Award Winning Sermons

If you’re looking for a book that captures the essence of powerful preaching, Award Winning Sermons deserves a spot on your shelf. Published by the Baptist Sunday School Board back in June 1980, this collection brought together multiple voices from the pulpit—speakers who had earned recognition for their ability to move congregations and deliver messages that stuck with people long after the service ended.

What makes this book particularly interesting is its timing. The 1980s were a pivotal moment for evangelical Christianity in America. Billy Graham’s crusades were in full swing, and conversations about what makes preaching effective were everywhere in church communities. This collection arrived right in the middle of that conversation, offering readers a chance to study sermons that had already proven their impact on real audiences.

The strength of a sermon collection like this one lies in its accessibility. You’re not reading about preaching theory or abstract principles—you’re encountering actual sermons from preachers who knew how to connect with their congregations:

• Practical wisdom: These weren’t academic exercises. They were messages designed to resonate with people sitting in pews, wrestling with real faith questions
• Varied approaches: Different preachers bring different styles, so you get exposure to how message delivery can take many forms
• Timeless themes: Even though the book came out in 1980, the fundamental questions about faith, perseverance, and spiritual growth that these sermons address remain relevant

What strikes you when you read sermon collections is how a single line can lodge itself in someone’s memory and change how they think. The Gospel Coalition has noted how certain sermon moments—even just a phrase that doesn’t roll off the tongue smoothly—can break through intellectual barriers and touch something deeper. That’s the power these award-winning preachers understood and executed.

The Baptist Sunday School Board knew exactly what they were doing by publishing this through their Baptist Book Stores network. They recognized that sermons worth studying are sermons worth preserving. This wasn’t just a book for preachers looking to improve their craft, though it certainly worked for that purpose. It was also a resource for laypeople wanting to deepen their own spiritual understanding by learning from voices that had earned their credibility in the pulpit.

Reading through a collection like this one helps you understand what separates memorable preaching from forgettable preaching:

1. Clarity of purpose: Each sermon knows what it’s trying to accomplish
2. Connection to the listener: The preacher speaks to actual human concerns, not abstractions
3. Memorable language: When a line sticks with you, it’s usually because it’s been crafted with care
4. Spiritual conviction: You can sense the preacher actually believes what they’re saying

The legacy of this book is quiet but solid. It’s the kind of resource that preachers pulled from their shelves year after year, marking up pages and borrowing ideas for their own pulpits. It’s been cited in pastoral training and used by people trying to understand what effective religious communication looks like.

What’s worth noting is that this collection represents a specific tradition and moment. These were preachers working within evangelical Christianity, speaking to congregations with particular theological commitments. But the principles of effective communication—how to tell a story, how to make an argument, how to move people emotionally while respecting their intelligence—those are universal skills. Whether you’re coming to this book as someone of faith looking to deepen your spiritual life or as a student of communication curious about rhetoric and persuasion, there’s something here to learn.

The book also captures something important about how knowledge was shared in pre-internet church culture. When you wanted to learn from the best preachers, you couldn’t just pull up a YouTube video. You had to seek out books like this, order them through Baptist Book Stores, and sit with the text. That deliberate engagement meant people actually thought more carefully about what they were reading.

If you’re interested in preaching, religious communication, or just how language works to move people, Award Winning Sermons offers genuine value. It’s a window into a tradition of public speaking that prioritizes substance alongside style, and it shows you what preachers who earned recognition for their work actually sounded like. That’s something worth experiencing.