Pastors often feel bombarded with an array of options for how to implement their craft. In this helpful book, Robert Reid argues that pastors will be more faithful and effective in their preaching when they understand exactly what they are trying to accomplish when they enter the pulpit. Do they want to encourage? Offer wisdom? Persuade folks to take up a particular course of action? Prophetically criticize the church or society? Reid contends that preachers tend to generally adopt one of four possible "voices" for their preaching: teaching, encouraging, sage, or testifying. He shows how these four voices differ, helps pastors understand which voice is predominantly theirs, and helps them sharpen the appropriate preaching skills. Sample sermons of each type of voice are included.
Where have all the prophets gone? And why do preachers seem to shy away from prophetic witness? Astute preacher Leonora Tisdale considers these vexing questions while providing guidance and encouragement to pastors who want to recommit themselves to the task of prophetic witness. With a keen sensitivity to pastoral contexts, Tisdale's work is full of helpful suggestions and examples to help pastors structure and preach prophetic sermons, considered by many to be one of the most difficult tasks pastors are called to undertake.
Brian Blount and Gary Charles team up to introduce us anew to Mark's Gospel. Reinterpreting Mark through sermons preached out of very different socio-cultural contexts, Blount draws parallels between Mark's message and the African American church's heritage of slavery and oppression while Charles wrestles with making the Gospel relevant to well-educated white suburbanites. Each chapter begins with an exegetical study and sermon by one author. Then, the other preacher responds from his own context, offering a different view of the text.
Few debates divide the contemporary church more than the issue of call. The question of who can be called to preach segregates denominations, divides people within churches, and undermines its public witness. Yet, curiously little homiletic attention has been paid to the issue of call. Because the practice of call has not been subjected to critical inquiry, it has taken on power. Power lies hidden in the crevices of the question of who can be called to preach; power lies in the institutional narrative and approved stories of call; power lies in the discordant debates, equally in the stifling silence. Claiming the Call to Preach critically examines the dominant historical narrative that overtly or covertly has exercised its power to keep women from preaching. Donna Giver-Johnston here recovers the histories of four notable female preaching pioneers who affected change in the religious landscape of nineteenth-century America: Jarena Lee, Frances Willard, Louisa Woosley, and Florence Spearing Randolph. These women, diverse in religion, race, class, and culture each told their story of call in distinctive ways that articulated strong and effective rhetorical arguments for ecclesiastical sanction to give them a place in the pulpit. Recovering their rhetorical witness helps to fill in the gaps in the history of preaching in America, contribute to research and pedagogies in the field of homiletics, and provide today's women--and all candidates for ministry--with different theological models and narrative strategies by which to effectively interpret and claim their calls to preach. These women who spoke truth to power help us reimagine a church today that no longer questions the legitimacy of one's call to preach, but endorses previously silenced voices, and is therefore strengthened by women's voices from the pulpit.
Talking about God in Practice details the challenges and complexities of real theological conversations with practitioners, whilst providing an example of appropriate process, and a model of theological understanding by which to negotiate these complexities fruitfully.
Leading homiletician Jared Alcántara offers a practice-centered, collaborative, technologically innovative, next-generation introductory preaching textbook. The book breaks new ground by adopting a practice-based approach to teaching preaching and by using innovative technological delivery to enhance the educational experience of learners. Alcántara introduces the basics of Christian preaching and emphasizes the skills preachers must cultivate throughout their lives. He shows that preachers can learn effective preaching by paying keen attention to five key competencies: conviction, context, clarity, concreteness, and creativity. Featuring the perspectives of a diverse team of collaborators, The Practices of Christian Preaching is designed to prepare effective communicators for the church's multicultural future. Call-outs in the book direct readers to a companion website for further information or practice. The online resources include audio and video sermons, video responses from the author, and contributions from collaborators, enabling Alcántara to coach students by showing them instead of just telling them. A Spanish language edition is also available.
Darrell Johnson's book is for any pastor or student who wants to cultivate a deeper pulpit approach, one that participates in the transforming mystery of God working through our less-than-perfect proclamation. Here is a solid foundation for preaching the good news as if God was living, Jesus was resurrected and the Holy Spirit was faithfully at work among us.
Now, in the West, such apostasy as deep and wide as was the past works of revival has now set in. There surely never has been in the history of redemption such a time as this. Humanity needs gospel workers—men mighty in the scriptures and filled with the Holy Ghost—to take the good news of the gospel again to the multitudes. So You Want to Be a Street Preacher offers advice for men looking to fill this role, those who believe they have a gift to preach God’s Word and desire to reach the lost of this world. Author Jimmy Hamilton, a.k.a. the Street Preacher, writes in the hope that God will raise up an army of street preachers throughout the world and send them into cities, towns, and villages to herald Christ once again. In this way, God will be glorified, Christ lifted up, and the church gathered in from the four corners of the earth. This guide for young men hoping to become street preachers seeks to take them with a heaven-sent love to rescue the perishing, care for the dying, and snatch them from sin and the grave.
The McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry is an electronic and print journal that seeks to provide pastors, educators, and interested lay persons with the fruits of theological, biblical, and professional studies in an accessible form. Published by McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, it continues the heritage of scholarly inquiry and theological dialogue represented by the College's previous print publications: the Theological Bulletin, Theodolite, and the McMaster Journal of Theology.
