This book includes all the texts from Troeger's prior collaborations and other prayers and poems which he has written. There are 134 texts (poems, prayers, etc.) in all, grouped by images and patterns of association: Borrowed Light, Hidden Water, Wind and Flame, Melody Alone, A Spendthrift Lover, A Single Unmatched Stone, Fragmentary Prayers, and Disturbance of the Solid Ground. Endnotes and indices according to meter, theme and image, scripture, and first lines will aid clergy, church musicians, liturgists, and composers. An afterword provides further material for the creative process by...

This book was designed to help women religious professionals provide essential ministries for congregations.

Written for preaching women, this book builds confidence for women in the pulpit by looking at issues of psychology and communication. It teaches women how to find their voice and their personal integrity as professional servants of God. This book is a resource for spiritual/psychological self-discipline and will most definitely help women ministers clarify their identities and name their skills.

In the parable that begins this book, a large chunk has fallen out of the roof of a historic church, exactly where an imposing mosaic of God enthroned in heaven used to reside. The members of the church, unable to agree on how to repair the roof or what image to put there, now worship under a God-shaped hole, trying to come to grips with the loss of old certitudes and the new challenges they face.

The church today faces exactly the same problem, argues Thomas Troeger. We live in a fragmented society, and the church reflects that fragmentation. We, too, sit under the "God-shaped...

In The Hum: Call and Response in African Preaching, Evans E. Crawford, with Thomas H. Troeger, relates his analysis of African American folk preaching by relying upon an indigenous scheme for evaluation. The call/response tension in black preaching (derived from a West African tradition) is what drives the musicality of speech in black churches. Crawford refers to this musicality as "hum thoughts" and one can imagine the choir responding with a low rumbling hum to the musical intonations of a motivated preacher.

Key features: a new volume in the Abingdon Preacher's Library,...

Troeger shares the secrets of capturing the imaginative spirit through exploration of the creative use of sight, sound, touch, and taste that leads to new visions for truth-telling and revelation in the sermon.

Here is the remedy for trite, boring sermons Thomas H. Troeger shows how to breathe fresh life into your sermons by harnessing your imaginative powers in a new way. In scores of dynamic workshops, Troeger has shown preachers and seminarians how to create powerful sermons by seizing moments when the heart and mind catch fire. Now, in Imagining a Sermon, Troeger...

A highly creative, entertaining, and thought-provoking way to examine contemporary preaching styles. In this contemporary parable--set in a homiletics classroom--two preachers from a wide diversity of backgrounds preach, debate, and reflect on critical issues facing today's preacher.

Too often we evaluate worship as a matter of taste without examining the presuppositions that inform worship in a given congregation. The authors help church leaders see that worship is a public event, which must be continually renewed and revitalized. They identify sources of conflict in worship, provide creative approaches to resolving these conflicts, and examine five road maps for revitalized worship.

Become a more effective preacher by understanding the multiple intelligences and learning styles present in your congregation.

Most preachers experience the conundrum of reaching some people in the congregation, and not others. Is this problem just a matter of some folks being "tuned in" to the gospel, while others aren't? Probably not, say Thomas H. Troeger and H. Edward Everding, Jr. Instead, it results from the diverse intelligences and learning styles represented throughout the congregation. A great deal of research in recent years has demonstrated that people receive...

Considering the lack of resources that exists in the study of women's preaching, this book makes a very significant contribution to the development of homiletics because it joins together the history of women preachers with theological reflection. It is the author's hope that this book will provide a broader and deeper basis for the theology of preaching as well as practical ways in which preachers can improve their own preaching by looking at a woman's perspective. Kim gives a detailed account of women preachers from ancient times until the present--from women of the Western and Eastern...

This book explores an issue at the nerve of the long term health of all churches: how godly wonder can be reborn through renewed attention to the place of beauty in preaching and worship.

The book opens with an exploration of the theological and cultural difficulties of defining beauty. It traces the church's historical ambivalence about beauty and art and describes how, in our own day, the concept of beauty has been commercialized and degraded. Troeger develops a theologically informed aesthetic that provides a counter-cultural vision of beauty flowing from the love of God.

The book...