Preach It

Studies of preaching and preaching style have up to this point focused almost exclusively on a western eurocentric understanding of good preaching. Preach It encourages students, both vocational and scholarly, to look beyond these approaches and to learn from traditions with which they are less familiar. The distinctive style and techniques that African Caribbean Pentecostal preachers have inherited has been shaped by historical, political and socio-economic factors impacting on black Caribbean people (including clergy). Using a variety of socio-linguistic and theological approaches, Preach It reflects on these techniques, and outlines how preachers across church traditions might learn from them and use them in their own contexts.

Let the Legends Preach celebrates the past and current legends of black preaching through preserving the sermons that they preached at the Annual E. K. Bailey Expository Preaching Conference. The twenty-four preachers honored in this book received the Living Legend Award for Excellence in Preaching on account of ministries that impacted hundreds of thousands of people across the nation and around the world. Not only does this book lift up preachers that are familiar to so many, names belonging to the great cloud of witnesses in black preaching over the last fifty years, but it also introduces a new generation of preachers to their powerful stories and homiletical wisdom. Each chapter offers readers short biographical sketches on the life and ministry of the preachers that were honored followed by the sermon that they preached or the lecture that they delivered at the annual conference.

In June of 2012, an astounding 360 people gathered at the University of Notre Dame for a major conference on Catholic preaching. With contributions by a wide variety of theologians and practitioners, We Preach Christ Crucified gathers the fruits of those days spent reflecting on the importance of the preaching ministry. Its release is timely, given the US bishops' promulgation of a new document on preaching, Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily (January, 2013), and the renewed emphasis on preaching by both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. The challenges facing Christian preachers in our time are many and formidable ones. The authors in this collection take a fresh look at the task, the resources at hand, the contemporary context, and the preacher. The result is a refreshing and stunningly hopeful reconsideration of an ancient ministry. We Preach Christ Crucified includes essays by: Robert Barron Archbishop Robert J. Carlson John C. CavadiniArchbishop Gustavo García-Siller, MSpS Mary Catherine Hilkert, OPJan Michael Joncas Barbara E. Reid, OP Michael E. Connors, CSC, ThD, is a pastoral theologian and teacher of homiletics on the faculty of the Theology Department at the University of Notre Dame, where he also directs the John S. Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics. He is the author of Inculturated Pastoral Planning: The U.S.Hispanic Experience (Gregorian University Press, 2001).

This is a groundbreaking study in the African American religious experience. Never before has there been a published collection of oral African American "call" stories that treats them as a genre worthy of scholarly analysis. This volume of eighty-six stories was collected in tape-recorded interviews over a six year period from 1985 to 1991. Significantly, this unique, in-depth study represents at least eight different Christian denominations. Many of the men and women who share their "call" story in this volume are nationally and internationally known.

In How to Preach, Samuel Wells goes beyond the arts and disciplines of preparing, crafting and delivering sermons, to explore preaching as an act of worship and prayer. Here, preachers will discover how being attentive to God, to Scripture, to the world, to their hearers, and to themselves can inform and shape their message. They will be renewed in joining the long tradition of witnessing to the revelation of God in every area of human experience. Preaching takes many forms and responds to many different needs and occasions. This broad-ranging volume considers: • the times in which we live: politics, society, freedom, disability and war • the seasons of the church year: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost • the variety of biblical texts: Old Testament narratives and poetry, Gospel miracles and parables, the writings of Paul • life’s key moments: baptisms, weddings and funerals. For each topic, there is reflection on the demands and opportunities presented, ways of approach, sermon examples, and memorably wise and uncompromising practical guidelines that will nourish and inspire all who long to embrace the call to preach more faithfully.