The Foolishness of Preaching
by Robert Capon
Capon knows how to play. He cares without being pretentious, he laughs without being frivolous. His angle is almost always fresh air, a cold drink. He is anything but a wet blanket or a blowhard.
That said, he gives away too much in this book for me to dance and sing. Capon not only writes with allowance for lady preachers/priests, he writes with ambivalence on He or She for God’s pronouns. It isn’t clear that he isn’t a Universalist. He says he is liberal, I believe him.
As for preaching, studying to preach, and reading to study, he says he loves it, and I believe him. For all the practicals (i.e., less adverbs, except for the ones that make it conversational in tone, etc.), his ideas are fine. Most importantly, he does get to the real foolishness of the message and task, the thing we don’t want to hear or do: die. Our preaching is vain unless Jesus died, and rose again. We must die in Him and, after that, like Him. It’s either complete foolishness or the power of God to salvation.
I can’t recommend that you start this book, but I wouldn’t tell you to stop reading it either. It will never make my required list for homiletics class, and yet his joy in the task and his joy in preachers may be for your joy.