Based on the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, this second in a series of three volumes provides resources for an entire year of sermons and offers practical help for preachers and others who use the Revised Common Lectionary. Beginning with Advent, this unique and comprehensive resource deals with lectionary texts for Year C. Each of the four texts--the Old Testament, Psalter, Gospel, and Epistle--for each Sunday and important festival day, including Christmas, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday, is treated. A brief introduction for the day indicates the general thrust of the texts and the relationships among them, emphasizing in interpretation of the texts themselves. Also included are suggestions concerning the implications of the texts for life today.

Designed to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregations experience of worship. Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

No longer distributed to depository libraries in tangible format (per ANTS-v9-#09)

Making Your Way to the Pulpit is a book for beginning preachers, for preachers who will never have a seminary course called "homiletics" (the art of preaching), for preachers who studied homiletics with William Hethcock and want a review, and for all preachers who are looking for a tested, reliable approach to sermon preparation. In short, this is a book for those who preach regularly or occasionally and would like a clear guide for making their way to the pulpit. At the School of Theology (SofT), University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, the Rev. Dr. William H. Hethcock directed field education from 1979 to 1985 and taught homiletics from 1985 until his retirement in 1997. After retiring, he continued to teach homiletics on semester contracts at the SofT and the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS). He remains active as a teacher, speaker on the subject of preaching, and preacher. Assimilating the work of other scholars, Hethcock developed his own process for approaching sermon preparation on a weekly basis. This book summarizes and describes the Hethcock method. When followed, his process reliably gets the preacher to the pulpit with a biblical proclamation that resonates with individuals in today's congregations.

Ronald Allen and Gilbert Bartholomew introduce preachers to verse-by-verse preaching, in which the preacher interprets the passage unit by unit and the sermon unfolds much like a commentary on the Bible. They note its applicability in a variety of settings and occasions, and offer practical suggestions for preparing a sermon in this style, including sample sermons from different genres and tips for keeping verse-by-verse sermons fresh, vital, and engaging.

"Most Sunday homilists have shied away from preaching the epistles because Paul seems too difficult for them. Raymond Collins explores the reasons for this lack of familiarity and the reluctance to use the New Testament epistles as topics for the Sunday homily. He shows us just how important it is for the richness of the epistles to be incorporated into the Sunday sermon." "Using the Sunday Lectionary as a basis, Preaching the Epistles unlocks the richness in the epistles of Paul, James, and John, Peter and Jude, and the book of Revelation. Collins shows us how to present these scriptures in a meaningful and challenging way for people today by offering reflections and practical suggestions on sharing God's word within their communities."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Preaching, says professor and author O. Wesley Allen Jr., should be considered as a form of conversation. The church, after all, is a community of conversation that exists in part to interpret God's purposes for the world and to participate in those purposes. The idea of the sermon as a conversation, then, is not simply a style or form of preaching but an integral expression of the nature and purpose of the church.

This set of seven sermons follows the traditional church sequence of "The Seven Last Words of the Cross," utterances that the gospel narratives place on the lips of Jesus. These utterances are drawn from the several gospel narratives. In the liturgical life of the church, however, the sequence has a significance and staying power of its own quite apart from the gospel narratives in which the utterances are embedded. These sermons take seriously the faith voiced by Jesus in his context of wretched abuse by the Roman Empire. They attempt, moreover, to connect that reality of faith and abuse in our contemporary world of concentrated, ruthless power. The intent of such sermons on Good Friday is to replicate for us in our context what such an interface of faith and abuse must have been like. These sermons were preached last Good Friday in the preacher's home congregation.

Preaching the Manifold Grace of God is a two-volume work describing theologies of preaching from the historical and contemporary periods. Volume 1 focuses on historical theological families: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Anglican/Episcopal, Wesleyan, Baptist, African American, Stone-Campbell, Friends, and Pentecostal. Volume 2 focuses on families that are evangelical, liberal, neo-orthodox, postliberal, existential, radical orthodox, deconstructionist, Black liberation, womanist, Latinx liberation, Mujerista, Asian American, Asian American feminist, LGBTQAI, Indigenous, postcolonial, and process. In each case, the author describes the circumstances in which the theological family emerged, describes the purposes and characteristics of preaching from that perspective, and assesses the strengths and limitations of the approach.