Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons That Connect with Our Culture
Overview
Do you think a postmodern audience may render your preaching post-relevant? Think again. Zack Eswine takes you through the nuts and bolts—and the heart and soul—of engaging today’s multicultural society with compelling messages from the pulpit. Such preaching, however, requires more than just contextualizing the message.
Using this comprehensive and practical guide will help you to preach God’s truth without compromising doctrine or ignoring the faithful. Eswine shows how God’s own interactions with humanity model relevant preaching and offers fresh, field-tested insights into the application of homiletics. Valuable appendixes detail steps to an effective sermon and provide questions for assessing cultural developments with spiritual discernment.
Whether a new or experienced speaker, in church leadership or in parachurch ministry, you can make an impact on the rising global village—starting now.
The Logos edition of this work on preaching is fully searchable and easily accessible. Scripture passages link directly to your English translations and to the original language texts, and important theological concepts link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the wealth of resources in your digital library.
- Explores how to preach effectively in a postmodern era
- Discusses contemporary issues and how they can affect preaching
- Part 1: Prepare the Sermon for a Post-Everything World
- Preach What Is Real
- Preach What Is Redemptive
- Preach the Stories
- Remember Where You’ve Been
- Part 2: Explore Biblical Models for a Post-Everything World
- Follow God’s Lead
- Find a Prophetic Edge
- Try on a Priestly Paradigm
- Speak like a Sage
- Step Outside
- Part 3: Engage the Cultures of a Post-Everything World
- Account for the Accents
- Handle the War Passages in an Age of Terror
- Learn to Speak about Hell
- Detect Idol Talk
- Discern Devilish Spin
- Cry Out for the Holy Spirit
- Clean the Dish and Light the Candle
Top Highlights
“Identify those areas of reality that a preacher does not talk about and you will discover those spheres of reality that people are daily trying to navigate without the light of God’s Word.” (Page 30)
“Evictions remove people from their places. The creation and cultural settings of the biblical text are overlooked, and the biblical text is preached as if the nature, towns, cities, rivers, and lands mentioned in the text do not exist or are irrelevant to a powerful message. The result is that sermons regularly offer placeless and creation-empty messages to people.” (Page 35)
“Once we’ve located the big idea for the narrative, then we try to identify the Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) by locating a person’s circumstances, words, or actions in the story that display the finite, fallen, faltering, or fragile conditions of human beings.” (Page 64)
“How does one reach people with the gospel without undoing the gospel?” (Page 12)
“Preachers who desire to cross the bend of a post-everything world must learn again to pray, to fast, to find quiet before God, to find the pleasure of his company and the provision of his power.” (Page 18)
Zack Eswine moves the Christ-centered preaching movement forward with this volume. He not only calls us to carefully contextualize our message to various cultures, sensibilities, and habits of heart, but he also gives us a host of practical tools, inventories, and guidelines for doing so. All the while he assumes and strengthens the foundational commitment to preaching Christ and his restoring grace from every text. A great contribution.
—Tim Keller, senior pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City
As a pastor/homiletician, Zack Eswine stands between the two worlds of the academy and the church, inviting biblical preachers to journey to the missional intersection where priest, prophet, and sage converge and converse. Navigating them through the turbulent waters of a post-everything culture, they arrive at the shore of homiletical hybridity: the terra firma of biblical revelation and contemporary relevance. Get on board!
—Robert Smith Jr., professor of divinity and Christian preaching, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
Preaching to a Post-Everything World not only offers valuable resources and counsel for biblical preaching in the twenty-first century, it regularly confronts preachers with the probing questions they must ask of themselves and their own ministries if they are to proclaim God’s Word with effectiveness and power today. This is a book that deserves a spot on each preacher’s bookshelf.
—Preaching.com
- Title: Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons That Connect with Our Culture
- Author: Zack Eswine
- Publisher: Baker
- Print Publication Date: 2008
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Pages: 288
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible › Homiletical use; Preaching; Postmodernism › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781441255907, 9780801091940, 1441255907, 0801091942
- Resource ID: LLS:PREACHPSTWRLD
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:22:29Z