Preachings most able practitioners gather in this book to explore and explain the idea that preaching is a practice that can be taught and learned. Arguing that preaching is a living practice with a long tradition, an identifiable shape, and a broad set of norms and desired outcomes, these noted scholars propose that teachers initiate students into the larger practice of preaching, in ways somewhat like other students are initiated into the practice of medicine or law. The book concludes with designs for a basic preaching course and addresses the question of how preaching courses fit into the larger patterns of seminary curricula.

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.

The Introduction to African American Preaching is an important, groundbreaking book. This book acknowledges African American preaching as an academic discipline, and invites all students and preachers into a scholarly, dynamic, and useful exploration of the topic. Author Frank Thomas opens with a “bus tour” study of African American preaching. He shows how African American preaching has gradually moved from an almost exclusively oral to an oral/written tradition. Readers will gain insight into the history of the study of the African American preaching tradition, and catch the author’s enthusiasm for it. Next Thomas traces the relationship between homiletics and rhetoric in Western preaching, demonstrating how African American preaching is inherently theological and rhetorical. He then explores the question, “what is black preaching?” Thomas introduces the reader to methods of “close reading” and “ideological criticism.” And then demonstrates how to use these methods, using a sermon by Gardner Calvin Taylor as his example. The next chapter considers the question, “what is excellence in black preaching?” The next chapter seeks to create bridges and dialogue within the field of homiletics, and in particular, the Euro-American homiletic tradition. The goal of this chapter is to clearly demonstrate connections between the African American preaching tradition and the field of homiletics. Thomas next turns to questions about the relevancy of the church to the Millennial generation. Specifically, how will the African American church remain relevant to this generation, which is so deeply concerned with social justice?

A field guide for teaching homiletics. There is a difference between knowing how to preach and knowing how to communicate that knowledge to others. Drawing from the wells of pedagogy and theology, Training Preachers shows teachers of homiletics how to educate preachers to skillfully and effectively present God's word to their congregations. Training Preachers presents the classroom-tested insights of several seasoned homiletics professors whose goal is to share their knowledge with preaching instructors ranging from novices to veterans. Expertly edited by Scott M. Gibson, this is a textbook on teaching preaching that is informed by Christian theology as well as cutting-edge pedagogical practices. The book enables those who teach preaching to holistically prepare to teach this subject to groups, conference gatherings, and classes in Bible colleges and seminaries.

Preaching is a way of life that can be beautiful and good; however, It can also be anxious, self-focused, and destructive. Preachers and teachers of preaching need a holistic view of preaching that not only paints the way to good preaching, but also to good living. They need a comprehensive practical theology of preaching that combines the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ with the ‘how’ and 'whom’ of preaching. Practicing the Preaching Life unites Christian practices, contextual virtues, and the best of homiletical pedagogy to pave the way to a beautiful preaching life. Preaching is best learned as a formative Christian practice embedded within a web of other Christian practices that form a way of life from which great sermons emerge. Therefore, preaching requires not only a way of speaking well, but also a way of living well. This embedded nature of preaching requires the enrollment of Christian practices in the formation of the preacher and the pursuit of contextual virtues for preaching that avoid cultural relativism on the one hand and cultural imperialism on the other. These requirements lead to a new vision for the preaching classroom, the rhythms of the preaching life, and the definition of what it means to be a good preacher.

Based on the conviction that the Old Testament texts are a vital and dynamic part of the Christian canon and pertinent to Christian practice, this stimulating volume offers guidance for expository preaching and practical suggestions for understanding the message of its diverse literature.

Many of us have big questions about God that the Christian faith seems to leave unanswered. But what if that tension is exactly where faith comes alive? Paradoxology boldly claims that the paradoxes that seem to undermine belief are actually the heart of our vibrant faith, and it is only by continually wrestling with them that God is most clearly revealed.