Unashamed Workmen: How Expositors Prepare and Preach

by Rhett Dodson

Bringing together some of the finest preachers of our day, 'Unashamed Workmen' focuses on the methods they use to prepare their sermons. You will find a variety of approaches and styles but they all share a passion for the Word of God to be explained and applied clearly. Contributors: Peter Adam, Rhett Dodson, Iain Duguid, Ajith Fernando, David Jackman, Simon Manchester, David Meredith, Josh Moody, Douglas Sean O'Donnell and Richard D Phillips.

Genres: Theology

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

Rhett Dodson is the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Hudson, Ohio. He previously served as an associate pastor and seminary professor. Originally from Pickens, South Carolina, Rhett has a PhD in Old Testament. He and his wife, Theresa, live in Hudson.

Reviews

[Andrew Farr]

Helpful in some ways. I found some practices that were good reminders of things I already do as well as helpful reminders of things I should try to implement. I'm not sure if the sermon chapters helped or not, for sometimes I wondered how that particular sermon demonstrated the things a particular man had highlighted in his practice.

[Peter Jones]

I think for a young pastor who had not read much on preaching this book could be of some value. Several different preachers walk through their sermon preparation or a part of their preparation. They follow each of their sections up with a sermon. If you have not read much on the nuts and bolts of sermon prep this book will be helpful. But if you have been around for a while it covers a lot of the same ground; prayer, ask questions of the text, work hard, etc. I found the sermons a distraction, not a help. Also several of the men gave an outline of how they portioned out their sermon prep during the week. This can help a pastor work through his schedule. But so often our work weeks are so different that descriptions of other pastor's work weeks are not always helpful.

I did not find this book very helpful. But younger ministers might.

My Rating System
1 Star-Terrible book and dangerous. Burn it in the streets.

2 Stars-Really bad book, would not recommend, probably has some dangerous ideas in it or could just be so poorly written/researched that it is not worth reading. Few books I read are 1 or 2 stars because I am careful about what I read.

3 Stars-Either I disagree with it at too many points to recommend it or it is just not a good book on the subject or for the genre. Would not read it again, reference it, or recommend it. But it is not necessarily dangerous except as a time waster.

4 Stars-Solid book on the subject or for the genre. This does not mean I agree with everything in it. I would recommend this book to others and would probably read it again or reference it. Most books fall in this category because I try not to read books I don’t think will be good. There is a quite a variety here. 3.6 is pretty far from 4.5.

5 Stars-Excellent book. Classic in the genre or top of the line for the subject. I might also put a book in here that impacted me personally at the time I read it. I would highly recommend this book, even if I do not agree with all that it says. Few books fall in this category. Over time I have put less in this category.

[Gabriel Magill]

I liked the concept of this book—having different pastors share their process for writing their sermons. Unfortunately there were so many pastors included in this book that none of them were given enough space to dive into the details, and a general overview of their process all hit the same general highlights of meditating on the word, praying over it, creating an outline, then manuscripting. There is not enough nuts and bolts of the process to help new preachers but far too familiar elements to help experienced preachers. Each preacher also included a manuscript of a sermon they did after their chapter which was a really neat idea. The problem was I wasn’t blown away by their sermons. They were all faithful enough to their texts, but most liked a good flow or that elusive element that gives a sermon its punch and helps it stay with you. Also, many of these preachers talk about putting in 30+ hours each week into a single manuscript and reading 20 or more commentaries. For most pastors of small churches, the demands on their time and limited resources make this impractical. There are a few tips in this book, but I think there are much better books on preaching out there.

[Rick Dobrowolski]

I found the practicality of this book to be a real help. Each preacher takes two chapters. One to talk about his preaching preparation workflow and the next to give an example sermon. The first chapter of each preacher was very helpful, but I do not feel that the example sermon was as much and found myself skimming over them but intending to go back in the future to read them more devotionally. I instead wish that the first chapters were developed more.

[Wes Bredenhof]

Two thoughts: 1) It had a lot of repetition -- for example, all the authors recommend reading the commentaries after doing your own exegesis. 2) It doesn't offer a lot to someone who has already been preaching for a while. After some years, you learn what works for you and what doesn't in sermon preparation.