Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Christian Ministry - Preaching

Throughout the modern period, history has been the dominant lens through which preachers have viewed the biblical text. The historical-critical method--with its emphasis on the context of a scriptural text's origins--has been the principal, or sole, tool with which preachers have approached the question of the text's meaning. Preachers have been in danger of losing the Bible as revelation and with that losing the rich varieties of God-centered meanings that our ancient forebears understood were the purpose of Scripture. They devised multiple 'lenses' through which the preacher was enabled...

Collaboration is one of the best ways to make a difference when leading a congregation. Now John S. McClure shows how collaborative preaching is the best way to inspire and guide a congregation.

Most preachers use a sovereign leader-centered style or an inductive (consultative) style of preaching. John McClure shows why these styles are sometimes manipulative and ineffective: they do not take seriously the spiritual wisdom and tested experience that are present in God's people - the laity. In collaborative preaching, a revolving, expanding roundtable is established, where a pastor...

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...

Helpful and insightful strategies for preaching from the writings of Paul.

Few biblical figures are more compelling to preachers than the apostle Paul. The story of his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus is a favorite example of the way that God turns lives around. His writings contain the earliest witness we have to the Christian gospel. His message of God's offer of grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is deeply appealing. So why is it that when it comes time to choose a text for this Sunday's sermon, preachers so often choose something other than...

White Soul examines the social, political, and religious foundations of country music as the soul music of white, working-class Americans.

Country music gives voice to an economically battered subculture of hard-living and hard-working people who find self-expression in the music of honky-tonks and heartaches. It celebrates the "wild side of life" as a form of populist anarchism and escapist festivity. This unusual medley of sociology, theology, and country music history is also a compelling critique of the elitism of "good taste" in the dominant culture.

Tex...

This book is designed to help preachers find and use the riches of the Psalms for preaching.

The authors address the perception that the Psalms often go neglected in preparing for one of the central acts of worship: preaching. McCann and Howell demonstrate that the Psalms offer the preacher broad, rich possibilities for the congregation's engagement with the Scripture. Each chapter concludes with a brief sample.

Everyone understands human pain. But many Christians have difficulty comprehending God's pain, especially God's pain in the death of Christ. Is it atonement or child abuse? To speak of God in pain, says Barbara Brown Taylor, is not only to address the biblical stories of Christ's suffering and death, but also to proclaim the God who is present in our pain. This volume of teaching sermons on suffering presents different approaches to the problem of God in pain. In each sermon, Taylor speaks with sensitivity and profound insight as she addresses pain and both its human and divine impact....

Careful biblical interpretation; insights into contemporary life; polished delivery; humorous anecdotes; these are the building blocks of preaching that genuinely reach people. Right? Wrong, says Ellsworth Kalas. We have all encountered preachers who seem to know all the fine points of exegesis and inflection, yet whose sermons leave us surprisingly unmoved, aware that we were in the presence of good speaking, but not great preaching.

The difference, Kalas reminds us, lies in that hard-to-describe, yet essential quality known as soul. Soul is the collection of those perspectives...

For most people, rhetoric is a dubious term at best. Whenever they see the word, they expect it to be preceded by something like "empty" or "mere." In other words, in the common understanding rhetoric is what happens when people want their hearers to believe them and they don't care whether what they say is right or wrong, true or false.

The ancient practice of rhetoric, however, wasn't about slick speech designed to convince or persuade; it was about connecting with one's hearers. It was the recognition that, not only what one says, but also who one is, where one is speaking, and...

Many resources have been written to offer assistance in exploring and understanding the lectionary texts for the purpose of preaching. However, few have sought to provide this kind of preaching commentary on texts that do not follow the lectionary's grouping. For those whose preaching does not customarily follow the lectionary, and for those who depart from the lectionary text during certain periods of the year, little guidance has been offered for how to select, and preach on, important biblical texts.

The Ten Commandments: A Preaching Commentary, the first book in The...

Alyce McKenzie reminds us that this is a new flurry of an old activity: the search for wisdom, for help in finding the principles that can guide our lives and shape our...