A History of Preaching brings together narrative history and primary sources to provide the most comprehensive guide available to the story of the church's ministry of proclamation. Bringing together an impressive array of familiar and lesser-known figures, Edwards paints a detailed, compelling picture of what it has meant to preach the gospel. Pastors, scholars, and students of homiletics will find here many opportunities to enrich their understanding and practice of preaching. Ecumenical in scope, fair-minded in presentation, appreciative of the contributions that all the branches of the church have made to the story of what it means to develop, deliver, and listen to a sermon, A History of Preaching will be the definitive resource for anyone who wishes to preach or to understand preaching's role in living out the gospel. Volume 2 contains primary source material on preaching drawn from the entire scope of the church's twenty centuries. The author has written an introduction to each selection, placing it in its historical context and pointing to its particular contribution. Each chapter in Volume 2 is geared to its companion chapter in Volume 1's narrative history. Volume 1, available separately as 9781501833779, contains Edwards's magisterial retelling of the story of Christian preaching's development from its Hellenistic and Jewish roots in the New Testament, through the late-twentieth century's discontent with outdated forms and emphasis on new modes of preaching such as narrative. Along the way the author introduces us to the complexities and contributions of preachers, both with whom we are already acquainted, and to whom we will be introduced here for the first time. Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Rauschenbusch, Barth; all of their distinctive contributions receive careful attention. Yet lesser-known figures and developments also appear, from the ninth-century reform of preaching championed by Hrabanus Maurus, to the reference books developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the mendicant orders to assist their members' preaching, to Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands, preachers of the eighteenth-century Welsh revival, to Helen Kenyon, speaking as a layperson at the 1950 Yale Beecher lectures about the view of preaching from the pew. "...'This work is expected to be the standard text on preaching for the next 30 years,' says Ann K. Riggs, who staffs the NCC's Faith and Order Commission. Author Edwards, former professor of preaching at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, is co-moderator of the commission, which studies church-uniting and church-dividing issues. 'A History of Preaching is ecumenical in scope and will be relevant in all our churches; we all participate in this field,' says Riggs...." from EcuLink, Number 65, Winter 2004-2005 published by the National Council of Churches

First published 1982 in the U.K. by Hodder and Stoughton, London, under the title "I Believe in Preaching."

A fusion of biblical hermeneutics and homiletics, this thorough and well-researched book offers a holistic contemporary approach to the interpretation and preaching of biblical texts, using all the scholarly tools available and focusing especially on literary features. Greidanus develops hermeneutical and homiletical principles and then applies them to four specific genres: Hebrew narratives, prophetic literature, the Gospels, and the Epistles.

Sermons are an invaluable source for our knowledge of religious history and sociology, anthropology, and the mental landscape of men and women in pre-modern Europe, of what they were taught and what they practiced. But how did an individual process the preached message from the pulpit? How exactly do written sermons duplicate the preached Word? Do they at all? The 11 leading scholars who have contributed to this book do not offer uniform answers or an all-encompassing study of preaching in the Reformations and early modern period in Europe. They do, however, provide new insights on Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed preaching in Western and Central Europe. Part One examines changes in sermon structure, style and content in Christian sermons from the thematic sermon typical of the Middle Ages to the wide variety of later preaching styles. Catholic preaching after Trent proves not to be monolithic and intolerant, but a hybrid of forms past and present, applied as needed to particular situations. Lutheran homiletic theory is traced from Luther and through Melanchthon, the intention of the sermon being to transform the worship service based on exegesis of Scripture. In Reformed worship, the expository sermon, often given on a daily basis with a continuing exegesis, was designed to communicate the tenets of the faith in terms that the laity could understand (“plain style”). Part Two deals with the social history of preaching in France, where preachers often incited their hearers to attack human beings or holy objects or were themselves attacked; in Italy, where preaching became a collective and “home-grown” product; in early modern Germany, where the authorities strove for uniformity of preaching practice and the preacher was seen as a moral guardian; in Switzerland, where leaders from Zwingli on sought to bring religious practice, conduct, and government in line with biblical teaching and propagated a pastoral vision of preaching; in England, where after the Reformation preachers became the indispensable agents of salvation, but clergy and congregations were often ill-prepared for the task; in Scandinavia, where post-Reformation sermons have a clear didactic aim, teaching obedience to the authorities; and in the Low Countries, characterised by its numerous denominations, all with their own churches and particular practices in terms of preaching. The volume ends with a consideration of the influence of late medieval preaching on the Reformation, concluding that the diversity of emphasis on how the practice of penance was preached (and received) very likely affected the appeal (or not) of the Lutheran/Reformed message in a given country. Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period is also published by Brill in paperback (ISBN 0 391 04203 3, still available)

Good preaching depends on being attentive – to God, to the Bible, to the congregation, to the context, to what influences and shapes the preacher. This practical, confidence-building guide is for all who want to develop their preaching by homing in on that which points to God in the now. Encouraging preachers in the ways that will make authentic connections with others, it demonstrates that preaching in today’s culture requires preachers to ‘show up and be present, in person’ rather than speak 'in role' or act as religious spokespersons who take no responsibility for their message. Based on the authors’ own training of ordinands, it offers: • Insights on how to develop the habit of noticing God in the world; • Strategies for opening up and finding fresh meaning in familiar Bible texts; • Ways of understanding what influences your congregation and your own theology; • Sample sermons that embody these principles.