"Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery do a wonderful job of encouraging students to think of preaching as dancing on the grave of despair. They model the kind of collaboration they hope students will use in learning this sacred task from one another. Few preaching books address so well the issue of diversity in the classroom, and fresh winds blow though this one in part because of the robust theology of the Spirit the authors sing about. They make it difficult for readers not to join them in song."
Ways of the Word: Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place
Preaching, and the discipline of preaching, is at a crossroads. The changing realities of church and theological education, the diversity of our classrooms, and our increasingly complex community contexts leave us in search of tools to help train a rising generation of preachers for a future whose contours are far from clear. The questions are immense: How to support preachers in contexts that are diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, both inside and outside the church? How to help students take varied contexts seriously as they are formed as leaders?
In Ways of the Word, a dynamic team of master preachers brings much-needed help. Different in race, gender, age, and tradition, both Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery speak with one voice their belief that preaching is an Spirit-empowered event: an embodied, vocalized, actively received, here-and-now witness to the ongoing work of God in the world.
They aspire to help students and preachers alike to reflect on a journey of learning by doing. They aim to help preachers to become more attuned to the Spirit, more adept in preaching's component skills, and more self-aware about all that is at stake in proclaiming the redemptive work of God in specific contexts.
- Publisher Fortress Press
- Format Paperback
- ISBN 9780800699222
- eBook ISBN 9781506410302
- Dimensions 6 x 9
- Pages 284
- Publication Date April 1, 2016
Endorsements
Paul Scott Wilson | Emmanuel College, University of Toronto
"Ways of the Word is a groundbreaking textbook. In response to changing demographics in the classroom and growing diversity in homiletics, Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery recognize that no single-voiced guide will do. Instead, they offer a creative, dialogical book that models homiletical conversation and makes room for many traditions and voices. Deeply theological and profoundly practical, Ways of the Word invites both preaching students and experienced pastors into spirit-animated proclamation grounded in prayer, worship, and Scripture."
Charles Campbell | Duke Divinity School
"The theological claim of Word made flesh suggests that embodied preaching should be what we do, yet few books take this premise seriously in executing a homiletic for today's changing contexts of preaching. Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery assume the incarnation with passion and promise, building a way of approaching the homiletical task that has 'learning-by-doing' at its core. In this significant contribution, the power of the embodied Word rings with inspired newness and revelation into the vast diversities of our world."
Karoline M. Lewis | Luther Seminary
"In a time when homiletics is at a crossroads, Ways of the Word models in the diversity of its authorship and the resulting relevancy of its methodology, homiletical wisdom that crosses traditions and communities for creative and powerful twenty-first century preaching. A must read for both novice and experienced preachers."
Frank A. Thomas | Christian Theological Seminary