I was asked to write a book review recently for volume of sermons from a specific context. I have agreed to do the review and it should be available soon but at first I was uncertain and to be honest remain a little nervous about undertaking this type of review.
I’m nervous for two reasons. First, attempting to review and assess sermons preached in a specific context, beyond confirming that they are Biblically and theologically sound feels risky to me. Who am I to say whether or not a particular sermon was appropriate to a context not my own. ICt’s also made harder because, a context specific sermon may sound very different when preached to an in person congregation than when read on the page.
However, more importantly, there’s the challenge about how we engage with sermons, or indeed any form of teaching material, including pastoral and theological books. I don’t tend to do a lot of book reviews and it is rare for me to take a specific request to read a book specifically to review it. I have done a couple of these but generally speaking, I review a book because I’ve read it for myself and either felt that the book has been so helpful that I want to encourage others to read it or alternatively, I’ve found it so depressingly bad that I’ve wanted to warn Faithroots readers not to part with their hard-earned cash.
You see, whether it’s a sermon, book, podcast or blog article, the risk is that we can end up reading or listening primarily with a critical mindset. We go in with the specific aim of making an assessment and evaluating whether the thing evaluated was good or bad. I’ve written before about how we can end up missing the opportunity to hear what God is saying to us through the speaker/author. We miss out on encouragement, challenge, nourishment.
Well, like I said, I’ve agreed to do the review having chatted with a couple of friends and taken their advice. I’ll be focusing on evaluating the concept itself. I’ll be asking whether or not the particular collection of sermons will be helpful for people in other contexts to read and in what ways they will be helpful. I’ll probably talk about how to make best use of such a collection (I’ll be writing more generally about how to engage with and make best use of other people’s sermon collections soon).
However, before I write that review, my intention is to sit back, read and enjoy the book and be challenged, corrected, rebuked, edified, encouraged, blessed by what God is saying to me from his Word through those preachers.
Faithroots 