Reading for Preaching

The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists

In Reading for Preaching Cornelius Plantinga makes a striking claim: preachers who read widely will most likely become better preachers.

Plantinga -- himself a master preacher -- shows how a wide reading program can benefit preachers. First, he says, good reading generates delight, and the preacher who enters the world of delight goes with God. Good reading can also help tune the preacher’s ear for language -- his or her primary tool. General reading can enlarge the preacher’s sympathies for people and situations that she or he had previously known nothing about. And, above all, the preacher who reads widely has the chance to become wise.

This beautifully written book will benefit not just preachers but anyone interested in the wisdom to be derived from reading.

Works that Plantinga interacts with in the book include

• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario
• Silence, by Shusaku Endo
• "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy
• "Narcissus Leaves the Pool" by Joseph Epstein
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo

. . . and many more!