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A Little Book for New Preachers: Why and How to Study Homiletics
One of the central tasks of pastoral ministry is preaching the Word of God. Yet those who are called to ministry may feel unprepared, unable, or unwilling to step into this role. Moreover, the discipline of homiletics sometimes gets lost amid the exegetical questions, theological debates, and denominational disputes that overwhelm our attention. In this brief introduction to preaching, Matthew Kim helps to prepare those called to preach the Word. A seasoned preacher himself, Kim provides proven insight and guidance about the importance and history of preaching, the characteristics of faithful preaching, and the personal habits of a faithful preacher. With his help, both those training for ministry and those new to the pastoral task will be encouraged as they undertake their calling.
- GenresChristian
110 pages, Paperback
Published January 14, 2020
25 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Matthew D. Kim
15 books7 followersMatthew D. Kim (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is professor of preaching and pastoral leadership, holder of the George W. Truett endowed chair in preaching and evangelism, and director of the PhD in preaching program at Baylor University's Truett Seminary in Waco, Texas.
He is the award-winning author and editor of numerous books, including Ready to Preach: An Introduction to Homiletics (Baker Academic, 2026), Becoming a Friendlier Church: A Pathway to Genuine Community (Baker Books, 2026), What's God Saying Here?: How to Navigate Awkward, Troubling, and Bizarre Passages We Would Rather Skip (Zondervan Reflective, 2025), We Follow Christ: Helping Women to Discern God's Call (Baylor University Press, 2025), and more.
He has three books under contract: Preaching with Emotional Intelligence: Reconnecting Pastoral Ministry and the Pulpit (Baker Academic, 2027), Chasing Holograms: Redefining and Reforming Our Christian Identity (Zondervan Academic, 2028), and The Ministry Mentors: Best Practices for Pastoral Leaders (coauthored, Baker Academic, 2030).
He is the award-winning author and editor of numerous books, including Ready to Preach: An Introduction to Homiletics (Baker Academic, 2026), Becoming a Friendlier Church: A Pathway to Genuine Community (Baker Books, 2026), What's God Saying Here?: How to Navigate Awkward, Troubling, and Bizarre Passages We Would Rather Skip (Zondervan Reflective, 2025), We Follow Christ: Helping Women to Discern God's Call (Baylor University Press, 2025), and more.
He has three books under contract: Preaching with Emotional Intelligence: Reconnecting Pastoral Ministry and the Pulpit (Baker Academic, 2027), Chasing Holograms: Redefining and Reforming Our Christian Identity (Zondervan Academic, 2028), and The Ministry Mentors: Best Practices for Pastoral Leaders (coauthored, Baker Academic, 2030).
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 25, 2020
Although I consider myself to be a relatively new teacher, I also feel responsible to train up new teachers at my church. In A Little Book for New Preachers, Matthew D. Kim writes on why and how to study homiletics.
Little Books
This is my first book in IVP Academic’s Little Books series, where career scholars sum up their time-tested wisdom and pass it on to a new generation. They offer a starting point for students, an inspiring vision, and an opportunity to set their course into the future. They were books made to be put in the hands of beginning students.
In just over 100 pages, Kim breaks down why we should study preaching, gives three characteristics of faithful preaching, and details three characteristics of faithful preachers. This is a small book packed with knowledge on every page.
For New Preachers
Why study preaching? Kim says that preaching is a forgotten discipline with a great legacy. Rightly so, he says that the point of preaching is making disciples. Kim uses Scripture passages to prove his points. He cuts quickly and writes precisely.
The characteristics of faithful preaching are faithful interpretation, faithful cultural exegesis, and faithful application. Those familiar with these steps will agree that they are fundamental, and Kim does them justice in just a few pages. You can sense the weight of his words in his desire to help others get the meaning and message of the Scripture text correctly.
Good News
I was most inspired by reading about the characteristics of faithful preachers. They are to be pastoral and loving, a person of character and integrity, and prayerful and Spirit-led. These chapters helped give the book a more spiritual and heartfelt focus, as preachers must seriously consider their calling.
New preachers will find this an excellent companion as they learn the craft of preaching. Veteran preachers will find it invigorating to revisit the basics and refocus on the fundamentals. As a relatively new teacher, I now have a tool to help sharpen my skills. I will recommend this book to teachers in training. And I hope to carry on the tradition and legacy of faithfully preaching the good news to the world.
