Review: A Manual for Preaching

In A Manual for Preaching (Baker Academic, 2019), celebrated preacher Abraham Kuruvilla provides a practical guide for moving from text to sermon. The steps covered include discerning theology, deriving application, creating maps, fleshing moves, illustrating ideas, crafting introductions and conclusions, producing manuscripts, and delivering sermons. Throughout each chapter, Kuruvilla uses examples from the book of Ephesians and the Jacob cycle in Genesis to provide real examples. Two complete annotated manuscripts, one from Ephesians and one from Genesis, are included as appendices.

This book is an incredibly valuable gift to preachers. Even if one does not agree with Kuruvilla’s hermeneutic of preaching (his pericopal approach is described and defended in Baker’s Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views), the suggestions for preparation and delivery are immensely helpful. Kuruvilla advocates for propositional preaching with manuscript delivery, which may be less familiar in free-church traditions. Nonetheless, his book is full of practical gems, including transitional phrases, tips for dealing with stage fright, and preaching from an iPad. His book does lack some insight into the spiritually formative nature of preaching, although the primary goal of this book is to set forth a preaching process. A few of his suggestions may become quickly outdated (consider for instance, his technical specifications on iPad preaching). Nonetheless, this is an excellent reference resource for preachers at all stages.

(A complimentary review copy was given in exchange for an honest review.)

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