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Credo Book Review

Are you an expositional preacher? David Helm can help (Joey Cochran)

9781433543135mDavid R. Helm. Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today (IXMarks: Building Healthy Churches). Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014.

Review by Joey Cochran

Like personified Wisdom, expositional preachers call far and wide for others to adopt their philosophy of homiletics. These days it’s en vogue for pastors to label themselves as “expositional preachers.” Labels are one thing; practicing the art is another.

Are you an expositional preacher? There’s a big difference between commenting verse-by-verse and drawing out the original text’s main point by theologically bridging to today’s context. Can you confidently say that the latter is your method?

If there is a lingering doubt – and even otherwise – then a refresher in expositional preaching will have inestimable worth. To do so, look no further than Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today (Crossway, 2014). Author, David Helm, chairs the Charles Simeon Trust organization, which promotes expositional preaching. He’s a practitioner too: Pastor Emeritus at Holy Trinity Church in Chicago. It’s Helm’s passion to promote expositional preaching.

Expositional Preaching accomplishes four aims in four succinct chapters covering the big problem and three steps to correct it: exegesis, theology, and contextualization.

A Big Picture of the Problem

Chapter one walks through how we get it wrong. The big problem is blind adherence: this is when cultural context gains control over how we read and preach Scripture. Doing this makes us impressionistic – our preoccupation is the world rather than the Word. We also become inebriated – intoxicated by our plans and purposes for the text rather than God’s. Last, we become inspired – our reading becomes God’s rather than God’s becoming ours. These are big problems!

You’ve probably seen these offenses to expositional preaching committed often in your history of ministry, either by yourself or another. So what are you to do? How are you to go about getting the text right and getting it across to your audience? …

Read the rest of this book review in Credo Magazine!


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We live in a world that screams to get our attention. From the moment you wake up to the second you hit your pillow at night, something or someone wants your time. Hosts of people are waiting for you to friend them on Facebook. The world awaits your next tweet and blCredo Front October 2014 Coverog post. Your phone is buzzing because you have another email that needs your response. When you go home and turn on your TV there are innumerable “must see” shows, as well as breaking news you cannot afford to miss.  Let’s face it, the world we live in is quite loud, and it never sleeps.

In the midst of all this noise, where does extended time in prayer fit in? Or does it? Prayer seems to run contrary to the busyness of life in the twenty-first century. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this question, “When was the last time I spent more than 15 minutes in uninterrupted prayer with the Lord?” Church history shows that for Christians who came before us, private and corporate prayer was essential, assumed to be a necessary staple for the Christian and the church. After all, it is the God-given means by which we have fellowship and communion with God himself.  Should we neglect prayer we actually neglect God, and the consequences are spiritually fatal. But should we set aside time to pray to God, we will benefit greatly, finding God to be a refuge and a shield in the midst of a chaotic, consuming, and demanding world.

In this issue of Credo Magazine we will focus on prayer, looking at how Christians in ages past have understood the importance of prayer, as well as Scripture’s own emphasis on the necessity of prayer. Not only will we recognize the importance of prayer, but in this issue we will look at how we pray as well. My guess is that most Christians have never even thought about how they should pray. Well here is a great opportunity to do so!

Contributors include: Gerald Bray, Aimee Byrd, Juan R. Sanchez, Peter Beck, Sandy Willson, Tim Keller, Sam Storms, Phil Johnson, Donald Whitney, Nancy Guthrie, among many others.

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