Review of “Welcoming Addresses for Various Occasions” by Ruby Smith

Score: 85/100 (8.5 out of 10)

Welcoming Addresses for Various Occasions is a spirited and inspiring collection of church sermons, welcoming speeches, addresses, and even a few poems by Ruby Smith!

We were pleasantly surprised by this book. While it doesn't wow you with its presentation (including a rather bland interior and exterior design) or with its niche audience, it may wow you with some of its content.

There are a lot of beautiful, powerful, and inspiring passages in this relatively short and condensed book. One Bible story that repeatedly gets mentioned and referenced is the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob and Rachel who gained the ire and jealousy of his brothers who tore his robe of many colors, threw him in a pit, and sold him into slavery in Egypt. There in Egypt, God was able to use Joseph—making him the Pharaoh's second-in-command, putting him in charge of the region's very lifeblood: its food supply. This created an interesting and awkward situation in which the brothers who betrayed Joseph—whom they initially fail to recognize—came to him for aid. Also wrapped up in Joseph's tale (and mentioned in Ruby Smith's book) is how Joseph was wrongfully prosecuted and unfairly treated after being accused of relations with Potiphar's wife.

Joseph's story, which again is referenced multiple times in these sermons/speeches, serves as an example of how God is with us and can use us even in the darkest of times and in the darkest of situations. All things work together for the glory of God. In fact, they could even be viewed as opportunities for God and his people to do God's work—to do his will the same way that Joseph was put in place to interpret Pharaoh's dreams and become a patriarch of the Christian and Jewish faiths.

At one point in this book, the speaker/narrator talks about how they were diagnosed with cancer. However, rather than this destroying and devastating their faith, it actually brought them closer to God as they now fervently prayed, reached out and was ministered to by a pastor, and made them value/appreciate every moment under the Lord's sky.

Here are some of our favorite passages from this book:

“Light also attracts bugs”

This means that the devil and demons are always waiting to pounce on your happiness, success, and relationship with God. When they see you thriving, they see opportunities to make you stumble, fall, and doubt/lose your faith. Cling to that faith no matter what and don't play into the devil's game. This is also analogous to the people who are wanting you to fail. Don't listen to them and don't let them win. They are crabs in a bucket trying to drag you back down into it.

“Prepare in Hebrew means to turn your head”

“The purpose of a sermon is to be preached. The purpose of a car is to be driven for transportation. The purpose of a piano is to be played. The purpose of going to school is to get an education. The purpose of all of us as members of [insert church name here[SIC] is to help carry out the vision that God gave to our Pastors[SIC].”

“God sees us as victors not victims”

There's a lesson about how we all say we want to upgrade to the next network (like 4G or 5G), but we should be wanting to upgrade to God's network: the For God Network. On that note, another lesson talks about how we have an opportunity to connect with the author of the Bible and the universe every day—a reminder to pray and nurture our invaluable relationship with God.

Now, there are a few things that hold this book back. We talked briefly about the exterior and interior design. Well, let's get into it. The exterior design of this book features the cover on both the front and back of it. There is no product/book description other than the title itself. In fact, if you look it up on Barnes & Noble, there doesn't appear to be a product description. This really hinders and hurts the marketability and accessibility of this book. There's also the issue that the cover itself features a low-resolution image of the author on top of a high-resolution image of an impressive mountain scene. In other words, it doesn't appear to be professionally-designed. It's ok for a church pamphlet, but leaves a lot to be desired in the literary world.

The same can be said for the editing and interior design of the book. First of all, the formatting itself appears to have margins that are too large for the purpose this book was intended for: giving speeches. When giving speeches, you want all of the words to be as condensed as possible so that your head and eyes don't need to shift too much while speaking and keeping track of where you are in a presentation. Another issue that the margins create is that the text gets too close to the median/center/spine of the book. That means that the spine will warp or obscure the text when you flip from page to page. You can try pre-bending the pages to make it easier, but this would take extra prep time. This book is supposed to help you prep, not make it more challenging. Our recommendation is to just have smaller margins.

Another issue with this book is that the editing leaves something to be desired. Now, it's not terrible, but we did catch some errors that any proofreader could've caught.

For example, “Lord” is capitalized sometimes but not other times.

On page 12, the letters “ng” just randomly appear for no reason near the bottom next to the words “play” and “directed.”

On page 18, the formatting is faulty as numerous points including between the words “the couple” and “petitioned.” The same problem occurs between “let us know” and “that God stands.” A third incident occurs between “Book of” and “Hebrews.”

On page 21, there's a random extra “D” before the word “detaining.” There also appears to be a word or phrase missing before the word “will” and after the word “fear” on that same page.

You may have also noticed that one of our favorite passages from the book had a few errors (indicated by [SIC]):

“The purpose of a sermon is to be preached. The purpose of a car is to be driven for transportation. The purpose of a piano is to be played. The purpose of going to school is to get an education. The purpose of all of us as members of [insert church name here[SIC] is to help carry out the vision that God gave to our Pastors[SIC].”

Here, there's a missing end-bracket after “here” and “Pastors” is capitalized despite it not being a proper noun.

However, it's easy to overlook these problems and just be impressed by the addresses themselves.

A lot of them have great rhythm, pacing, and beat. A lot of them are alliterative or use anaphora (repetition of a beginning sound/phrase/word). For example,

“In this house” is repeated brilliantly throughout page 11.

“A view into the faith mirror” is repeated nicely throughout page 12.

Lastly, the poems by the author are actually quite good. The last one compares different roles in our faith life to different roles/aspects of an education institution.

If you work for a church and need some addresses, this may be a good resource.

Check it out on Barnes & Noble!