How to be good at preaching

Chris Erdman's Countdown to Sunday is not a book that is incredibly attractive by looking at the cover, looks gimmicky, and the excellent content does not match the airport time-management self-help looking cover. So if you are a preacher or aspiring to be one and you've seen Erdman's book, and written it off, pick it up. You'll be glad you did.

I like Chris Erdman’s surprisingly good book, Countdown to Sunday. The chapters are short, reflective, punchy, practical, and sock you in the gut when you are not least expecting it.

Today this encourages me:

Here’s why trying to be good or thinking you are good is no good for the preacher. When you’re trying to be good, you spin off mental and spiritual energy that you need to rightly handle the Word. You split your energies between preaching the Word and evaluating how you’re doing at preaching. When you’re preaching you must inhabit the moment as fully as possible. You cannot afford to split yourself. When you do, something becomes false, rings hollow . . . When you try to be good, you are not good. You may be good in that veneer sense of being good that tricks only the undiscerning, but your drive to be good means that your gifts and personhood (which are part and parcel of the way God wills to reveal the Word in our world) get all gummed up–they can’t work well at all because you are constantly worrying and evaluating and fretting, instead of living free, released to live in this moment, just this moment, asking only, “Lord, what’

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