Preaching in the Purple Zone is a resource for helping the church understand the challenges facing parish pastors, while encouraging and equipping preachers to address the vital justice issues of our time.This book provides practical instruction for navigating the hazards of prophetic preaching with tested strategies and prudent tactics grounded in biblical and theological foundations. Key to this endeavor is using a method of civil discourse called “deliberative dialogue” for finding common values among politically diverse parishioners. Unique to this book is instruction on using the sermon-dialogue-sermon process developed by the author that expands the pastor’s level of engagement on justice issues with parishioners beyond the single sermon. This book equips clergy to help their congregations respectfully engage in deliberation about “hot topics,” find the values that bind them together, and respond faithfully to God’s Word.

This book examines the impact of white racialization in homiletics. The first section, Racial Hegemony, interrogates the white, colonial bias of Euro-American homiletical practice, pedagogy, and theory with particular attention to the intersection of preaching and racialization. The second section, Resistance and Possibilities, contributes diverse critical homiletical approaches emerging in conversation with racially-minoritized scholarship and racially subjugated knowledge and practice. By reading this book, preachers and professors of preaching will encounter alternative, non-dominant homiletical pathways toward a more just future for the church and the world.

Different ethical situations require different homiletical responses. John McClure organizes recent literature on ethics and preaching into four ethical approaches. Does your situation require public moral leadership? Then a communicative ethic is best. Does your situation require the development of countercultural moral character? Then a witness ethic is best. Does your situation require ethical consciousness-raising and organizing for social justice? Then a liberationist ethic is best. Does your situation require genuine moral conversation and the discernment of shared commitments in spite of our differences? Then a hospitality ethic is best. Each ethical approach is briefly and carefully explored, correlated with appropriate contexts and situations, and demonstrated with model sermons. The result is a useful handbook for quickly discerning what ethical approach is needed, how to preach that approach, and what to expect as a result.

Preaching to Teach merges the related functions of preaching and teaching, and equips the reader to accomplish both. Preachers stand up to speak each week in challenging times to unsettled congregations. Each week seems to bring a new difficult subject: mass shootings and other forms of violence; hard conversations around race, ethnicity, and multi-religious contexts; immigration; poverty; climate change; foreign and domestic terrorism; and bickering about it all on social media. Preachers are hungry for ways to envision the work of preaching in these times, as well as for tools that will help them speak to difficult and contentious topics. In a divided and weary world, preachers struggle with the choice of any number of “images” to describe their preaching identity. Responding to social crisis after social crisis, preachers most often lean toward the roles of pastor, prophet, or somewhere on the spectrum in between the two. Juggling between these images and their associated roles on a week-to-week basis can be exhausting. But there is an ancient image of the preacher that may help: the preacher as teacher. The image of teacher has traditionally focused on content and rhetorical aspects of preaching: the preacher is conveying information, modeling theological reasoning, or effecting a certain pulpit style. But rather than focusing on traditional concepts of teaching to determine the content, form, style, or delivery of sermons, the field of critical pedagogy (represented by notable figures such as Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and bell hooks) offers a way of re-envisioning the preacher-as-teacher. Recasting the preacher-as-teacher through the lens of critical pedagogy grounds the image of teacher in an ethical framework, inviting preachers to redefine their public roles, stand in relationships of solidarity with communities of faith, break the silences of taboos, tackle tough issues, and re-imagine the world in the shape of the kingdom of God.

Few vocations share more in common with preaching than stand-up comedy. Each profession demands attention to the speaker’s bodily and facial gestures, tone and inflection, timing, and thoughtful engagement with contemporary contexts. Furthermore, both preaching and stand-up arise out of creative tension with homiletic or comedic traditions, respectively. Every time the preacher steps into the pulpit or the comedian steps onto the stage, they must measure their words and gestures against their audience’s expectations and assumptions. They participate in a kind of dance that is at once choreographed and open to improvisation. It is these and similar commonalities between preaching and stand-up comedy that this book engages. Stand-Up Preaching does not aim to help preachers tell better jokes. The focus of this book is far more expansive. Given the recent popularity of comedy specials, preachers have greater access to a broad array of emerging comics who showcase fresh comedic styles and variations on comedic traditions. Coupled with the perennial Def Comedy Jams on HBO, preachers also have ready access to the work of classic comics who have exhibited great storytelling and stage presence. This book will offer readers tools to discern what is homiletically significant in historical and contemporary stand-up routines, equipping them with fresh ways to riff off of their respective preaching traditions, and nuanced ways to engage issues of contemporary sociopolitical importance.

Coauthored by a homiletician, a theologian, and a biblical scholar, this book is a preaching primer that provides tools for crafting effective, engaging, and inspiring sermons. Using a unique workbook-style format, Introduction to Preaching equips seminarians and preachers to use appropriate theological claims informed by solid biblical interpretation while providing several sample sermons from the authors. Readers will learn how to use a three-part schema—the Central Question, the Central Claim, and the Central Purpose—to provide the drive, direction, and destination for the sermon. Offering guidelines for using appropriate sermon forms, imagery, metaphors, and creativity, together with advice on how to deliver contextually relevant sermons using our bodies, presence, and voice make this a staple for both new and experienced preachers. Introduction to Preaching includes a chapter on exploring the space of preaching, including onsite and online sermons. In addition, it features charts and worksheets to help organize the sermon-writing process, as well as exercises for the preacher’s voice and body and tips for advice for guest preachers and supply preachers. A glossary of terms and an extensive bibliography make this a handy reference guide for students and all preachers.

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.