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Based on the Revised Common Lectionary and broadly ecumenical, this addition to the Just In Time! series provides: Sitting with the Text: Scripture commentary for each of the three lectionary years; Worship and Preaching Themes; Creating the Environment: ideas for decorating and preparing the worship space; Shaping the Worship Service: prayers, liturgies, dramas, music suggestions; Scripture Index; and more. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, Lenten Services aids the reader in planning and implementing transformative worship services throughout the Lenten journey.
What difference does the virtue of patience make for our ability to engage deeply in the practice of patience? And how does patience help us grasp the something more that is at the heart of preaching excellence? Learning to Speak of God argues that the virtue of patience is vital to our faithful and deep preaching practice; that patience is a homiletical virtue. In doing so, this volume asks us to consider the role of character in preaching and the work of specific virtues as we go about our preaching practice. Along the way, it names the importance of patience as a long-acknowledged Christian virtue and considers anew how this virtue shapes and empowers the practice of those who desire to preach in ways that participate in God’s transforming work. For those who study, practice, or care about preaching, this volume identifies how any notion of what it means to preach well calls for those whose practice is infused with the virtue of patience.
Step into the pulpit in a small membership church, and you’ll sometimes find your fair share of challenges, but you’ll almost always find more than your share of blessings as well. Those blessings, and the chance for authentic, life-transforming preaching, are what preaching in the small membership church are all about. Lewis Parks knows those blessings well. For nearly 40 years he has preached in small membership churches and taught others who serve in them. In this book he lays out the distinct roles that preaching in the small membership church calls on us to fill, and offers down-to-earth, substantive guidance on how to be the best preacher you can be in these most numerous, and most important, outposts of Christ’s church.
Historically, people who have risen to the occasion to speak of faith for their generation have been keenly aware of their own limitations-whether Moses, who was slow of speech, or Isaiah, who was concerned that he spoke with unclean lips. The question both Moses and Isaiah seem to be asking is, who am I to speak for God? And we wonder in turn, was it they who spoke, or God who spoke through them? These biblical images carry the weight of the question raised by the essays in this volume. How is preaching both the work of God and yet also a function of the individual's own person and identity? How is the preacher to conceive the identity he or she assumes when proclaiming the Word of God? Som...
With its relentless insistence that there is no reality beyond that which we construct, postmodern thought questions the presuppositions of many disciplines, including homiletics. Offering a lively description of the postmodern worldview and its implications for Christian faith, Confessing Jesus Christ by David Lose teaches preachers how to rise to the challenges posed by our postmodern world. Few if any books on preaching offer such a comprehensive investigation of postmodern thought or yield such a wealth of insights for relevant Christian proclamation. Significantly, Lose sees postmodernism not primarily as an obstacle to the church but as an opportunity for it to stand once again on faith alone rather than on attempts to prove the faith. According to Lose, preaching that seeks to be both faithful to the Christian tradition and responsive to our pluralistic, postmodern context is best understood as the public practice of confessing faith in Jesus Christ. He explores the practical implications of a confessional homiletic for preaching and also provides concrete methods for preparing sermons that meaningfully bridge biblical texts and contemporary congregations.
This volume develops an approach to preaching that brings together two important forces. One is process theology and the other is a homiletic of conversation based on mutual critical correlation. In this approach, the preacher does not unilaterally announce the Word of God but is the leader of an exciting conversation involving the biblical text, process theology, the congregation, and voices from the larger world. The preacher seeks to help the congregation identify God's invitations towards inclusive well-being and to imagine how to respond in ways that are consistent with those invitations, that promote inclusive well-being. The book begins with a crisp and clear summary of the worldview ...
This thorough and detailed revision of The Witness of Preaching is even clearer and more helpful than the first edition. Long has updated the language, expanded the key chapter on biblical exegesis, and included more examples of sermon forms, illustrations, and conclusions. He continues to critically engage the best thinkers in the field of homiletics, bringing into the conversation both important new voices and the latest works of those who appeared in the first edition. In addition, he addresses some of the new forces at work, such as the use of video clips and PowerPoint presentations in sermons.
The point of the Revised Common Lectionary is to allow God’s people to encounter the meaning of Scripture through the Word read and proclaimed. Yet too many lectionary resources fail to help in that task. In fact, they often confront the preacher with a choice between poor options: in-depth commentary focused too heavily on the historical world of the text; or shallow suggestions for “life applications” that have too little to do with the real world. Christians are called to an engagement with the deep meaning of Scripture; preachers are called to help them do that. But where can they turn for resources that will make this possible? The Abingdon Theological Companion to the Lectionary ...
John McClure'sPreaching Wordshighlights 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.