Listen Up! A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons by Christopher Ash Book Review

GROW IN LISTENING

There are multitudes upon multitudes of books about how to preach an excellent, expositional, and even entertaining sermons, but before reading this one, I had only ever heard of one book on listening to sermons, and that book was “A Consumer’s Guide to Preaching,” by Jay Adams. That book was great and I recommend you read it if you are not the regular preaching pastor at your church, but if you think you may be too busy to take on a full-size book on listening, “Listen Up! A practical guide to listening to sermons” is a 32-page booklet published by The Good Book Company that is so accessible I would recommend it to anyone who can read and attend Sunday services regularly.  

Now, to the content of the book. Author Christopher Ash practically breaks down seven ingredients for healthy sermon listening. Because I want you to read the booklet, I’m not going to list them here but I really appreciated the way that at each step in the process, Ash consistently located the power and authority of preaching not in the man but in the Word of God. 

A second call from the book that I appreciated was to prepare one’s heart to hear the message before walking into church on Sunday morning. How much fruit can be born from tilling the soil from our hearts and fertilizing it before the seeds of the Word are planted!

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the last section of the booklet devoted to listening to bad preaching. You may find yourself in a church situation you would rather not be in right now, and the instructions on listening to inaccurate or just plain dull sermons may be incredibly helpful to the person who dreads going to church on Sunday morning!

I would recommend this book to anyone who listens to sermons regularly (which should be all of us)!