Well-Driven Nails: The Power of Finding Your Own Voice

by Byron Forrest Yawn

At its core this book is about everything seminary and academics never taught us about preaching. Professors don't produce preachers. Preachers are hewn out of the rough granite of experience and time. I had the privilege of sitting down with some of the most notable preachers of our day and pilfering their hard-earned wisdom and insights. Well-Driven Nails is an accounting of what I learned from these true "professors" of the craft. But, it is also more than a book on preaching. It's about a journey every preacher must take if he is to be a fearless proclaimer of Christ in a room full of critics. It is about finding one's own voice. In this sense it also applies to everyone who struggles to overcome the fear of man in their devotion to Christ.

124 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2010

About the author

Byron Yawn is the senior pastor of Community Bible Church in Nashville, Tennessee and a much-sought speaker. His book Well-Driven Nails received much positive acclaim from prominent ministers, including John MacArthur and Steven Lawson. Byron has MDiv and DMin degrees from The Master’s Seminary, is married to Robin, and has three children.

Reviews

[Sean Higgins]

Great book about the regular failures of expository preaching, summarized under the criticism of preachers preaching and not caring about what/Who they're preaching. In other words, "finding your own voice" means speaking something you own, not just something you learned and think is good. For example,

> Effectiveness in preaching is tied to the preacher's own pursuit of God. Our people need to observe us stunned by the truths we encounter. ... Among the most hopeful, powerful, effective things I can do for my people is to drag a freshly broken heart into the pulpit. (30)

> ...the quality of our delivery must rest not on cleverness, structure or personal skill, but on the integrity of our relationship to Jesus Christ. (56)

> If the sermon has not yet ministered to our own soul, then it's nothing more than a thesis paper. (60)

> [quoting Spurgeon] real success is proportionate to the preacher's earnestness. Both great men and little men succeed if they are thoroughly alive unto God, and fail if they are not so. (101)

> [quoting Piper] I don't think they have a hard time with it because they are afraid of it, but because they don't feel it. I doubt many preachers are feeling great emotion and not allowing it because they are concerned people will dislike it. They just haven't been amazed by what they see. (111)

Throughout the book, Yawn addresses the easy, typical problems of angry preaching, arrogant preaching, academic preaching, and unaffectionate preaching.

My only knock on the book would be that, especially with a title like Well-Driven Nails, there sure were a lot of sentence fragments. Very many sentence fragments. There were so many that the editor must have decided to leave them in on purpose which, again, is at least a little ironic.

[Mark Barnes]

8/10 (very good): Short and straightforward book, encouraging clarity, simplicity and passion in preaching, using the models of John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul and John Piper. Well-written, it’s clear, simple and passionate. I found the earlier chapters resonated more than the latter ones, but I made plenty of notes that I will return to.

[Andy Hickman]

Byron Forrest Yawn, Well-Driven Nails: The Power of Finding Your Own Voice, (Greenville, SC: Ambassador International, 2010).

Some helpful insights

[Colleen]

I enjoyed it so much, I sent the book onto to a paid church worker, who I hope has found it useful in their work.

[Hector Ortega]

Mi respuesta a la pregunta de este libro es: Hablar bien de Dios