LaRue provides important insights on why black preaching is strong and active, and connects with the real-life experiences of listeners. (Christian)

Cleo LaRue is one of the best-loved preachers and writers about preaching. In past volumes, he has brought together great collections of African American preaching to showcase the best preaching from across the country. Here he offers his own insights into what makes for great preaching. Filled with telling anecdotes, LaRue's book recognizes that while great preaching comes from somewhere, it also must go somewhere, so preachers need to use the most artful language to send the Word on its journey.

In this book, scholar and preacher Cleophus J. LaRue brings together the voices of twelve of America's most influential African-American preachers. Each of these renowned preachers describes his or her method of sermon preparation and includes a sample sermon for illustration. An excellent how-to manual for pastors and students,Power in the Pulpitis both sage wisdom on the art of preaching and an inspiring look at some of the most prominent figures in the black church.

In this companion and sequel to the best-selling Power in the Pulpit (2002), which has sold over 11,000 copies, more of America's best-known and most influential African American preachers describe how they go about preparing their sermons. Each preacher also presents a sermon that highlights his or her particular method of sermon preparation. This book is an excellent how-to manual for pastors and students, presenting sage advice and wisdom on the art of preaching and an inspirational look at the work of some of the most prominent figures in the life of the black church.

Preachers have long been faced with two options. On the one hand they can appeal to their congregations’ intellects, teaching them the substance of the faith from the pulpit. On the other they can seek to stir their hearers’ emotions, wooing or warning them with the gospel. Usually we reserve these two forms of preaching for different tasks or audiences. If you are preaching an evangelistic message to the unchurned, then your preaching style will draw more heavily on the emotional aspects. If you are leading the faithful into a deeper grasp of the Christian message, then you will more likely draw on the intellectual components of preaching. While most preachers know that the choice between the head and the heart is a false one, they often don’t know how to bring the two together effectively. In this book Thomas Swears offers detailed, practical advice on how to preach to both head and heart. He shows how both emotions and intellect function any time one tried to convey meaning from the pulpit, regardless of the kind of message one is preaching. Without abandoning the conventional wisdom on evangelistic vs. teaching sermons, he nonetheless insists that preaching with integrity—in which the Word is truly embodied—will always involve the whole person and personality of both the preacher and the congregation.

The Journey and Promise of African American Preaching is a constructive effort to examine the historical contributions of African American preaching, the challenges it faces today, and how it might become a renewed source of healing and strength for at-risk communities and churches. --from publisher description

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?