PREACH THE WORD
The call and challenge of preaching today
Edited by Greg Haslam. Sovereign World. 624 pages. £24.99
ISBN 1 85240 443 4
This is a large and substantial volume consisting of 49 chapters, in which many different aspects of preaching are covered from a wide variety of perspectives and standpoints.
In his foreword, R.T. Kendall refers to its ‘wide variety of preaching styles as well as diverse theological opinions under an evangelical umbrella’. Contributors include David Pawson and John Stott, J. John and Terry Virgo, Mark Stibbe and Chris Wright. The thread common to all the contributions is that they are edited transcripts of teaching sessions given at Westminster Chapel, as part of a preaching school called ‘Preach the Word!’, which ran from autumn 2003, under Greg Haslam’s direction. This was designed to deal with ‘the decline of bold, authoritative and powerful popular preaching’, with its resulting ‘widespread leakage of spiritual power, declining numbers and stunted spiritual growth in many churches’. There can be little doubt about the need.
