Text message: preaching scripture in the multimedia age

Preaching has fallen on hard times with many questioning its relevance and even its validity as a New Testament practice.

This symposium of specially commissioned essays draws together an international team of thirteen scholars and pastors to address the importance of textual preaching in the history and life of the early church, the historic church, and the contemporary church.

Contributions include essays on Old Testament preaching; preaching in Eastern Orthodoxy; gender-sensitive preaching; and preaching in the theology of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

It also includes essays on a range of homiletical challenges that textual preaching raises for the contemporary preacher, including genre, preaching without notes, inhabiting the text, and preaching without platitudes.

A final reflection by Dave Hansen on the state of textual preaching rounds out the collection.