Preaching is not as simple as it may appear. The preacher today is confronted with a dizzying array of homiletic methods and approaches, each holding important insights into how to proclaim the Good News. While pastors wish to learn from these different ways of preaching, they often do not know where to begin (Who are the best representatives of a given approach? How do the different methods relate to one another? How has the preaching scene changed in recent years?). In The Web of Preaching, Richard Eslinger addresses these and other questions about contemporary approaches to...

Preaching is in crisis. Why? Because the traditional, conceptual approach no longer works, says Richard L. Eslinger. It fails to capture the interest of listeners and is not sufficiently Scripture-based. The time has come to listen to new voices, new methods. And that is what A New Hearing provides.

Eslinger offers as "living options" the work of five preeminent--though quite different--preachers who represent the "cutting edge" of preaching in the 1980s: Charles Rice and the storytelling method; Henry Mitchell and the black narrative method; Eugene Lowry, who bridges the...