Spirit Empowered Preaching: Involving the Holy Spirit in Your Ministry

This book is the single best book I have read on preaching. But the blessing from this book doesn't end there. I could recommend this book to any Christian because it will teach alot of things concerning the relationship of the believer to the Holy Spirit. It also shows what a congregation should be looking for in a pastor's preaching and how to help him! An Amazing book and the best book I have read this year (And I have read over fifty so that is saying something)!

I read this book off and on over a period of about 5 weeks. The context of my reading varied greatly, but it most often was done in public. On more than one occasion I found myself somewhat embarrassed (if I can use that term) by the title. I was afraid that folks might label me some sort of pentecostal nut job or something. But the more I read, the more I found myself unnecessarily jaded in my practical view of the Holy Spirit in ministry. So then this book helps me by being both instructive and corrective; this is of tremendous practicality. Arturo Azurdia is the author of Spirit Empowered Preaching. He writes vividly, pastorally, and biblically. His main objective is to compassionately and lovingly grab the preaching pastor by his ears and get him to better understand, anticipate and appreciate the work of the Holy Spirit in his ministry. Azurdia is helpful in clarifying the chief goal of the Holy Spirit as not creating a bunch of noise and disorder but rather as glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. John 16.14). Thus one might conclude that a church, and their pastor, are Spirit filled when they are Christ-centered and cross-boasting. This is a helpful calibration to our evangelical culture which equates the Holy Spirit so much with subjective feelings and fuzzy mystery rather than the bull's eye of Christ's glory. It is with this theological underpinning of the ministry of the Holy Spirit to exalt Jesus that Azurdia formats much of his explanation and exhortation. He does spend a healthy time behind the woodshed with the church growth movement, noting that without the accompanying power of the Holy Spirit working through the preached word of Christ, the hearers are unable and unwilling to respond and receive forgiveness. Azurdia's contention is that with the contemporary downplaying of doctrine, imprecision with respect to the gospel and the marginalization of the preached word, the hearer is not served a lick by the shenanigans performed by many men who call themselves pastors in many evangelical churches today. Instead men ought to humbly put themselves under the authority of the word, beg heaven for help, and preach with all of the passion and power that God sees fit to dispense, that if God is pleased, might wake the dead. One of the helpful features in this book is the wide array of quotations that the author provides in his various chapters. We are given insights from Calvin, Luther, Spurgeon, Watson, Lloyd-Jones and many others. Azurdia has done his homework and provided a rich resource to stir the preacher's heart. One minor critique that I have is with regard to the prolonged discussion of unction. Unction is that special gift of God given to the preacher whereby God attends his words with a special divine enablement. I believe that God does do this and we can see it in the Scriptures and throughout history. However, the way in which it is presented leaves me asking a lot of questions. Such as, "Is this a special and unique wor

Spirit Empowered Preaching is a wonderful book. But to understand its value, you must know what it is not. It is not a step-by-step guide to writing a sermon. It is not a manual on going from the biblical text to exegesis to application. It is an excellent study on the Spirit's work in Preaching. It seems his main premise is that the special presence of the Spirit mentioned in various places throughout the New Testament is manifested in the Bold and effective (though not attractive cf 1Cor 1 & 2) proclamation of the gospel. This is an irreplacable tool in the toolbox of the preacher of the gospel. I give it my highest recommendation.