A Preacher's Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series, Volume 2


Book Description

Both lectionary preachers and topical preachers will enjoy the best of both worlds with this second volume of sermon series ideas designed to frame consecutive weeks of lectionary texts into seasonal and short-term series. With contributors from seven denominations, this comprehensive resource offers new perspectives and fresh ideas for diving deep into biblical themes in ways that make congregants eager to come back for the next sermon and to invite others as well. Twenty-eight series plans include thematic overviews, sermon starters, and ideas for worship and outreach, honoring holy days and seasons and addressing typical patterns of church attendance to maximize visitor retention and member engagement. Contributors include: Amy K. Butler, Kyle E. Brooks, Carol Cavin-Dillon, Magrey R. deVega, Brian Erickson, Mihee Kim-Kort, Jasper Peters, Tuhina Verma Rasche, Bruce Reyes-Chow, Brandan J. Robertson, Martha K. Spong, and Anthony J. Tang.




A Preacher's Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series - Volume 1


Book Description

Preachers get the best of lectionary and topical series preaching with this comprehensive manual of sermon series ideas based on the Revised Common Lectionary. Designed to frame consecutive weeks of lectionary texts into seasonal and short-term series, a diverse group of twelve preachers outline multiple thematic series plans for each lectionary year. Each series plan provides a series overview, chart that outlines each segment of the series, tips and ideas, scriptural references, and a brief sermon starter. The series honors holy days and seasons and responds to typical patterns of church attendance, maximizing visitor retention and member engagement. Pastors can honor their commitment to lectionary preaching while taking advantage of the benefits series preaching can offer with this truly unique resource. Contributors include: Theresa Cho, Pastor of St. John's Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, California Bob Dannals, Rector of St. Michael's and All Angels Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas Magrey R. DeVega, Pastor of Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Tampa, Florida Brian Erickson, Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama Mihee Kim-Kort, Presbyterian Minister and Campus Ministry Leader at University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana Jessica LaGrone, Dean of Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky Cleophus J. LaRue, Professor of Homiletics, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey Jacqueline J. Lewis, Senior Minister, Middle Collegiate Church, New York City, New York Katherine Willis Pershey, Pastor of First Congregational Church, Western Springs, Illinois Paul Rock, Pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Kansas City, Kansas Martin Thielen, Pastor of First United Methodist Church, Cookeville, Tennessee Winnie Varghese, Priest and Director of Community Outreach at Trinity Wall Street, New York, New York




The Women's Lectionary


Book Description

Focusing on passages about women in the Bible and feminine imagery of God,The Women's Lectionaryreimagines the liturgical calendar of preaching for one year. These women are daughters, wives, and mothers. They are also strong leaders, evil queens, and wicked stepmothers. They are disciples, troublemakers, and prophetesses. Ashley Wilcox explores how the feminine descriptions of God in the Bible are similarly varied—how does it change our understanding if God is feminine wisdom, has wings, or is an angry mother bear? Discover this must-have lectionary, perfect for every female clergyperson or anyone seeking to incorporate more insights from a female perspective into their preaching. From well-known figures like Miriam and Mary to lesser-known women like Huldah and Sapphira to feminine metaphors, this comprehensive resource features more than one hundred commentary essays with an Old Testament and New Testament passage for each Sunday of the year and special holy days in the calendar.




Backstory Preaching


Book Description

Instead of being a dour task on the checklist, what if the process of homily prep renewed you? Instead of feeling insecure about your message, what if your skills made you confident to preach a consistently clear message of Good News, authentic to you, relevant to your listeners, holding their attention and inviting transformation? Backstory Preaching: Integrating Life, Spirituality, and Craft shows you how. By integrating your life and spirituality with the practical skills necessary for effective preaching, you can move beyond the boredom, stress, or insecurity of preaching so it is no longer you who preach but Christ who preaches in you. By connecting with God in the midst of your sermon prep, the Gospel will be spread deeper and further. God’s joy—and yours—will be made complete.




Beyond the Lectionary


Book Description

Beyond the Lectionary gives preachers a new year of Biblical texts that are not found on Sundays (or other mainline Protestant holy days) in the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. It provides readings from the Hebrew Bible, Psalms, Epistles/New Testament and Gospels for each Sunday of the liturgical year, along with several midweek observances. The texts have been selected with an eye toward continuity (progressing in order) and complementarity (textual completion or harmony), and they are accompanied by commentaries and prayers. Written in language that is accessible to both lay people and professionals, Beyond the Lectionary has the potential to transform congregational culture by bringing more of the content of scripture to people's awareness. ,




Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship


Book Description

Designed to empower preachers as they lead their 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. For each worship day within the three-year lectionary cycle, the commentaries in Connections link the individual lection reading with Scripture as a whole as well as to the larger world. In addition, Connections places each Psalm reading in conversation with the other lections for the day to highlight the themes of the liturgical season. Finally, sidebars offer additional connections to Scripture for each Sunday or worship day. This nine-volume series is a practical, constructive, and valuable resource for preachers who seek to help congregations connect more closely with Scripture. This volume covers Year A for Lent through Pentecost.




Preaching and the Thirty-Second Commerical


Book Description

At first glance, preaching and advertising seem worlds apart from one another. One tries to proclaim love of God and neighbor; the other tries to sell you something that you may or may not need. Yet both must compete with other ways we receive and process information in an increasingly distracted world. While most of the time preaching simply tries to muddle through this situation, advertising knows that it must continually relearn how to reclaim its audience's attention–and keep it. Believing that preaching can benefit from advertising's laser focus on how to make its message stick, O. Wesley Allen, Jr. (a preaching professor) and Carrie La Ferle (a professor of advertising) have written this first-of-its-kind book on what preachers can learn from advertising. Examples of these lessons include: • Sharpening one's analysis to understand the congregation better • Encoding a message so that listeners can decode it for their individual lives • Understanding how the form of the sermon leads to greater or lesser effectiveness • Building the sermon around imagery and narrative




The New Interpreter's® Handbook of Preaching


Book Description

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.




Planning Your Preaching


Book Description

A pastor-created and field-tested, easily adaptable method for planning a comprehensive preaching ministry.




Power in the Pulpit


Book Description

In this book, scholar and preacher Cleophus J. LaRue brings together the voices of twelve of America's most influential African-American preachers. Each of these renowned preachers describes his or her method of sermon preparation and includes a sample sermon for illustration. An excellent how-to manual for pastors and students,Power in the Pulpitis both sage wisdom on the art of preaching and an inspiring look at some of the most prominent figures in the black church.