What can the Puritans teach us today about preaching?
You have to try them for yourself, and do it this way. Get J.I.Packers Among Gods Giants10 and read those essays on various of the Puritans, their stalwart lives, controversies, how they conceived of the ministry, their personal disciplines of godliness and their evangelism. Start with Packer and see what immersion in Puritanism has done for him, in his many helpful books. He has not become a sad archaic caricature of the seventeenth century in his style. He is amongst the most contemporary, bracing and searching of writers today. Then try some Puritans. What a wealth you have to choose from. Start, of course, with Bunyans Pilgrims Progress11. It is the Westminster Confession of Faith lived out in pastoral theology. Read the debates especially because in those exchanges you will meet the application of truth to the kind of people we are meeting. Then there are the Banner of Truth paperback modern language series of books written by John Owen. There is the paperback on the Holy Spirit12
