The Senses Of Preaching

Written in conversational style, The Senses of Preaching is a thought-provoking book using anecdotes to take a careful look at the relationship between preachers and congregations. Thomas Long provides insight into faith and life as well as preaching and homiletics. He offers preachers a better understanding of the whole concept of their craft and complements it with sermon-starter ideas. This compact volume shows preachers how to develop and implement a preaching experience that encourages the hearing of the gospel.

Most preaching and teaching in the church engages only one of the senses—hearing. In The Power of Multisensory Preaching and Teaching, Rick Blackwood shows how recognizing and engaging the multiple senses of the congregation can lead to greater impact. Blackwood presents both biblical evidence and scientific research showing that the more senses we stimulate in teaching and preaching, the greater the levels of learner attention, comprehension, and retention. Blackwood addresses both the “why” and the “how” of multisensory communication. Regardless of one’s current skill level, this practical book can help anyone add multi-sensory elements to messages in order to take communication to the next level—more compelling, clear, and memorable. As a result of reading this book readers can be more effective as a communicator and teacher. The book includes tools, examples, and worksheets.

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Preaching was immensely important in the medieval Church, and Thomas Aquinas expended much time and effort preaching. Today, however, Aquinas’s sermons remain relatively unstudied and underappreciated. This is largely because their sermo modernus style, typical of the thirteenth century, can appear odd and inaccessible to the modern reader. In Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas, Randall Smith guides the reader through Aquinas’s sermons, explaining their form and content. In the process, one comes to appreciate the sermons in their rhetorical brilliance, beauty, and profound spiritual depth while simultaneously being initiated into a fascinating world of thought concerning Scripture, language, and the human mind. The book also includes analytical outlines for all of Aquinas’s extant sermons. Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide is an indispensable volume for those interested in the thought of Aquinas, in the intellectual and spiritual milieu in which he worked, and in the manifold ways of preaching the Gospel message.

An examination of what it means to "preach the Word" in the context of Anglican ministry.

This is a newly revised edition of one of the standard introductory preaching textbooks on the market today. Beginning with a solid theological basis, veteran preacher and best-selling author Thomas G. Long offers a practical, step-by-step guide to writing a sermon. Long centers his approach around the biblical concept of witness. To be a preacher, Long posits, is to be a witness to God's work in the worldone who sees before speaking, one whose task is to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what is seen." This updated edition freshens up language and anecdotes, contains an extensive new analysis of the use of multimedia and its impact on preaching, and adds a completely new chapter on plagiarism in preaching. Included for the first time are four complete sermons, with Long's commentary and analysis. The sermons were written and originally preached by Barbara Brown Taylor, Cleophus J. LaRue. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, and Edmund Steimle. With this third edition, The Witness of Preaching reaffirms itself as the essential resource for seminary students as well as new and experienced preachers.

The widening of political, racial, generational, and religious differences leads too often to an "us vs. them" mentality. The Sacred Overlap communicates a refreshing vision that embraces tension and shows us how to live in radical love and faithfulness between the extremes that isolate and divide people. The gospels display how Jesus was committed to crossing the either/or waters of the cultural and societal wars of his day. His miracles and parables often broke or ignored religious and political lines that seemed all important. He comforted the disturbed and disturbed the comfortable. Using Jesus' example, J. R. Briggs offers a fresh and relevant understanding of evangelism and discipleship in our present time of extreme polarization. Without sacrificing biblical integrity, The Sacred Overlap is a joyful exploration of the complexity of life in the peace of Christ. With careful discernment, Briggs: Shares creative ways to engage with God's mission of ministering to those who are intrigued by Jesus but turned off by church. Explores what it means to be joyful in the midst of heart-wrenching pain and earthly suffering. Models what it means to maintain a posture of convicted civility which emphasizes both grace and truth. The Sacred Overlap helps readers see how Christians are called to live with their feet firmly planted in two different worlds—in both heaven and earth—living naturally with both the sacred and the ordinary. Only then can a Christian be a faithful witness and disciple of Jesus.

In The Visual Preacher: Proclaiming an Embodied Word, Steve Thomason's winsomely illustrated text shows preachers basic principles and visual techniques to create and use images that will make them even more effective communicators than they already are. Preachers need not be skilled artists or technological wizards to apply Thomason's ideas.

By focusing attention on the importance of preaching, this book should spur a fundamental reconsideration of 'scholastic' culture and education.

Follow God's process for growth and find hope in life's darkest moments with Bishop T.D. Jakes' uplifting stories and advice from his own faith journey. In this insightful book, #1 New York Times bestselling author T.D. Jakes wrestles with age-old questions: Why do the righteous suffer? Where is God in all the injustice? In his most personal offering yet, Bishop Jakes tells crushing stories from his own journey -- the painful experience of learning his young teenage daughter was pregnant, the agony of watching his mother succumb to Alzheimer's, and the shock and helplessness he felt when his son had a heart attack. Bishop Jakes wants to show you how God uses difficult, crushing experiences to prepare you for unexpected blessings. If you are faithful through suffering, you will be surprised by God's joy, comforted by His peace, and fulfilled with His purpose. Crushing will inspire you to have hope, even in your most difficult moments. If you trust in God and lean on Him during setbacks, He will lead you through.