Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World


Book Description

"Can preaching recover a Blues sensibility and dare speak with authority in the midst of tragedy? America is living stormy Monday, but the pulpit is preaching happy Sunday. The world is experiencing the Blues, and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses of non-prescribed prosaic sermons with severe ecclesiastical and theological side effects." â€"from chapter 1 Uniquely gifted preacher Otis Moss III helps preachers effectively communicate hope in a desperate and difficult world in this new work based on his 2014 Yale Lyman Beecher Lectures. Moss challenges preachers to preach with a "Blue Note sensibility," which speaks directly to the tragedies faced by their congregants without falling into despair. He then offers four powerful sermons that illustrate his Blue Note preaching style. In them, Moss beautifully and passionately brings to life biblical characters that speak to today's pressing issues, including race discrimination and police brutality, while maintaining a strong message of hope. Moss shows how preachers can teach their congregations to resist letting the darkness find its way into them and, instead, learn to dance in the dark.




Slug and Snail Search for Peace


Book Description

Every Sunday, Otis Moss III and his preaching attract over 5,000 people to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Moss describes himself as, "a jazz-influenced pastor with a hip-hop vibe committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ rooted in love and justice." He admits he can talk endlessly about theology, popular culture, and movies, and has even based some of his best sermons, collected in this book, on these powerful films: The Wiz, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, The Book of Eli, The Color Purple, Avatar, Flight, and For Colored Girls. Discussion questions are included, making it ideal for individuals or groups, movie nights and book clubs.




Jesus and the Disinherited


Book Description

“No other publication in the twentieth century has upended antiquated theological notions, truncated political ideas, and socially constructed racial fallacies like Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman’s work keeps showing up on the desk of anti-apartheid activists, South American human rights workers, civil rights champions, and now Black Lives Matter advocates.” –Rev. Otis Moss III, author of Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World and senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ A commemorative edition of the work that inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and helped shape the civil rights movement In this beautiful gift edition of the classic theological treatise, complete with a place-marker ribbon and silver gilded edges, celebrated theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1899–1981) revolutionizes the way we read the gospel. Thurman lifts Jesus up as a partner in the pain of the oppressed and reveals the gospel as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. In this view, the example of Jesus’s life shows us that hatred does not empower—it decays. Only by recognizing fear, deception, contempt, and love of one another can God’s justice prevail. With a new foreword by acclaimed womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas, this edition of Jesus and the Disinherited is a timeless testimony of faith that demonstrates how to thrive and flourish in a world that attempts to destroy one’s humanity from the inside out. Having witnessed firsthand the depths of white supremacy and the heights of human civility, Thurman reiterates the inherent dignity of all of God’s children.




Best Advice for Preaching


Book Description

A bright new resource for working preachers. Packed with preaching wisdom from twenty-seven outstanding American preachers from various religious and ethnic backgrounds.




Beyond Maintenance to Mission


Book Description

This book argues compellingly for the centrality of mission in understanding the church and provides a model for congregational leadership that will help move congregations beyond a maintenance mentality to vital engagement with the world God loves. Nessan's model of congregational leadership is strongly centered on worship life of a congregation and the entirety of the church's ministry. The chapters provide solid theological and practical direction on the themes of worship, education, fellowship, stewardship, evangelism, global connections, ecumenism, and social ministry. It is a book that will find a home in both the academy and the parish a textbook for seminarians and a guide and resource for pastors and lay congregational leaders.




Losing Church


Book Description

From Ft. Smith, Arkansas, to Princeton, New Jersey, to Kernersville, North Carolina, with a stop along the way in Asbury Park, New Jersey, to pay homage to “The Boss,” Michael Gehring takes us on his journeys as a pastor at a pivot point in history for the church and the world. Along the way, we meet up with a fascinating array of characters: Barbara Brown Taylor, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jesus’s forerunner, John the Baptist, to name just a few. But it’s the questions Gehring raises that make this book not only entertaining, but compelling reading for individuals and small groups: How might the decline of the church lead us into rediscovering the gospel? Did clergy, and all of us for that matter, make a good choice investing in institutional Christianity? How would you describe the emotional price of love? What does living a soulful life look like? With the humility and genuineness of someone who doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out, Gehring is the perfect travel companion. Come along.




The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock


Book Description

This collection of more than fifty of Fred Craddock's sermons provides a glimpse of a master preacher at work. Amazingly, only one of the sermons was preached from a manuscript written in advance, as Craddock considered a sermon to be an event in the world of sound. As a result, the selections here wonderfully reflect and preserve Craddock's "voice" and engage readers with all the immediacy of the spoken word.




Where Have All the Prophets Gone


Book Description

This book is a call for preachers to learn the importance of keeping their eyes on the vision of Jesus and biblical prophets when preaching - that of doing justice, caring for others, and being equitable. The book attempts to make a biblical argument for the importance and the content of prophetic preaching, and argues that the issue is not preaching from a text taken from the prophetic corpus but preaching on the themes that echoed over and over from the biblical prophets themselves.




The Very Good Gospel


Book Description

God once declared everything in the world “very good.” Can you imagine it? A Vision of Hope for a Broken World Shalom is what God declared. Shalom is what the Kingdom of God looks like. Shalom is when all people have enough. It’s when families are healed. It’s when churches, schools, and public policies protect human dignity. Shalom is when the image of God is recognized in every single human. Shalom is our calling as followers of Jesus’s gospel. It is the vision God set forth in the Garden and the restoration God desires for every relationship. What can we do to bring shalom to our nations, our communities, and our souls? Through a careful exploration of biblical text, particularly the first three chapters of Genesis, Lisa Sharon Harper shows us what “very good” can look like today, even after the Fall. Because despite our anxious minds, despite division and threats of violence, God’s vision remains: Wholeness for a hurting world. Peace for a fearful soul. Shalom.




Meditations of the Heart


Book Description

“As poet, prophet, and priest, Thurman builds upon a powerful legacy of ancestral hope: belief in a liberating God who can always be found ‘in and among the struggling.’” —Yolanda Pierce A universal beacon of hope and endurance for people of all faiths seeking to meet the challenges, uncertainties, and joys of life Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart is a beautiful collection of over 150 prayers, poems, and meditations on prayer, community, and the joys and rituals of life by one of our greatest spiritual leaders. Thurman, a spiritualist and mystic, was renowned for the quiet beauty of his reflections on humanity and our relationship with God. In a new foreword, Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity, calls attention to the justice-centered theological framework of Thurman’s words. Pierce notes how Thurman brings to light an image of God who can always be found “in and among the struggling,” both in times of weariness and in strength. First written for and shared with his congregation of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, these meditations sustain, elevate, and inspire. They are a universal beacon of hope and endurance for people of all faiths seeking to meet the challenges, uncertainties, and joys of everyday life with a renewed and liberating faith.