article_snippet: Rev. Fred Craddock, the pulpit giant who was "like no other
article_snippet: Fred Craddock was a national treasure and a devoted servant of his church and Jesus Christ.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock impact on preaching -- in terms both of scholarship and practice -- is incalculable," said the Rev. Thomas Long, a friend and a pastor at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.
article_snippet: Preachers studied classic Craddock sermons such as "Have You Heard John Preach?" and "Grace and Disgrace," much like aspiring jazz musicians listened to saxophonist John Coltrane and amateur boxers studied tapes of Sugar Ray Robinson -- for clues to greatness and inspiration.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock elevated preaching to an art.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock was often called a preaching genius.
article_snippet: Rather than deliver a sermon like a lecture -- an intro, three main points and a conclusion -- Fred Craddock developed an "inductive" conversational style of preaching.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock sermons unfolded like a short story -- there was foreshadowing, plot twists, dialogue; language of startling beauty and surprise endings.
article_snippet: The way Fred Craddock ended His sermons was as memorable as what Fred Craddock said.
article_snippet: The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, an author and world-renowned preacher, once said of Fred Craddock: "Fred Craddock spoke of Kierkegaard as easily as Fred Craddock spoke of the Indianapolis 500.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock quoted Kafka as helpfully as Corinthians... but Fred Craddock was also someone who noticed a lot about ordinary human life on earth.
article_snippet: " Craddock, who taught preaching at  the Candler School of Theology until Fred Craddock retirement, was selected as one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world in a poll of 341 seminary professors and editors of religious periodicals in 1996.
article_snippet: Fred Craddock was just as impressive outside the pulpit.
highlights_snippet: Fred Craddock revolutionized art of preaching .
  
highlights_snippet: Fred Craddock was selected as one of the world's best preachers .
  