What I’m Reading This Week 6/25/07

Posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:11 am

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This week I am working on getting a book read that I am reviewing for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. The work, called Fabricating Jesus, deals with many of the attacks of modern scholarship on the historical Jesus. It is a fairly technical book, and unless you are really into the historical Jesus movement and the modern work that has been done, it would likely not be a great read for you. On the other hand if you want to know about The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Mary, or the Secret Gospel of Mark, this is the book to get. It is well written by a scholar who understands the material and explains it clearly.

The second book I am reading this week is about preaching. I try to read at least four books on preaching every year, just to keep up with the current ideas, and to try to get a little better at what I do. This work has to do with the move from outline preaching to inductive preaching. The move has been pioneered by such people as Calvin Miller and Fred Craddock who argue that the sermon should move in a story like fashion rather than a lecture like fashion. I am an outline kind of person, but I try to make at least some of my work inductive and to use as much creativity as I can. While you may not be a preacher, you might be interested to read some works on preaching to help you make better presentations, lessons, lectures, etc. The book is called The Shape of Preaching, and it has been out only a few months.

I, of course, always have a few books that I am reading just for fun. This weekend I read the fourth and final book in the series The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.

Tolle Lege,

DrSamLam