Explosive Preaching: Letters on Detonating the Gospel in the 21st Century

by Ronald Boyd McMillan

'Why do so many preachers make the most exciting news in the world sound so boring?' That is the question driving this unusual book. In a series of honest, personal and humorous letters, the author also answers the question, 'What will it take to inspire great preaching for the 21st century?'. Ronald Boyd-MacMillan rejects the modern fixation with form in current homiletics and advocates a return to the practice of eight fundamentals for great preaching. The insights from 2,000 years of preaching history and twenty years of personal preaching experience across three continents are applied to the needs of the 21st century. This is a humorous yet hard-hitting guide to explosive modern preaching.

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006

Reviews

[John Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its best book on preaching I have read. Its also very humorous. Lots of “thats so true” laughter moments.

[Peter Mead · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was urged to get this book in a brief lunch-time encounter last month. Based on the enjoyable nature of our conversation, I trusted the advice of this new friend and bought the book. I’m glad I did. This book is comprehensive in scope and highly helpful in content. The author works for Open Doors International and serves, among other things, as a tutor to preachers and speech-makers.

It contains 31 “letters,” I suppose in the style of Screwtape Letters, although essentially the letter style is not really sustained within each letter to any meaningful extent – it simply allows the author to pour forth his thoughts. Since I am only half-way through the book at this point, I can only give a pre-review. I’ll review the whole book once I get to the end. This is the book I have been referring to over the past few weeks.

So far I have read this book with an almost constant smile on my lips, even though I acknowledge that much of the content is very serious, sobering and challenging. The book is still an entertaining read. I suppose it is also tempting to be as condescending toward the book as the author is toward other homiletics writers (perhaps myself included – would I fit in his category of puerile homiletics writers that keep on stating the obvious or making the whole task seem unnecessarily complex?) But rather than feel condescending toward a book with an edge, despite our denominational, ecclesiastical and even slight theological differences, I would rather engage with the book and learn from it.

The first two sections of the book deal with the problems in preaching and the elements of preaching. So far I’ve found much that has been challenging and helpful. I am looking forward to the subsequent sections on the history of preaching and the life of the preacher. I suspect this book might creep into my top books page, but I’ll read the whole of it before I make such a major decision!

. . . review continued . . .

I partially reviewed this book several weeks ago. My opinion of the book has not changed as I’ve finished it. It is creative, insightful, humorous, challenging and helpful. There are small moments where you may find it annoying, but better to provoke reaction than to leave no mark at all!

To be honest the third section, on the history of preaching, was decent and helpful, but perhaps not quite as good as I’d hoped for. Nevertheless, it is worth reading. The final section, on the life of the preacher, is excellent. Although somewhat scattered with a feel of “mopping up” the bits that were left over, these chapters were nevertheless worth the price of the book.

I have heard that this book is hard to get hold of in the USA. If that is the case, then it is a real shame. Even if you need to order the book from a UK seller on Amazon marketplace, I would encourage you to do so (I order books from the US this way at times, and have never had a problem).

A lot of book about preaching tend to say the same thing again. This one doesn’t.