This book review is also found on the Book Review page, but I have found it to be so beneficial to me in my preaching, that I thought it was worth bringing a little extra attention to it here. I hope you find this brief review helpful.
I love to read, but I do not love every book I read. I love Doctrine That Dances. I have underlined over and over again within the pages of this book (I switched to underlining when my wife got tired of hearing the hightliter squeak in bed). As an African American man, Robert Smith preaches in ways that I cannot, but there is much to learn from Smith, not only because of his African American heritage, but because of his call for preachers to return to doctrinal preaching.
Doctrine does not have to be boring, and Smith makes that apparent as he compares the sermon to jazz music…living, moving, and active. Smith’s book is ripe with illustrations and practical wisdom. It is as well written as it is researched, and he closes to book with two sermons to show that he can not only write about preaching, he can also construct sermons that make doctrine dance.
I was most impacted by Smith’s emphasis on creating word pictures in our preaching. The sermon needs to come alive, people must experience it as well as hear it, and it is through the preacher’s ability to relate doctrine through experience, illustration, and carefully crafted story-telling, that the hearer is able to experience and be impacted by the sermon.
This is a valuable new book that any serious expositor of the word can learn from. I am thankful to my friend David Easler for this gift, it has impacted my preaching in a great way.
Tags: books, doctrine, preaching, theology
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
[...] Passion For Preaching is happy to announce our very first book give away. Robert Smith’s Doctrine That Dances is a great book on doctrinal preaching that I highly reccommend and now, it can be yours for [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
[...] Winner of the first P4P book giveaway is Norm Brock. Norm will be receiving copies of Doctrine That Dances by Robert Smith Jr., Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges, and Searching for God Knows What by [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[...] short review for Doctrine That Dances, which was recently awarded Preaching Book of the Year, here. December 4th, 2008 [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] Priority of Doctrinal Preaching” here. You can also read our review of Robert Smith’s Doctrine that Dances, and our article, Doctrinally Rich [...]