A Retirement Message from the Editor

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Black Feminist Triptych

Two driving features of Black feminism are care and collectivity. This article considers them as vectors for Christian preaching. I focus on a specific speech event that involves Alice Walker, Angela Davis, and June Jordan, and treat it as a case study for Black feminist preaching. Ultimately, I propose a triptych approach to preaching that entails layering sermonic messages, accommodating dissonance, and foregrounding mutuality.

Eric C. Miller and Jonathan J. Edwards, eds., Rhetoric of the Protestant Sermon in America: Pulpit Discourse at the Turn of the Millennium

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David Ward, Practicing the Preaching Life

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The Crisis of Preaching Politics: Homiletical Insights from the Young Karl Barth

Many contemporary preachers and homileticians address what they believe to be a “crisis” of preaching. Without denying these claims, this essay offers theological and homiletical insights from the young Karl Barth on what he believed to be a more fundamental and pervasive homiletical crisis subsuming all others. Just what this crisis was for Barth becomes clearer when we look to the sociopolitical commitments of two of Barth’s pastoral mentors: Friedrich Naumann and Christoph Blumhardt. Drawing from his theologico-political discernment leading up to the Great War, Barth offers us ways to challenge unjust and oppressive policies and systems through our preaching ministries today.

Cleophus J. LaRue and Luiz C. Nascimento, The Future Shape of Christian Proclamation: What the Global South Can Teach Us About Preaching

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The Personal Presence of the Preacher in Preaching: An Explorative Study on Self-Disclosure in Sermons at Pentecost

How does self-disclosure work in preaching? This study explores that question empirically, using a variety of data collection methods such as sermon analysis, focus groups, and interviews. Self-disclosure is an ambiguous concept in homiletical and theological literature, and it remains an ambiguous concept when considered from an empirical approach. Our focus is on how self-disclosure works brings to the fore three different homiletical processes: negotiating homiletical space, shaping the homiletical relationship, and performing self-disclosure. This study argues that researching implicit self-disclosure provides a better, though more complex, way of understanding the public presence of the preacher, than an analysis of the explicit use of the first pronoun “I” in preaching.

Joni S. Sancken, Words That Heal: Preaching Hope to Wounded Souls

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Gayle Fisher-Stewart, ed., Preaching Black Lives (Matter)

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