eBook-The Renewed Homiletic
The major shift in the study and practice of preaching in the 1970s and 1980s, labeled the New Homiletic, turned toward the hearer. The purpose of preaching focused less on persuasion and more on transformation, less on asserting religious truths and more on offering an experience of the gospel. Instead of viewing language as referential, its creative, evocative nature began to be emphasized. Thus homiletical strategies utilizing induction, celebration, story, narrative structures, and moves replaced a deductive, propositional approach to preaching.
Now three-and-a-half decades after this shift began, preachers recognize that the homiletical landscape has continued to evolve in ways that influence how preaching ought to be done—for example, the rise of postmodernity, the decline of the mainline church, cultural pluralism, and biblical and theological illiteracy.
Those considered to be the pillars of the New Homiletic—David Buttrick, Fred Craddock, Eugene Lowry, Henry Mitchell, and Charles Rice—discuss how to change their homiletical approach for a new day. Each of these distinguished scholars offers a lecture describing how his mind has changed, preaches a sermon reflecting these changes, and participates in a panel discussion with younger respondents.
