PreachingToday.com Book of the Year
On the Skills of Preaching

Preaching to a Post-Everything
World: Crafting Biblical Sermons
That Connect with Our Culture

Zack Eswine opens his book Preaching to a Post-Everything World with this brief autobiography:

I was the child of a single mother in a low-income apartment complex. I had little biblical context. I smoked cigarettes as a five-year-old while playing with the older kids. I think that sometimes our playing together was like parenting one another. I am the stepson of two stepmothers and two stepfathers. I am the brother of four dear half sisters and three stepbrothers I rarely see. My family tried to love one another, but we often broke one another with various forms of active abuse, passive neglect, or earnest attempts to love that didn't accomplish what we hoped. That was then. The grace of God has long since met my family in the deep places. I am a Christian, a pastor, a seminary professor. And I have been asking myself this question: Could I now reach who I once was?

Preaching to people who don't fit the church-goer's profile is not academic speculation for Zack. He is an advocate for the listener, the thoroughly post-everything listener, and he believes what those listeners need more than anything is messages that are fully biblical and Christ-centered.

In part 1, Zack urges us to preach what is real and what is redemptive. We need to preach the stories and remember where we've been. In part 2, he explores biblical models for the way that we approach listeners in the sermon, including the models of prophet, priest, and sage. In part 3, he zeros in on specific issues of reaching today's culture, such as preaching about hell and talking about biblical war passages in an age of terror.

One of our award judges wrote, "Eswine is keenly sensitive to the culture and deeply committed to the gospel. A lot of preaching sacrifices one or the other. But his book shows promise in helping preachers engage the culture through biblical exposition. Eswine's book will help us refine our thinking and our homiletical methodology so that we can substantially improve our ability to connect biblical truth to the non-churched in the culture around us."

On the last page of his book, Eswine writes:

The question is this: Preacher, will you seek to reach who you once were? Will you move toward others with the same grace God showed you when he moved toward you? Then begin with this refrain: Wherever "there" is, he is. And he is not silent about it. The God who reached you is both real and eloquent. By the grace he gives you, seek to exalt his reality and eloquence for the neighbors you find in the place he has called you.

Honorable Mention

Preach the Word:
Essays on Expository
Preaching in Honor of
R. Kent Hughes

Craig Brian Larson is the pastor of Lake Shore Church in Chicago and author and editor of numerous books, including The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching (Zondervan). He blogs on Knowing God and His Ways at craigbrianlarson.com.