Book Review: The 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching

Introduction and Overview of McDill's Text

Preaching is speaking the truth about the word of God. In the second edition of his now-classic text, The 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching, Wayne McDill revises the original to make it relevant to the next generation of preachers and to the general public interested in the fundamentals of delivering the good news. Just as scripture itself needs to be continually revisited to remain relevant to contemporary believers, so too do Christian commentaries and guides like The 12 Essential Skills. McDill's primary audience is aspiring preachers, but anyone—Christian or not—can gain essential wisdom from this text.

The 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching is divided into four sections, plus two prefaces (one from the original edition and a new preface to the second edition), an introduction, a conclusion, and appendices. The book offers a concise overview of the core skills McDill presents as keys to great preaching practice. Conveniently, McDill also sub-divides the book into the titular twelve skills, which are pragmatic and practical rather than philosophical or theological. It is therefore assumed that the reader is already engaged in critical analyses, exegeses, and biblical correspondences to develop the core material for sermons or Bible studies.

A cogent introduction opens the text brilliantly, mentioning basketball great Michael Jordan as well as legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman. By anchoring The 12 Essential Skills to popular culture, McDill establishes the tone and theme of the text. This is a book geared not for an academic or scholarly audience but for the general community of believers. Mentioning exceptionally talented individuals like Perlman and Jordan allows McDill to distinguish between those who are born with innate gifts and those who still must work hard and practice to perfect their skills. On this note, McDill presents the core argument of the book: great preaching may begin with a calling and perhaps a gift, but to truly elevate the material and inspire the congregation, one must hone and develop skills through hard work.

In the introduction, McDill also provides an outline and general overview of what the book contains, as well as guidance on how to read and get the most from it. He notes that the book focuses on the well-established key-word method of developing sermons, which both Hamilton (1992) and Stackhouse and Crisp (2014) explicate in their similar texts on presenting the New Testament to diverse congregations. McDill also discusses the keynotes of rhetoric and notes that the objective of preaching should always be maximizing audience appeal. Finally, he tells the reader plainly that the book is about how to prepare an expository sermon—as opposed to a narrative or inductive one—and is not about sermons in a sociological or historical sense.

Expository sermons are sermons that communicate the meaning of the primary source by discovering what the original writers meant and the theological underpinnings of the passage. The text speaks for itself as the word of God; however, the preacher essentially translates the spiritual essence of each passage for a modern listener. McDill claims, "we are all gifted and can develop the skills appropriate to those gifts" (p. 6), establishing an inclusive and encouraging foundation for what follows.

References

Hamilton, D. L. (1992). Homiletical handbook. B&H.

McDill, W. (2006). The 12 essential skills for great preaching (2nd ed.). B&H.

Stackhouse, I., & Crisp, O. D. (2014). Text message: The centrality of scripture in preaching. Wipf and Stock.