The Ten Laws of Highly Compelling Preaching

by David deBruyn

97 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2026

About the author

David is from Johannesburg, where he and his family reside. He is married with three children.

David received his Master's Degree from Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota, U.S.A and his Doctorate of Theology in Christian Spirituality through UNISA.

David has pastored New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg since 2003, and has served as a frequent itinerant speaker and conference speaker. He is heard weekly on Christian radio in South Africa. He is also one of the lecturers at Shepherds Seminary Africa.

Reviews

[Rocky-John Stevenson]

David de Bruyn has done preachers and aspiring preachers a real service with this little book, and he has done it with candour and a good deal of humour. The Ten Laws of Highly Compelling Preaching does not read like a dry homiletics manual (and I have half read those). It reads like a friend pulling you aside after a poor sermon and telling you plainly why nobody could follow you. Each law comes wrapped in a memorable, half-comic image, the meter-taxi, the maples driver, the egg and spoon race, and that choice is itself an illustration of what de Bruyn is teaching: abstractions need to be made concrete if they are going to stick. I laughed more than once, and flinched more than once, recognising faults I have heard in other men's sermons and in my own.

What gives the book its weight is its pastoral urgency. De Bruyn plainly loves congregations, and he is troubled by the quiet damage done when they are fed sermons with no point, no order, and no compelling delivery, week after week. If young preachers took this book to heart early, a great deal of that needless harm would simply never happen. Short, clear, and genuinely useful. I recommend it without hesitation.

Rocky Stevenson, Pastor of Benoni Bible Church.