I was provided a free copy of A Little Book for New Preachers but was not required to write a positive review.
Little Books
This is my first book in IVP Academic’s Little Books series, where career scholars sum up their time-tested wisdom and pass it on to a new generation. They offer a starting point for students, an inspiring vision, and an opportunity to set their course into the future. They were books made to be put in the hands of beginning students.
In just over 100 pages, Kim breaks down why we should study preaching, gives three characteristics of faithful preaching, and details three characteristics of faithful preachers. This is a small book packed with knowledge on every page.
For New Preachers
Why study preaching? Kim says that preaching is a forgotten discipline with a great legacy. Rightly so, he says that the point of preaching is making disciples. Kim uses Scripture passages to prove his points. He cuts quickly and writes precisely.
The characteristics of faithful preaching are faithful interpretation, faithful cultural exegesis, and faithful application. Those familiar with these steps will agree that they are fundamental, and Kim does them justice in just a few pages. You can sense the weight of his words in his desire to help others get the meaning and message of the Scripture text correctly.
Good News
I was most inspired by reading about the characteristics of faithful preachers. They are to be pastoral and loving, a person of character and integrity, and prayerful and Spirit-led. These chapters helped give the book a more spiritual and heartfelt focus, as preachers must seriously consider their calling.
New preachers will find this an excellent companion as they learn the craft of preaching. Veteran preachers will find it invigorating to revisit the basics and refocus on the fundamentals. As a relatively new teacher, I now have a tool to help sharpen my skills. I will recommend this book to teachers in training. And I hope to carry on the tradition and legacy of faithfully preaching the good news to the world.
I was provided a free copy of A Little Book for New Preachers but was not required to write a positive review.
January 8, 2020
Matthew D. Kim is associate professor of preaching and ministry at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, as well as director of its Haddon W. Robinson Center for Preaching. He describes A Little Book for New Preachers as “a primer or introduction to preaching focusing on the characteristics of what makes for effective sermons and faithful preachers” (p. 14). Kim divides his material into three parts:
1. Why Study Preaching?
2. Characteristics of Faithful Preaching
3. Characteristics of Faithful Preachers
In a cultural era in which preaching is often denigrated, Kim makes a case for both the practice and formal study of preaching in Part One. After outlining several reasons for preaching, Kim concludes: “Preaching is essential to the life of God’s people because understanding and applying the Word of God is essential” (p. 52). The goal of preaching, in other words, is “to make disciples” (p. 44, cf. Matthew 28:19–20). Preaching is not the only way to do this, of course, but the Church has long found it to be an important, if not the most important way to do it.
Part Two turns to three characteristics of “faithful preaching: interpretation, cultural exegesis, and application. The material on interpretation and application is good. I especially appreciated the chapter on cultural exegesis, however. “Every congregation consists of people from different personal experiences, cultures, and backgrounds,” Kim writes, “even if outwardly they seem homogeneous” (p. 72). And that applies doubly outside a church’s four walls. The goal of cultural exegesis is “not to compete with the culture but rather to comprehend it for the sake of effective proclamation of God’s Word” (p. 73). I encourage pastors to pay attention to this chapter especially, and to consider reading Kim’s longer book, Preaching with Cultural Intelligence (Baker Academic). Those of us who preach need to know the cultural blind spots we all too often have when reading and preaching the Bible.
Finally, Part Three identifies three qualities preachers need to have to be effective: being pastoral and loving, being a person of character and integrity, and being prayerful and Spirit-led. “Preaching ability and charisma are inadequate to sustain a long-term, fruit-yielding ministry,” Kim writes (p. 106). Character is needed. In its absence, preachers are tempted to “fall into various destructive patterns of sin, which abruptly curtail their ministries and hurt their families and congregations” (p. 107). At the end of the day, the quality of the preacher matters as much as the quality of his or her sermons. Your whole speaks, not just your words.
Although Kim wrote his Little Book for “new preachers,” old preachers—which includes me—can read the book profitably as a refresher on homiletical basics.
Book Reviewed
Matthew D. Kim, A Little Book for New Preachers: Why and How to Study Homiletics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020).
1. Why Study Preaching?
2. Characteristics of Faithful Preaching
3. Characteristics of Faithful Preachers
In a cultural era in which preaching is often denigrated, Kim makes a case for both the practice and formal study of preaching in Part One. After outlining several reasons for preaching, Kim concludes: “Preaching is essential to the life of God’s people because understanding and applying the Word of God is essential” (p. 52). The goal of preaching, in other words, is “to make disciples” (p. 44, cf. Matthew 28:19–20). Preaching is not the only way to do this, of course, but the Church has long found it to be an important, if not the most important way to do it.
