Outreach Preaching: The Role of Preaching in Evangelism. By Elton P. Richards, Jr. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986. 56 pages. Paper, $4.25.  

Richards, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Reading, Pennsylvania, writes to help correct what he considers an incomplete understanding of evangelism. “Too often evangelism is understood only as bringing others into the church rather than as sending disciples into the world also” (p. 5).  

Richards and his congregation live and serve in an area where the demographics for numerical growth “are far from encouraging” (p. 4). Yet they have a mission, which includes verbal evangelism and deeds of social ministry. Richards stresses that mission means the church is “sent” and has worked to help change the “come” structures of his church to “go” structures.  

In the introductory chapter, Richards addresses some contemporary distortions of evangelism; stresses that evangelism should include listening as well as telling, that preaching is both direct and indirect; then states the basic affirmation of his book: “The preaching of the Word from the pulpit has created the climate of mission outreach of our congregation” (p. 8). He obviously believes it will for any congregation.  

The remainder of the book contains 13 sermons, some of which address those who need to hear the good news, others which celebrate festival days of the church year, and some which exhort Christians to be evangelists. The sermons are mostly inductive in nature and get to the point quickly.  

This monograph stresses the centrality of preaching in the ministry and the need for more serious thought on the nature of evangelism. Too much of it is dedicated to outreach sermons and too little of it to the nature of outreaching preaching.