It may be only in sermon writing that a preacher “finds out what he or she most deeply believes,” Baptist minister Austin Carty ventures in his Some of the Words are Theirs.
As commonword.ca explains in its critique of his book, it’s in crafting a homily that clerics make “meaning from the stuff of our lives.” In it, “Carty offers a masterclass in sermon writing that also explores the ‘why’ driving this vocation. In so doing, he discovers how often his own sermons have been an exercise in trying to make sense of his own past.”
As the author himself puts it, “[T]he practice of sermon writing is indeed a gift of self-discovery.” In his concluding chapter he writes, “[E]very sermon—like every life—should be filled with wonder and pain, struggle and hope, crushing despair and astonishing surprise.”
Before becoming a preacher, Carty taught English literature, and authored several books, and it shows in his writing. As blogger Bob Cornwall reports, he “covers the entire process of writing a sermon from preparation to final draft,” but, in so doing, he “weaves his own story into the book,” and that tale “serves as fodder for the way Carty creates sermons.”
Some of the Words are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon
By Austin Carty
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2025