"The major shift in the study and practice of preaching in the 1970s and 1980s, labeled the New Homiletic, turned toward the hearer. The purpose of preaching focused less on persuasion and more on transformation, less on asserting religious truths and more on offering an experience of the gospel. Instead of viewing language as referential, its creative, evocative nature began to be emphasized. Thus homiletical strategies utilizing induction, celebration, story, narrative structures, and moves replaced a deductive, propositional approach to preaching. Now three-and-a-half decades after this shift began, preachers recognize that the homiletical landscape has continued to evolve in ways that influence how preaching ought to be done£for example, the rise of postmodernity, the decline of the mainline church, cultural pluralism, and biblical and theological illiteracy.Those considered to be the pillars of the New Homiletic £ David Buttrick, Fred Craddock, Eugene Lowry, Henry Mitchell, and Charles Rice £ discuss how to change their homiletical approach for a new day. Each of these distinguished scholars offers a lecture describing how his mind has changed, preaches a sermon reflecting these changes, and participates in a panel discussion with younger respondents" -- Publisher description.

Deep faith meets high tech here in The Renewal of Preaching in the Twenty-first Century. A communications revolution is sweeping through the churches leaving some on fire and others burned out. This work shows what makes the difference for church leaders and communities who are using new media to advance Christian preaching. Join them by recovering the great tradition and expanding it through creative use encouraged by artists and filmmakers as well as preachers and professors. This work explores ways to maximize the promise of preaching and confront the perils leading to the renewal of church and society. Beginning with review of the situation today, we proceed step by step through the preparation and presentation of the sermon leading to transformation. The sermon in the local parish is seen as the microcosm of the macrocosm that is the communication of God's good news.

Most preachers have little fondness for apocalyptic texts because of their scathing language, surrealistic plots, and enigmatic symbols. David Jacobsen helps preachers move past these barriers with clear step by step directions and insightful analysis, showing how to move from text to sermon for the apocalyptic texts included in the lectionary.

The New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching is a major reference tool for preaching, with articles on every facet of Christian sermon preparation and delivery. This resource is both scholarly and practical. It focuses on the most distinctive feature and greatest strength of homiletics as a discipline: It is rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship and it develops theory geared to practice. Its theory arises out of the study of both excellent preaching past and present and actual sermon preparation and composition. When theory and practice critique each other, it is possible to produce guidelines that assist greater excellence and economy in preaching the gospel. Excellence in standards is an area in which homiletics needs to grow, and this project will be both a means to encourage and develop it. A guiding question throughout will be, Will it preach? The answers will be offered in the sense that “here is something that works well,” rather than “here is something to try.” Preachers will turn to this resource with the expectation that they will find scholarly treatment of topics, brief bibliographies of relevant key books and articles, along with practical methodological suggestions for preachers to employ. The contributors are homileticians, preachers, and writers in various disciplines who are committed to the pulpit through practice.

Even though the postmodern return of religion is dramatically shaping the future of twenty-first-century theology, its riches for preaching are rarely mined. Preaching After God highlights the trajectories of the postmodern return of religion by introducing readers to the positive theological themes stirring in the work of influential philosophers like Jacques Derrida, John Caputo, and Slavoj Žižek. Phil Snider shows how engaging their thought provides possibilities for preaching that highly resonate with postmodern listeners. Preachers familiar with the postmodern return of religion will appreciate its homiletical appropriation, while those introduced to it for the first time will discover just how much it is helpful for the preaching task. Six lectionary-based sermons are included as examples.

Karl Barth famously argued that all theology is sermon preparation. But what if all sermon preparation is actually theology? This book pursues a thoroughgoing theological vision for the practice of preaching as a way of doing theology. The idea is not just that homiletics is the realm of theological application. That would leave preaching in the position of simply implementing a theology already arrived at. Instead, the vision in these pages is of a form of theology that begins with preaching itself: its practice, its theories, and its contexts. Homiletical theology is thus a unique way of doing theology--even a constructive theological task in its own right. Homiletician David Schnasa Jacobsen has assembled several of the leading lights of contemporary homiletics to help to see its task ever more deeply as theological, yet in profoundly diverse ways. Along the way, readers will not only discover how homileticians do theology homiletically, but will deepen the way in which they understand their own preaching as a theological task. Contributors include: -Ronald J. Allen, Professor of Preaching and Gospels and Letters at Christian Theological Seminary -John S. McClure, Charles G. Finney Professor of Preaching and Worship at Vanderbilt Divinity School -Alyce M. McKenzie, George W. and Nell Ayers Le Van Professor of Preaching and Worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University -Michael Pasquarello III, Granger E. and Anna A. Fisher Professor of Preaching, at Asbury Theological Seminary -Luke A. Powery, Dean of the Chapel and Associate Professor of the Practice of Homiletics, at Duke University -Teresa Stricklen Eisenlohr, Ph.D., Associate for Worship, Office of Theology and Worship, at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

In 1928, when Riverside Church (NYC) pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick asked the question in Harpers Magazine, “What’s the Matter with Preaching Today?” he did not know that one response to that question had just entered the world in Humboldt, Tennessee. Fred B. Craddock revolutionized preaching theory and practice by flipping pulpit logic from deductive to inductive—often called the preaching-as-storytelling revolution—and in so doing brought renewed interest and impact to the practice of preaching, effectively rescuing it from an often tedious and moralizing fate. With Fred, preaching was anything but boring. Rather, it was an exciting and enlightening ride that led to the renewal of faith. To honor Craddock’s legacy, Mike Graves and André Resner invited ten leading voices in homiletics to identify something that is right about preaching today. In addition, they issued a call to a wide variety of people to contribute stories about Fred’s impact on their lives and ministries. Twenty-seven remembrances of Fred are included here throughout the book. If you appreciate effective and engaging preaching—as either a preacher or listener—the essays and remembrances here will speak to you and provide encouragement about preaching’s present and future. With contributions from: Ronald J. Allen Barbara K. Lundblad Alyce McKenzie Debra J. Mumford Luke Powery Andre Resner Richard Ward Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm Paul Scott Wilson