Saturday, December 14, 2013

Nelson's Annual Preacher's Sourcebook vol. 3

A book that contains sermon outlines for every week including holidays and special occasions? What could be wrong with this resource?


Sometimes pastor's get into a rut when it comes to formulating messages. This book could be a fine resource to kick-start the creative ideas. But would a pastor simply regurgitate a sermon directly from this book? Perhaps.

The content is divided up by contributor. You'll read through a list of a person's sermon titles, then a slew of articles explaining funeral preparation and special day sermons. Then you'll come to some more articles about ethics and general sermon preparation before locating sermons for baby dedications, baptisms, and marriages.

Volume three contains a CD that you can open in a MAC or PC to carry the content into your digital world.

Here's my beef with books like this, while it might have been a true treasure trove "back in the day", with the birth of the internet, speakers can simply access sermon websites for ideas and get much more options. I'm thinking of places like sermon central.

This book includes suggestions for what songs to include for each sermon, prayers to lead, and illustrations to help make the point. For the last ten years, this probably was the best pastor's could use. Make no mistake, this would make a fine addition to someone's Pastor Helps library.

While some ministers do not use the Internet, most would probably simply turn to the websites of their choice before flipping through this thick tome.


This book was provided for review, at no cost, by Thomas Nelson Publishing.
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