Crafting Biblical Sermons that Connect with Our Culture and Pasquarello Christian Preaching A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation and Day A Reader on Preaching: Making Connections Review:
Zack Eswine starts this unique pastoral resource with a captivating question: Could I now reach who I once was? Challenging the idea that today’s preachers must do away with biblical or expository preaching if they are to reach non-Christian people, Eswine offers a way of preaching that embraces biblical exposition in missional terms. Recognizing all of the different cultural situations in which the gospel must be preached, he gives preachers practical advice on preaching in a global context while remaining faithful to the Bible. Pastors, seminarians, and church and ministry leaders who speak in various contexts will welcome this fresh, thoughtful examination of bringing the Word to today’s multi-everything, post-everything world.
From the Back Cover
The sermon is dead. Long live the sermon. Do you think a postmodern audience may render your preaching post-relevant? Think again. Zack Eswine takes you through the nuts and bolts–and the heart and soul–of engaging today’s multicultural society with compelling messages from the pulpit. Such preaching, however, requires more than just contextualizing the message. Using this comprehensive and practical guide will help you to preach God’s truth without compromising doctrine or ignoring the faithful. Eswine shows how God’s own interactions with humanity model relevant preaching and offers fresh, field-tested insights into the application of homiletics. Valuable appendixes detail steps to an effective sermon and provide questions for assessing cultural developments with spiritual discernment. Whether a new or experienced speaker, in church leadership or in parachurch ministry, you can make an impact on the rising global village–starting now. “Zack Eswine moves the Christ-centered preaching movement forward with this volume. He not only calls us to carefully contextualize our message to various cultures, sensibilities, and habits of heart, but he also gives us a host of practical tools, inventories, and guidelines for doing so. All the while he assumes and strengthens the foundational commitment to preaching Christ and his restoring grace from every text. A great contribution.”–Tim Keller, senior pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City “As a pastor/homiletician, Zack Eswine stands between the two worlds of the academy and the church, inviting biblical preachers to journey to the missional intersection where priest, prophet, and sage converge and converse. Navigating them through the turbulent waters of a post-everything culture, they arrive at the shore of homiletical hybridity: the terra firma of biblical revelation and contemporary relevance. Get on board!”–Robert Smith Jr., associate professor of divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
About the Author
Zack Eswine (PhD, Regent University) is assistant professor of homiletics and associate dean of ministry formation at Covenant Theological Seminary. He is the author of Kindled Fire: How the Methods of C. H. Spurgeon Can Help Your Preaching and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Product Description
There are many books that give preachers hints about engaging speaking or methods for creating sermons. This homiletics primer focuses not on the “how to” of preaching but on the theological foundation of the very act of preaching itself, introducing students and pastors to a thorough understanding of why they preach or will preach. Michael Pasquarello III takes a biblical and historical look at preaching, calling all preachers to think theologically, regardless of denomination, audience, or preaching style, when they proclaim the Word of God. Each chapter concludes with a sermon example that shows the practical way that such theology works itself into the pulpit.
From the Back Cover
“Michael Pasquarello III has written a ‘must read’ book articulating a trinitarian vision for preaching. His compelling argument is richly informed by traditional biblical hermeneutics, creedal history understood as storied attestation of the witness of Scripture, and liturgical theology and practice considered as embodied performance of the Bible’s divine narrative. Here is a clear summons to the church to abandon all lesser homiletic aims and to prayerfully and faithfully proclaim the Holy Gospel to the glory of God.”–Charles L. Bartow, Princeton Theological Seminary
“Like all of Michael Pasquarello’s work, his newest book not only upholds the classical Christian tradition but breathes new vitality into it. In an era in which preaching is reduced to persuasive communication, Pasquarello reminds us that the Christian message has a content that originates in and gives expression to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”–Richard Lischer, Duke Divinity School
“One of the refreshing things about this fine book by Michael Pasquarello is that, when he thinks about the ministry of preaching, he is not afraid to measure the breadth historically or to plumb the depth theologically. Pasquarello has written this book like a good sermon–faithfully, thoughtfully, prayerfully, and with a profound word to speak. We are in his debt.”–Thomas G. Long, Candler School of Theology
“Boldly challenging homiletical accommodation to American culture, Pasquarello seeks to change the subject of preaching from method and ‘marketing’ to the Triune God, who is the source and goal of our speech. A welcome theological vision of preaching.”–Charles L. Campbell, Columbia Theological Seminary
“Christian Preaching brings together two disciplines that have sadly grown apart such that they almost developed irreconcilable differences–preaching and theology. Pasquarello offers a brilliant critique of theology as technique and draws on the theology and sermons of Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and others, convincingly demonstrating that effective, pragmatic preaching requires substantive theological engagement (and vice versa). This book accomplishes its purpose so well that it should be used not only in preaching courses but also in basic theology courses. No preacher should be let loose on a congregation without passing through Pasquarello’s Christian Preaching.“–D. Stephen Long, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
About the Author
Michael Pasquarello III (PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is Granger E. and Anna A. Fisher Professor of Preaching at Asbury Theological Seminary and has more than twenty years of pastoral experience in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of Sacred Rhetoric: Preaching as a Theological and Pastoral Practice of the Church and the coeditor of Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation.
Product Description
Every Sunday all over the world people rise up and claim to speak in the name of God. It is an astonishing thing to do and an astonishing claim to make. It is small wonder that the sermon has been the focus of debate, discussion and investigation. It has been dismissed as irrelevant in today’s culture and has become the butt of numerous jokes and caricatures. Yet the claim persists that these human words in some way can become God’s message to these hearers. This collection of twenty-nine articles by international experts in the area of homiletics coincides with the revival of interest in preaching over the last twenty-five years. It is practical without being merely tips for preachers; and it offers the necessary theoretical discussion for anyone who wants to take the art of preaching seriously. No important issue has been omitted and, taken as a whole, the book constitutes a first class introduction to the principles, processes, context and theology of preaching.
About the Author
David Day was Principal of St John’s College with Cranmer Hall, Durham, where he established the Centre for Christian Communication and taught preaching and communication to Anglican and Methodist ordinands. He is the author of A Preaching Workbook. Jeff Astley is Director of the North of England Institute for Christian Education, and Honorary Professorial Fellow in Practical Theology and Christian Education in the University of Durham. He is the author of Ordinary Theology. Leslie Francis is Professor of Practical Theology in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Bangor. His series of books on ‘Personality Type and Scripture’ apply personality theory to exploring the Gospel readings in the Revised Common Lectionary.