Influenced Me- Part 2

Important details of life such as the birth of my son John Thomas have kept me from blogging for a little bit, and I now wish to return to this series regarding books that have influenced me.

After graduating from college I admit that I had a misguided view of preaching. The fault did not lie with my college classes alone, though I do think that my homiletics class presented the applicational aspect of preaching as perhaps too small a portion of the whole. I had the view that preaching was to be, above all, informational. My overemphasis on the importance of the didactic element led me to often compose an entire sermon with little or no thought to what change the truth presented should require of the listener. As I matured a bit my preaching did, too. I began to include applicational elements into sermons, but even at this point I knew that there was more that was needed.

In the Fall of 2001 I was called to be interim pastor of a small church near my home town. As my preaching ministry took shape week after week for the first several months I saw serious shortcomings in my messages. I was presenting life-changing truths, but not seeing life-changing results. As I evaluated myself, I realized that I was not presenting those truths as life changing truths. That is, I was simply bombarding my people with the facts without clearly pointing out to them how these facts were to impact their lives.

Sometime in first part of 2002 I was perusing books in the local Christian book store and came across Preaching that Changes Lives by Micheal Fabarez. I held off on buying it for a week due to the price, but finally caved after browsing it several times and seeing its important and relevant subject matter. The book was a Godsend. It hit the very issues and deficencies I was struggling with.

Fabrez very convincingly makes the case that the goal of preaching is transformational, not just informational. He shows the Biblical necessity of constant change in the life of the minister himself. He tackles difficulties that must be understood by the preacher and addressed by his preaching in our day, including the matter of postmodernity's difficulties with authority.

Fabarez impacted me very much philosophically regarding preaching, but some of his most important contributions are in very practical chapters regarding preparing life-changing sermons. From prayer to specific attitudes in Bible study to outlining to time allotments to understandability to Christ-centeredness to doctrinal foundations to church involvement through study to follow-up application Fabarez very practically sets forth brief, yet comprehensive manual on Biblically grounded, applicationally driven preaching. This book is important enough that I believe every preacher should have a well-worn copy on his shelf.