Part Two turns to three characteristics of “faithful preaching: interpretation, cultural exegesis, and application. The material on interpretation and application is good. I especially appreciated the chapter on cultural exegesis, however. “Every congregation consists of people from different personal experiences, cultures, and backgrounds,” Kim writes, “even if outwardly they seem homogeneous” (p. 72). And that applies doubly outside a church’s four walls. The goal of cultural exegesis is “not to compete with the culture but rather to comprehend it for the sake of effective proclamation of God’s Word” (p. 73). I encourage pastors to pay attention to this chapter especially, and to consider reading Kim’s longer book, Preaching with Cultural Intelligence (Baker Academic). Those of us who preach need to know the cultural blind spots we all too often have when reading and preaching the Bible.
Finally, Part Three identifies three qualities preachers need to have to be effective: being pastoral and loving, being a person of character and integrity, and being prayerful and Spirit-led. “Preaching ability and charisma are inadequate to sustain a long-term, fruit-yielding ministry,” Kim writes (p. 106). Character is needed. In its absence, preachers are tempted to “fall into various destructive patterns of sin, which abruptly curtail their ministries and hurt their families and congregations” (p. 107). At the end of the day, the quality of the preacher matters as much as the quality of his or her sermons. Your whole speaks, not just your words.
Although Kim wrote his Little Book for “new preachers,” old preachers—which includes me—can read the book profitably as a refresher on homiletical basics.
Book Reviewed
Matthew D. Kim, A Little Book for New Preachers: Why and How to Study Homiletics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020).
November 24, 2024
I almost used this book for my preaching class but decided against it. If you are in a more conservative, literalist tradition, you might get more use out of it. Kim certainly has a good, pastoral voice in his approach to preaching, but he is dismissive of contextual theology and preaching to the point where I wondered if his political ideology was getting in the way. Like Karoline Lewis, Kim also advocates working on your sermon sixteen hours a week. It is obvious that he and Lewis are both seminary professors, and not full-time pastors.
March 12, 2022
A good book for homiletics. It also offers basic hermeneutics and Bible backgrounds for OT and NT. It is a primer for those new preachers or planning to be a preacher. It balances the skills and heart of the preacher. It contends for the servant heart and willingness to commit to them in a pastoral level. A preacher needs to have a pastoral heart in order to serve wholeheartedly to the body of Christ. Pick this book if you want to learn a basic yet competent book on homiletics.
July 15, 2020
An outstanding book that needs to be read by novice and advanced preachers. Kim’s ending note is this: “Preaching is a privilege.” What a glorious privilege it is, and may we continue to be humbled by its awesome weight. If you’re a preacher, or considering pastoral ministry, you must read this book.
November 27, 2021
This was a solid little book on the practice of preaching. Kim makes an argument for the need to study preaching, some general best practices for preaching, and some characteristics of faithful preachers. He is at his strongest when he is considering preaching with cultural intelligence and exegeting the audience (which he has devoted a whole work to).
May 11, 2020
Humble look at preaching and preachers!
Great book! The use of the HABIT acronym for preparing a sermon was worth reading this book. Get this book and grow in who you are as a preacher in glorifying God.
Great book! The use of the HABIT acronym for preparing a sermon was worth reading this book. Get this book and grow in who you are as a preacher in glorifying God.
September 9, 2023
Kim addresses not only how to write applicable sermons, but on the importance of being a pastor and a preacher. While it is a very brief introductory text, I’m glad I read it before studying more advanced texts on homiletics.
December 23, 2024
Unfailingly good on how you might fail, and pleasingly practical on how you might hope to succeed, this book does a useful job of giving a serious scope and the beginnings of a serious practical checklist for being a pastor.
Strength!
Strength!
June 1, 2020
Excellent book! Very helpful for the new or experienced preacher. I will use it in my Tyndale University undergrad Preaching course in Fall '20.
September 14, 2023
Fin liten bok. Særlig del 3, om forkynnerens karakter er viktig.
January 24, 2025
Solid little book on homiletics. Definitely revisiting as time goes on.
July 1, 2020
I am reviewing this book for the Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society, and my review can be found there when it is published later in 2020.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews