In the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Open Secrets captures the friendships, rivalries, and rumors of small-town life by chronicling the lives of the citizens of a small Midwestern community through the eyes of a young minister. Fresh out of divinity school and bursting with enthusiasm, Richard Lischer found himself assigned to a small conservative church in an economically depressed town in southern Illinois. It's an awkward marriage at best--a young man with a Ph.D. in theology, full of ideas and ambitions, determined to improve his parish and bring it into the twenty-first...
In the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Open Secrets captures the friendships, rivalries, and rumors of small-town life by chronicling the lives ...
This unique volume draws on the wisdom of Christian thinkers and preachers from across the ages to present a warm and informative collection of insights on the art of preaching. Gathering the writing of figures as diverse as Augustine, John Chrysostom, Jonathan Edwards, Gardner C. Taylor, and Barbara Brown Taylor, The Company of Preachers provides experienced advice on effective preaching, direct from the pens of those who have known it best. The book is arranged in seven divisions, each covering a central component of the preaching task. Editor Richard Lischer, himself a...
This unique volume draws on the wisdom of Christian thinkers and preachers from across the ages to present a warm and informative collection of insigh...
After the horrors and violence of the twentieth century, words can seem futile. In this reflection on the place of preaching today, Richard Lischer recognizes that our mass-communication culture is exhausted by words. Facing up to language's disappointments and dead ends, he opens a path to its true end.
With chapters on vocation, interpretation, narration, and reconciliation, The End of Words shows how faithful reading of Scripture rather than flashy performance paves the way for effective preaching; Lischer challenges conventional storytelling with a deeper and more...
After the horrors and violence of the twentieth century, words can seem futile. In this reflection on the place of preaching today, Richard Lischer re...
Today it seems extraordinary that a nation the size of the United States could have been so profoundly affected by the minister of a little Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. But at a turning point in American history, Martin Luther King, Jr., had an incalculable effect on the fabric of daily life and the laws of the nation. As no other preacher in living memory and no politician since Lincoln, he transposed the themes of love, suffering, deliverance, and justice from the sacred shelter of the pulpit into the arena of public policy. He was the last great religious reformer in America. How...
Today it seems extraordinary that a nation the size of the United States could have been so profoundly affected by the minister of a little Baptist ch...
Description: Joseph A. Sittler (1904-1987) was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, distinguished for his pioneering work in ecology and for his preeminence as a preacher. He gave both the Beecher Lectures at Yale and the Noble Lectures at Harvard. As the "preacher's theologian," Sittler approached the interpretation of Scripture with a clear understanding of current critical scholarship, but also in the freedom of the gospel at the center of Scripture and with the humility of a theologian of the cross. In following the trajectory of the text into the preaching...
Description: Joseph A. Sittler (1904-1987) was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, distinguished for his pioneering work...
Stations of the Heart is a father's heartbreaking and hopeful story about his beloved son, in which a young man teaches his family "a new way to die" with wit, candor, and grace.
As the book opens, Richard Lischer's son, Adam, calls to tell his father, a professor of divinity at Duke University, that his cancer has returned. Adam is a charismatic young man with a promising law career, and that his wife is pregnant with their first child makes the disease's return all the more devastating. Despite the cruel course of the illness, Adam's growing weakness evokes in him a remarkable...
Stations of the Heart is a father's heartbreaking and hopeful story about his beloved son, in which a young man teaches his family "a new wa...
Parables make up one-third of Jesus' speech in the New Testament. In this volume, Richard Lischer provides an expert guide to these parables and proposes an important distinction between reading and interpreting the parables.
Emphasizing the importance of reading the parables versus interpreting them, Lischer asserts that reading offers a kind of breathing space to explore historical, literary, theological, and socio-political dimensions of the parables and their various meanings, whereas interpreting implies an expert and critical position that must be defended.
In this...
Parables make up one-third of Jesus' speech in the New Testament. In this volume, Richard Lischer provides an expert guide to these parables and pr...
