George Buttrick's Guide to Preaching the Gospel

Are preachers still needed? George Buttrick's answers finally revealed.

“Does the preacher now impress us as a ‘legate of the skies’? To many he is a pathetic figure, an anachronism, a stage-joke—an inoffensive little person jostled by the crowd, and wearing the expression of a startled rabbit. With one hand he holds a circular hat on a bewildered head and with the other desperately clutches an umbrella. The crowd pushes him from the sidewalk; the traffic shoots him back into the crowd. Some curse him; a few laugh; most are unaware of his existence.” (George Buttrick, Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1931). Whether we need preaching has been asked for hundreds of years, long before an age of media saturation from streaming 24-hour news, entertainment, politics, and sports. This question hounded George Buttrick, one of the most profound preachers of the twentieth century and often compared with Billy Graham. Buttrick offers a compelling answer to the question, but his answer remained hidden for 40 years until now. In George Buttrick’s Guide to Preaching the Gospel, we learn why the world needs competent preachers, what the preacher must preach about, and how the preacher goes about creating the sermon with daily discipline and several practiced skills, including research, charting, outlining, writing, and performance. These writings have never been published before and were found by his grandchildren after his death. A brief biography of Buttrick introduces this master orator and professor to readers who do not know his work.