Three contemporary, humorous parables of a preacher who struggles with his need to changeSam the preacher wonders what has gone wrong with his sermons. Are people still listening? Well-known storyteller and communications professor Calvin Miller combines his fiction writing with his insight into preaching to address the changes faced by today’s preachers, especially the fact that contemporary congregations have shifted to a different way of listening. How can Sam recover his passion for preaching?In this short, entertaining, story-driven book, church leaders will see honest reflections of themselves. But the narrative humor also provides a clever way to stimulate thought and discussion on how preachers and preaching are changing. Some places in the story will lead to laughter, others will cause readers to pause and reflect. But whatever the reaction, The Sermon Maker leaves the reader encouraged and changed.Extensive commentary on the stories provides insight from the author into the best ways to communicate. Just as the story in the tremendously popular Who Moved My Cheese? impacted readers in the business world who were facing change, so this book is designed as a quick but stimulating story for any church leader who preaches or is concerned about the state of preaching today.

What is theologically and homiletically happening in 'prophetic' sermons? This empirical theological study offers an analysis of the prophetic dimension in contemporary practices of preaching, including sermons from Bonhoeffer, King and Tutu, and from Dutch local contexts. After a phenomenological opening, five theological concepts are extracted from the studied sermons: exposing destructiva; interrupting dominant discourses; recognising the Word; overcoming destructiva; and edifying the congregation. In this study, prophetic speech is reconstructed as an illuminative interplay between epiphanic and inductive aspects.

This volume deals with the varied forms of shame reflected in biblical, theological, psychological and anthropological sources. Although traditional theology and church practice concentrate on providing forgiveness for shameful behavior, recent scholarship has discovered the crucial relevance of social shame evoked by mental status, adversity, slavery, abuse, illness, grief and defeat. Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have discovered that unresolved social shame is related to racial and social prejudice, to bullying, crime, genocide, narcissism, post-traumatic stress and other forms of toxic behavior. Eleven leaders in this research participated in a conference on The Shame Factor, sponsored by St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Lincoln, NE in October 2010. Their essays explore the impact and the transformation of shame in a variety of arenas, comprising in this volume a unique and innovative resource for contemporary religion, therapy, ethics, and social analysis.

Originally published in 1983, Fundamentals of Preaching is a comprehensive textbook on preaching, guiding the novice from the first steps of conceiving the sermon through the actual construction and delivery. In this new, revised edition, Killinger enhances the outstanding, practical qualities of the text with much input from recent homiletical studies and the preaching of women.

The contemporary evangelical church faces serious difficulties. All their leaders are aware of this and they try different diagnoses and answers for it. It occurs to me that the current situation is similar to the tragic fate of Samson, to whom the Spirit of God had left him, and he did not realize it. As solutions are sought in human and pragmatic techniques, the patient aggravates their condition. The only correct answer is that this vanishing life be breathed in, as at the beginning of creation, by the Word of God. The spiritual life of the church and of ourselves depends on listening to and responding to the Word of God. And for this to happen, Scripture must take the central and authoritative position in the life of the church.

In our highly sensory and interactive age, how might drawing upon various arts—music, film, architecture, dramatic performance, painting, fashion, and more—expand the aesthetic experience and mode of preaching? This book presents a critical, practical answer to the question. As our society becomes more visually oriented, art-seeking, and body-positive, the practice of preaching is likewise challenged to demonstrate the mind-body, word-visual, and artistic proclamation of the Sacred (after all, isn’t the writing of the Bible itself highly art-full and aesthetic?). In this book, Sunggu A. Yang, a seasoned preacher and experienced teacher of preaching, encourages preachers to utilize their unique artistic talents as critical sources of theological and homiletical imagination and as hermeneutical-perspectival tools to aid their rigorous exegetical process of interpreting Scripture, eventually toward artistic-holistic sermon composition and delivery. A sample syllabus, included in the appendix, will greatly assist any preaching instructor who wants to offer a creative course on arts and preaching.

Because they are speaking to a younger society more attuned to lively dialogue and visual images, pastors need a fresh wineskin for a timeless message of redemption. Calvin Miller, who has preached and equipped preachers for decades, offers a volume of helpful insights for pastors to deliver the heart of the gospel via the Jesus-endorsed vessel of compelling storytelling. For the working pastor, Miller's crash course on preaching is a welcomed study. Now available in trade paper.

Inspired by the example of his predecessors Chaucer and Gower, John Lydgate articulated in his poetry, prose and translations many of the most serious political questions of his day. In the fifteenth century Lydgate was the most famous poet in England, filling commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. He wrote for an elite London readership that was historically very small, but that saw itself as dominating the cultural life of the nation. Thus the new literary forms and modes developed by Lydgate and his contemporaries helped shape the development of English public culture in the fifteenth century. Maura Nolan offers a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of his time. Moreover, she provides a wholly new perspective on Lydgate's relationship to Chaucer, as he followed Chaucerian traditions while creating innovative new ways of addressing the public.