Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christian Ministry - Preaching

Seventy-five years ago, renowned preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick asked in Harper's Magazine, "what's the matter with preaching?" Fosdick's question is even more relevant today, as both pastors and laity acknowledge the need for improvement in Sunday morning's sermons. And who better for pastors and students to learn from than those who already do it well? The contributors to this book are a some of the best and most thoughtful preachers in the church and classroom today. In their essays, they assess the state of preaching today, identify a variety of issues that challenge effective...

Encapsulating years of experience integrating critical theological thinking with the preaching task, Claiming Theology in the Pulpit will be a welcomed resource to both preachers and students. Through the use of a theological profile, Burton Cooper and John McClure help preachers become more aware of not only the broad theological traditions of the church but of their own particular theological appropriations. Part One lays out the eight categories of the theological profile, offering a worksheet for readers to identify in summary fashion their own theological position. Part Two...

Pastors face a perennial challenge in deciding how to treat special days in the calendar. For days marked in the church year, the challenge is how to speak a fresh word about a familiar theme or story. For days marked in the civil calendar, the challenge is to discern within secular celebrations appropriate connections with the Christian gospel. In Preaching the Calendar, masterful preacher J. Ellsworth Kalas discusses the importance of embracing holidays and special days as occasions when sermons can enlarge and deepen spiritual yearnings. His words of wisdom demonstrate how this...

The Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching is the most comprehensive reference work on preaching available in the English language. No other book so richly combines concerns for the practice of preaching with theological themes and historical tradition. Its scope ranges from the technical tasks of sermon preparation to thoughtful essays on such topics as narrative preaching, African American preaching, style, and prophetic preaching, as well as a host of issues that are shaping and challenging the contemporary pulpit. Also included are essays that explore the life and work of the...

Preaching is an art, J. Barrie Shepherd argues, and the sermon is an art form, an exercise in creativity and imagination. But all too often preaching suffers from a lack of imagination and a loss of the joy and wonder that attracted the crowds to Jesus' words two thousand years ago. In this book, based on his 2003 Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, Shepherd hopes to encourage the preacher toward a more creative vision for the sermon. His approach is spontaneous, eclectic, intuitive, and daring. Shepherd's purpose is to encourage the preacher to think of life as filled with God's...

The Four Codes of Preaching, John McClure's first book-length treatment of homiletical theory, is a sophisticated and, at times, controversial contribution to the field of homiletics.

Preaching, says professor and author O. Wesley Allen Jr., should be considered as a form of conversation. The church, after all, is a community of conversation that exists in part to interpret God's purposes for the world and to participate in those purposes. The idea of the sermon as a conversation, then, is not simply a style or form of preaching but an integral expression of the nature and purpose of the church.

Pastors are constantly in search of ways to connect to their parishioners through their sermons, and one of the most effective ways to do this is through the use of contemporary movies. InHearing a Film, Seeing a Sermon, New Testament scholar and pastor Timothy Cargal teaches pastors some of the basics of interpreting films so that they can integrate insights about popular films into their preaching. He explains how people see and think about movies and then demonstrates for pastors how this connects with the way parishioners comprehend Scripture and theology. In addition, he offers...

In this insightful study, James Earl Massey offers an expanded version of the Twelfth Annual William E. Conger, Jr. Lectures on Biblical Preaching that he delivered at Beeson Divinity School in February 2004. Through a unique collection of informative lectures and illustrative sermons, the highly esteemed teacher and preacher considers four dimensions of the preacher as steward of the gospel story. Pastors will warmly welcome this book as it provides them with both practical guidance and insight about their identity as preachers.

Every week churches must address issues related to stewardship. With deep pastoral sensitivities and solid biblical knowledge, veteran pastor and author David Mosser draws one Scripture passage from each week in the three-year lectionary cycle to provide a brief reflection on how that passage can be used to teach and preach about stewardship. Mosser's inspirational and motivational reflections offer a clear connection between the lectionary Scripture passage and the matters of stewardship. The reflections offered here address a variety of issues related to stewardship, making this book an...

John McClure's Preaching Words highlights the most important ideas in homiletics and preaching, offering short explanations of these ideas, what scholars of preaching are saying about them, and how they can help in today's preaching. Topics range from elements of the sermon (introduction, body, and conclusion) to aspects of delivery, types of preaching in different Christian traditions, and theories of preaching.

Mike Graves begins this book with the question "If preaching is intended to enliven the church, why is it killing so many ministers?" His answer? Because preaching has become divorced from the vitality and diversity of the preacher's daily life. He invites preachers to discover how preaching can be renewing rather than draining.

Renowned and beloved Psalms scholar James Luther Mays shares in this book some of his most influential ideas about the Psalms and shows the reader how this rich Old Testament poetry can be taught and preached in the church. The book's editors, Patrick Miller and Gene Tucker, have carefully brought together Mays's best insights into the meaning of the Psalms and shown us in his sermons how a master with a love for the church handles these beautiful texts.

In this third and concluding volume of their lectionary commentary collection (Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews and Preaching the Letters without Dismissing the Law), Ronald Allen and Clark Williamson encourage the church and its preachers to rediscover the Old Testament as a vibrant wellspring of Christian faith and life. Preachers often neglect the Old Testament, misrepresent it, or regard its theological content as superseded by Jesus and the New Testament, Allen and Williamson claim. The authors help preachers avoid these traps by explaining how a text was...

Conflict stories appear throughout the Synoptic Gospels, and although they are familiar and dramatic, the stories are particularly challenging for pastors to interpret and teach. In this book, David Buttrick delves into each conflict story, analyzing the particular controversy at hand and highlighting problems that these passages pose for preachers--including anti-Jewish attitudes in the text. As he moves through each story, he helps readers correct long-standing biases, shows how many of these controversies are still with us, and provides sample sermons to demonstrate how these stories...

An Inclusive Language Lectionary is a responsible attempt to represent the biblical writings in an inclusive manner. This volume includes litergical texts for use in lectionary year B.

Should the pulpit be used as a place to address issues of congressional conflict? After first examining the nature of conflict within human groups, William H. Willimon discusses how to prepare sermons on controversial subjects, suggesting ways to use the biblical text to examine divisive issues. He comments on the importance of style and delivery tone when dealing with difficult topics.

How can a sermon be shaped so that it conveys the reality of Scripture? In this innovative work seven homileticians explore new ways of bringing to life the power and drama of God's word in Scripture.

In addition to editor Don M. Wardlaw, contributors include Ronald J. Allen, William J. Carl III, Thomas G. Long, Charles Rice, Gardner Taylor, and Thomas H. Troeger.