So it's good to finally open Saving Eutychus and enjoy some encouragement while I'm learning.
Millar and Campbell use the image of poor Eutychus falling asleep and then falling out of a window during a lengthy sermon to remind us of the importance of being interesting. More importantly, they want preachers to be faithful to the Biblical text that is before them. Can a sermon be both interesting and faithful? Their answer would be, "Yes! And it should be!"What's good about the book?
I appreciate the fact that it's not a long book. I have enough large books keeping the dust off the shelves, so a book of this size is much more attractive. It's 171 pages long and the font is big enough that I could read comfortably, though I still needed my glasses. (Age is catching me)
The chapters are long enough to pack stuff in, but not so long that I lose track of what I'm reading.
I also greatly appreciated the two sermons that are included in the book, and the critiques of each sermon that follows. Critiquing sermons is something that I find really easy to do, but I'm not sure I'd be so keen for people to critique my own sermons. This book provides a model for such a critique to happen.
What did I learn?
There are many good things here. But two things have stood out for me. They might not be the most important things in the book - I already knew about them - but these two should be a great help to me.
The first comes from Phil Campbell as he describes his sermon preparation. He writes out the passage by hand in a note book. He says that in doing this he begins to see the repeated words and ideas etc. I've often printed out the passage, but hand-writing seems just so last century. Perhaps I need to revisit that. (p66)
The second is also from Phil (sorry Gary) in his "Top Ten Tips". All of these are worth hearing, but number eight 'Illustrate the Obvious' is the one that sticks in my mind. I can get so tied up trying to illustrate some concepts of faith that I turn the message into a boring lecture. But by illustrating the obvious, I can make the sermon connect much better. This has to be a good thing. Then when I've got people's attention, those more difficult concepts might be a bit easier to work with.
Worth Reading?
At 171 pages, you're not going to lose anything by reading this. If you've read other books on preaching, you'll read some stuff you already know, and some things you've probably forgotten too. Perhaps like me you will come across some nuggets of gold that make you sit back and think a bit more about your preparation and your presentation.
Yes, it's worth reading.
