With the sensitivity born of time and experience, Charles Hoffacker presents an unusually warm and caring approach to preaching at a pivotal transition in human life, one which goes to the very heart of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Hoffacker teaches the reader, whether a seasoned preacher or a novice homilist, to find the key to unlocking the mystery of Jesus' promise of eternal life in a mortal life now ended.

“Reading of God's silence in the Bible gives me courage to explore the practice of restraint in preaching-not as a deliberate withholding of God's word nor, I hope, as a rationale for my own reticence, but as a sober reaching for more reverence in the act of public speaking about God.”In these 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures in Preaching delivered at Yale Divinity School, Barbara Brown Taylor focuses on the task of those who preach and those who hear sermons in a world where people thi...

Sermon Outlines for Today's Busy PastorToday, pastors are busier than ever, with more time spent in ministry activities and less time spent in sermon preparation. Sermon Outlines for Busy Pastors: Volume 1 gives the busy pastor a head start on sermon preparation. With 52 complete sermon outlines, pastors can save hundreds of hours a year, with the base research and layout for a year's worth of sermons already in place.Here's some advantages...

What if Charles Spurgeon helped you prepare next Sunday’s sermon?Or what if you could talk over your preaching with Joseph Parker, Richard Baxter, Henry Ward Beecher and H. P. Liddon. Do you think it would make a difference to get the input of some of the greatest preachers who ever lived?That’s precisely what Joseph Exell had in mind when he put together the massive series of volumes called The Biblical Illustrator. In what can only be called a Herculean feat, he spent yea...

The Purpose of this Busy Pastors Sermon Guide:Greetings to my fellow laborers of the Gospel. As a Senior Pastor, I found it difficult at times to have well prepared messages each week. As you know, a Pastor's time is stretched. At times, new ideas and thoughts are hard to develop as our minds are often full of the cares of the church. Sunday Morning Volume 1 is a Busy Pastors Sermon Guide for pastors looking for sermon ideas or outlines. Sermons are easier to prepare if you have th...

Church education programs for children often substitute children's Bibles for Holy Scripture and simple moralism for imagination. Gretchen Wolff Pritchard shows how to offer the gospel imaginatively to children, with practical ideas on children's worship, liturgy, drama, pastoral care, and study of the Bible. The final chapter includes an exhaustive annotated bibliography of children's books for the parish library, and resources for parents and teachers.

Advent-the season in which we prepare for the coming of the Savior-provokes a certain ambivalence among modern believers. We know that Christ has come in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth, and we live anticipating his return, knowing that our true home is one which he has gone ahead to prepare for us. In the meantime, we are left living between those two worlds. Moorehead uses the witness of the scriptures, her wealth of experience in long years of ministry, and the wisdom of her ...

Preaching about the cross of Christ is one of the greatest privileges and responsibilities any preacher can have! The four Gospel writers who wrote about the cross of Christ and the events leading up to it, did so in their own unique way. Each interpreting the events through the lens of different Old Testament Scriptures and each emphasising different themes. Based on his own sermons preached over a number of years at All Souls Church in London, Christopher Wright explores the rich variety...

Offering a fresh approach to homiletics, David J. Schlafer provides an invitation to preaching by way of metaphor. Starting with the fire of Scripture, and engaging in the work of preaching as play, Schlafer offers new ways of approaching the preaching moment. Taking into account the preacher's call, the stages of preparation, the role of the congregation, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of it all, we discover that playing with fire is a sacred act indeed.Two metap...

This long-awaited companion volume to Howard E. Galley's classic The Ceremonies of the Eucharist provides clergy, liturgical assistants, and altar guild members with clear, step-by-step guidance for the liturgies of Lent and Easter. In addition to background material for the traditions and theology of each season, Mitchell includes specific preparations and instructions for each liturgy of the paschal cycle-Ash Wednesday through Pentecost-as well as Tenebrae, the Way of the Cross,...

How can we proclaim justice for God's Creation in the face of global warming? How does fracking fit with "the earth and its fullness are the Lord's?" Creation-Crisis Preaching works with the premise that all of Creation, including humankind, needs to hear the Good News of Jesus' resurrection in this age in which humanity is "crucifying" Creation. Informed by years of experience as an environmental activist and minister, Leah Schade equips preachers to interpret the Bible through a...

Live, Listen, Tell: The Art of Preaching will guide readers through the process of sermon preparation and hearing God through the Scriptures. By drawing on life and Scripture, especially the road to Emmaus narrative in Luke 24, the author illustrates that preachers are living a story, listening to a story and telling a story. This book encourages you to pay particular attention, through prayer, to the story to which you are listening. Geoff New shows how to prayerfully listen to the Script...