Poor Eutychus might have tumbled off his perch in Acts 20, but it's humbling to notice that what took Paul many hours of preaching to achieve—near-fatal napping in one of his listeners—takes most preachers only a few minutes on a Sunday.
Saving Eutychus will help you save your listeners from such a fate. Written by an Aussie and an Irishman with very different styles who share a passion for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Saving Eutychus delivers fresh, honest, faithful and practical insights into preaching the whole word of God, sunday by Sunday, in an engaging way. This book is a practical distillation of decades of thinking, writing, preaching, failing, humbly praying and seeing God at work, and is an invaluable tool for honing your own gifts to become the best preacher you can be.
Includes sermons and mutual critique from each author, a sermon critique sheet, and practical tips and helpful diagrams. Saving Eutychus: How to Preach Gods Word and Keep People Awake
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Excellent book on preaching. Easy to read, biblical, practical, and Christ-focused. 9781922206251 Acts 20 has an interesting story along Paul’s route back to Jerusalem. In the city of Troas, Paul preaches and preaches. And preaches. And preaches some more. Somewhere in the midst of the last night, a young man named Eutychus falls out of the window to his death. That would have been a bad night…except the Holy Spirit enabled Paul to raise Eutychus from the dead.
And then go back to preaching.
Saving Eutychus takes its title from this story, but this book is not about the resurrection of the dead. Neither is it a CPR manual for those we bore to death on a Sunday to Sunday basis. Instead, this is a preventative medicine book. Saving Eutychus is about keeping him from dropping dead in the first place.
In all honesty, Saving Eutychus is a tightly-targeted book. If you are not involved in the proclamation and presentation of Biblical truth, this is not going to be of much use to you. If, however, you are involved in teaching or preaching, you are in the target audience here. There is some benefit for those who study rhetoric, but we are talking a pretty specialized book here.
Gary Millar and Phil Campbell co-author Saving Eutychus. These authors have experience in teaching, in preaching, and in teaching preaching. Their work presents an approach to preaching that differs from some current American-written texts on the subject. Instead, they reflect their Irish and Australian backgrounds. Well, I assume so. I don’t know if I should judge all of Ireland and Australia based on these two men.
However, on to content. After all, we’re not interviewing Millar and Campbell. We’re reading their book. Counting the appendices, Saving Eutychus comes in at 168 pages. Having been printed with footnotes, those 168 pages are certainly better than the same 168 pages with endnotes.
Then, we must look at what Millar and Campbell hope to communicate. Saving Eutychus is subtitled “How to preach God’s word and keep people awake.” This is the two-pronged attack: the sermon should be based in God’s Word; the sermon should keep people awake.
I found Saving Eutychus effective in communicating the need for clarity in preaching. Additionally, the authors point out how text-centered preaching will result in a similarity of messages, and how this is not a bad thing in itself. I was surprised to see a personal story that came across as critical of Bill Hybels, but it is placed strictly in the context of ensuring our preaching is about the text, not about common sense.
Having read three books on preaching in the last year, Saving Eutychus was truly the most practical of them. A major reason is that, while Millar and Campbell briefly address Biblical interpretation, this book focuses on the development and delivery of the sermon. It is presented with an underlying assumption that you can study the text and comprehend major ideas from it.
I liked the inclusion of sample sermons and critiques of those sermons. Further, the website at www.savingeutychus.com has the videos of these as well. Also in the appendix one finds blank sermon critique forms, though these can also be downloaded at the same website.
At the present time, if I had the opportunity to have a preaching study group, I would start with Saving Eutychus.
Now a word: not being up-to-date with Australian Evangelicals (or Irish ones living in Australia), I know nothing about the day-to-day ministries of Millar and Campbell. They may or may not be nice people—I know of a few very good books from American preachers who I would neither attend nor recommend attending their churches. That’s one advantage I see in this book, generally: there is no baggage to recommending Millar and Campbell.
Read their book. Be a better preacher. Keep people awake, both physically and spiritually.
And watch God work.
(I had already bought this book before I received a free copy to review, so there's no conflict of interest here.)
