Between Two Worlds Book Review

Overview

Between Two Worlds came about after the author, John Stott, read hundreds of books on homiletics. (Stott, 9) What Stott claimed that his purpose of writing was to accomplish the construction of a text that combined several different aspects of the subject of preaching together in one book that are otherwise separate. (Stott, 9) One could thus conclude that Between Two Worlds is designed to be like a introductory text on the subject of preaching that renders a holistic approach.

Weaknesses and Strengths

The greatest weakness of Between Two Worlds is that it is incredibly out of date. For example Stott writes, "it is difficult to imagine the world in the year A.D. 2000 -- " (Stott, 69) For Stott A.D. 2000 would have been almost two decades in the future, and he had to speculate a lot about the future in order to write about it intelligently, but now that A.D. 2000 is many years in the past, some of Stott's visions for the future would appear somewhat comical.

One of the predictions of Stott for example is that the silicon chip would become greater than even human brain-power. (Stott, 69) Although what Stott wrote became true to some extent, no reasonable person today would raise the issue as a real concern. The point is that much of the future context that Stott envisioned for preaching and his solutions for working in such a context should perhaps not be considered with full acceptance today, and such could be said because if Stott rewrote his book today, then he would likely change some things after having considered the outcome of what was considered the future for people that lived several decades in the past.

Perhaps the greatest gain can be achieved by Stott's instruction on how to prepare a sermon as is seen in the chapter entitled Preparing Sermons; moreover, what Stott does in the chapter is to give a rather timeless model for sermon preparation that includes the steps of choosing the text, (Stott, 213) meditating, (Stott, 220) isolating the dominate idea, (Stott, 224) arranging the material, (Stott, 228) adding the introduction and conclusion, (Stott, 243) and praying over the message and writing it. (Stott, 254) The process that Stott suggests is a rather good one, and he describes it as he holds opposition to always using the extempore method. In this regard Stott tells a story about how a preacher was able to lazily get by for years without preparing his sermons until one day the Bishop came to the preacher's church and caught him at the act. (Stott, 211-212)

In Stott's instruction for preparing a sermon, he firstly points to the church calendar of holidays for beginning the process of selecting the appropriate biblical text to preach upon, (Stott, 214-215) and secondly he points to external events that are monumental occurrences in history as well as any discovered need in the church thirdly. (Stott, 216) Stott next advises reading the selected text time and time again and then asking questions of the text, (Stott, 220-221) and as the process develops, Stott recommends writing lots of ideas while looking for the main point of the text. (Stott, 224) Stott next recommends organizing all the miscellaneous ideas such that they serve the main thought, (Stott, 228) and thus for Stott the introduction and conclusion only come together after the body of the text has been developed. (Stott, 243) Lastly Stott advises to write the manuscript but not to be tied to it. (Stott, 254-255)

Effective Preaching Promoted by Book

A lot of value could be gained from Stott's sermon preparation method. What would work best however is to write all the various ideas generated, while meditating on a text, in little bubbles on a very huge sheet of paper that could be put on a wall. The main idea of the bubble could be in large print in the bubble while the details could be in smaller print. After a person gets a lot of bubbles together on the sheet and discovers the main thought that links all the bubbles, then such a person can draws lines connecting all the bubbles in a web and thus centralize the main idea.

Although Stott's standard process can increase the effectiveness of preaching greatly just by a person following the process that he details, a person could however use the above method to increase the value of Stott's process in such a way as to generate a visual map of the sermon to be given. With a organized visual map of bubbles detailing a web of ideas, a preacher could be far more organized without having to read from a massive script. Overall, Stott's model for preparing a sermon is clearly the most effective part of his entire book for training preachers.

Bibliography:

Stott, John. Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.