Paradoxes have become characteristic of the world we live in - poverty and privilege, empire and oppression, migration and enclaveseeking, war and peace, justice and injustice, reconciliation and revenge. During the 2016 Societas Homiletica annual conference held in South Africa, these paradoxes served as a rediscovery of the calling of preachers to deliver the promise that lies within life's contradictions. A divine promise brought forth by the grace of God and the gospel of Christ - embodied in and through us by the Spirit of Christ. This promise may take many forms and calls for discernment and often interrupts the status quos in surprising, shocking ways. It is a promise that interrupts, in order to comfort.

Although preachers often question their effectiveness, no task of the church is more important than proclamation. Only the gospel liberates sinners from guilt, despair, and death and grants them freedom, hope, and new life. Few have grasped this truth better than Martin Luther. This volume features contributions by contemporary theologians whose work is shaped by Luther's conviction that God's justification of the ungodly comes through preaching: Gerhard Forde, Oswald Bayer, and their students and friends. Taken from the pages of Lutheran Quarterly, these essays in historical and theological perspective bring the doctrine of justification to bear on contemporary preaching. For Luther, the whole creation has its life out of God's "pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of ours at all!" Luther's insight to center creation around God's justifying work accents the cosmic scope of the doctrine. Justification is at the core of God's creative and saving activity with respect to all that has been, is, and will be. God's justification of the ungodly is the heart of all Christian theology and mission, and inescapably shapes the character of both. Preaching Christ as the justifier of sinners, in contrast to the accusing directives of the law, does nothing other than establish God's deity over and for the world, and brings an end to sinners' own self-deifying quests, re-creating them as fully human, fully free. Theologians and preachers gain their compass, purpose, and courage from this truth.

Sidney Greidanus's previous two preaching books -- The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text andPreaching Christ from the Old Testament -- have received wide acclaim. Preaching Christ from Genesis offers more of Greidanus's solid, practical homiletical fare. Packed with unique features, Preaching Christ from Genesis uses the latest scholarly research to analyze twenty-three Genesis narratives presents the rhetorical structures and other literary features of each narrative discloses the message for Israel (theme) as well as the author's likely purpose (goal) explores various ways of preaching Christ from each narrative offers sermon exposition and commentary in oral style suggests relevant sermon forms, introductions, and applications Including helpful appendixes -- "Ten Steps from Text to Sermon," "An Expository Sermon Model," and three of the author's own Genesis sermons -- this volume will be an invaluable resource for preachers and Bible teachers.

The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is a multivolume study by Hughes Oliphant Old that canvasses the history of preaching from the words of Moses at Mount Sinai through modern times. In Volume 1, The Biblical Period, Old begins his survey by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ and the Apostles. Finally, Old looks at the development and practice of Christian preaching in the second and third centuries, concluding with the ministry of Origen.

Given the conclusions of recent research, that predestination was no central dogma to, and did not affect the method of reformed theology, this study investigates the question of if and how the doctrine of predestination affected the ideas and practice of preaching. The relation of predestination and covenant, congregation, atonement, faith etc. are researched in the theology and sermons of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Diodati, and Theodore Tronchin, Francis Turretin, and Benedict Pictet. This study shows that in Genevan Reformed Theology from Calvin to Pictet, predestination and the external call were inseparably connected, but that the doctrine of predestination neither dominated the content nor restricted the address of the external call.

Distinguished Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser believes that the Old Testament is sorely neglected today in teaching and preaching, but it is even more neglected when it comes to setting forth the hope that Christians have for the future. Firmly believing that the Old Testament offers important insights into biblical eschatology and the Christian life, he provides guidance for expositing fifteen key Old Testament eschatological passages to preachers, teachers, and Bible students. Each chapter focuses on a single biblical text. Kaiser introduces the topic, examines the issues, notes who has contributed to some of the solutions, and shows how this sets up the text to be exegeted and prepared for exposition.

The purposes of this article-based thesis are to explore and understand preaching as a practice in general, and the practice of preaching in digital culture and spaces in particular. Informed by the practice theory of Theodore Schatzki, it presents the results of a cross-case analysis of four different case studies of the practice of preaching in digital culture and spaces in Swedish protestant churches. Based on the analysis, Frida Mannerfelt argues that the deep relationality of the practice of preaching involves not just humans and texts but also material arrangements and that this feature often is amplified in digital culture and spaces. While there were examples of a decrease, overall, there was an increase in interaction, negotiation, and interdependency. In light of this, Manner-felt contends that the practice of preaching in digital culture and spaces is characterized by co-preaching. Moreover, Mannerfelt argues that some of the implications of co-preaching are the enabling and encouragement of dialogue, imagination, and the priestly function of the priesthood of all believers, but also an increased vulnerability for the co-preachers involved.

This thorough and detailed revision of The Witness of Preaching is even clearer and more helpful than the first edition. Long has updated the language, expanded the key chapter on biblical exegesis, and included more examples of sermon forms, illustrations, and conclusions. He continues to critically engage the best thinkers in the field of homiletics, bringing into the conversation both important new voices and the latest works of those who appeared in the first edition. In addition, he addresses some of the new forces at work, such as the use of video clips and PowerPoint presentations in sermons.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology, found his voice first in preaching. This book demonstrates how Schleiermacher moved between the critical reading of Scripture, the proclamation of Christian faith to congregations over a forty-five-year period, and, eventually, the work of theology in all its disciplines. Schleiermacher's Preaching, Dogmatics, and Biblical Criticism is the first work to fully unveil this interaction by focusing on Schleiermacher's 228 known sermons on the Gospel of John. Kelsey shows in detail 1) how the central insights of his theology emerged first in his preaching, and 2) that his dogmatic writings provided a context within which these insights could be related to all the major doctrinal themes of Christian faith. The study concludes by drawing implications for theological reflection and its relation to worship life in our own time.