Book Review: Why Johnny Can't Preach

Why Johnny Can't Preach
by: T. David Gordon

Preaching can be bad. Bad preaching can be the result of a lot of different things. A rough night's sleep, too much coffee, not enough coffee, bad listeners, or a thousand other mishaps. Sometimes though, bad preaching comes from the fact that a man doesn't know how to preach.

In the book Why Johnny Can't Preach, T. David Gordon suggests that some men can't preach, not because they don't love the Lord, or because they are not spiritual enough, but because they do not have the basic intellectual and educational foundation to preach a sermon. We can't read and we can't write, which means we can't think. If you can't do those things, you can't preach.

This is a very short book, but carries a lot of food for thought and a book that I think should be read and at least considered.  R.L. Dabney's "seven cardinal requisites of preaching" from his Lectures on Rhetoric provides a thread through which the book examines and condemns a lot of what is called preaching today. Preachers must be readers, but not just readers for information, but readers of texts.

Is the book perfect? By no means, and I had some areas of disagreement. Because preaching is a spiritual endeavor, the suggestion of an annual review of the preachers sermons is probably not the best idea. I doubt Paul would have had very many good reviews at Corinth or Galatia. This would also focus the preacher on getting better reviews, not necessarily preacher more truth.

I also had issue with his description of Christ-centered preaching. All roads lead to Christ, the Bible is about Jesus, but not all messages explicitly about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

All in all, this is a good book and I learned a good deal. If you preach, you need to read this book and think about it for a while.