9781922206251 Read for a preaching class. I found this short book to be very readable and doctrinally sound, but I am not convinced of some of their practical suggestions. All of the main chapters are helpful for exegesis faithful to the text and communicating clearly to the congregation before you, but their own examples of preaching were lacking to me. The suggestion for a 23-minute preaching time and the use of video clips for sermon illustrations were off-putting to me, but that may just be me being a stuffy Particular Baptist. I would still recommend this book, but I would say skip the last chapter and appendices. 9781922206251 This is a faithful and practical look at the strengths of expository preaching. Pray, locate the big idea, preach redemptive-historical, and be clear and concise. 9781922206251 A great, simple read on how to improve your preaching skills! Hopefully no one ever dies during one of my messages…poor Eutychus 9781922206251
A fun, easy read with good reminders about preaching.
Millar and Campbell cover the importance of prayer (ch. 1), the nature of expository preaching (ch. 2), the need for clarity (ch. 3), what is the big idea (ch. 4), biblical theology (preaching Christ, ch. 5), delivery (ch. 6), and feedback (ch. 7). They conclude with examples and feedback from both authors.
The most helpful part for me was how to preach from a biblical theological perspective without falling into a rut each week. Millar provides 9 helpful ways to move the sermon toward Christ (pp. 93-99).
9781922206251 As someone who has grown up in the church and has never had the courage to preach while also feeling a sense of calling to do so at some level, and as someone who was given this book by my pastor as I prepare to preach my first sermon, I can honestly say there are so many gold 'nuggets' of wisdom in these pages!
Right from the outset I was hooked, and both Millar and Campbell did well to inject enough humor and 'real life' alongside the invaluable tips and advice to keep me interested the whole way through, which I suppose isn't surprising since the book is about how to preach and keep people awake!
Perhaps the most helpful things for me were the strong cal to prayer at the beginning of the book, Phil's top ten list of things to remember when preparing a sermon and the example sermons and feedback forms from both preachers at the end of the book.
This is the kind of book I'm sure I will need to read multiple times in order to mine all the useful advice, instruction and tips from, and it is certainly the kind of book I'd recommend to anyone who currently preaches or who is preparing to begin preaching. 9781922206251 Even though I am not a preacher, I do like to share my faith and God's word in a meaningful way that will encourage others to desire a relationship with Jesus Christ. How do we do that? Do I have to go to seminary school? Do I even have to be a gifted speaker/teacher? Even though this book is designed for preachers, I received some sound encouragement from this study. What entails good preaching and how preaching can change the heart. It does take prayer and preparation.
Change only happens when the bible itself controls and defines the message we hear (and speak). To share, we need to work at it constantly, developing our ability to understand, to teach and apply the scripture. Understanding the Old Testament and how it applies to the new testament can make the scripture come more alive. So many think the God of the Old Testament is different from the New Testament because of failure to show how the old is part of the new.
With our delivery (tone of voice, bringing the scripture to how it applies in my life now, and making the point of the Gospel), we can preach the word of God without needing a pulpit. This is a great tool to come back to and apply over and over again.
A complimentary review copy was provided to me by Cross Focused Reviews (A Service of Cross Focused Media, LLC). I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own 9781922206251 Though Millar and Campbell belong to a school of preaching that is more conversational than I am used to, I still appreciated this book very much. There are gems here for anyone who cares about getting through. 9781922206251 This book's title includes the byline How to preach God's Word and keep people awake. At the risk of sounding arrogant I will say that I don't struggle with either. But I know many preacher's do. If you are one of those preachers that know that your preaching has a tendency to lull the sheep instead of feeding them, then I recommend this book.
It's a good book. Not a great one. I liked it and found some helpful suggestions. However, the main premise of the book was that preaching from a sermon manuscript (not an outline) was the best way to improve one's preaching. Now, the authors do a good job explaining how to preach from a script instead of a skeletal outline, but there is no way I could do that. I prefer to do a mixture of extemporaneous preaching from an outline and using some word-for-word scripted sentences when a difficult or confusing subject requires precision.
So for those preachers who struggle with keeping their people awake: read this book. But honestly, if you're a new preacher and would like to learn how to preach well, I suggest you teach an elementary age Sunday school class for boys. Do this for a couple years. If you can learn to keep them interested, then you will come close to mastering the fundamental basics of homiletics. 9781922206251