Based on a decade's experience of preparing ministry students to become preachers and his own experience as one of today's most gifted preachers, Doug Gay offers an imaginative, practical and inspiring guide for all who are privileged with the task of preaching. 40 short, pithy and often humorous reflections consider different aspects of the nature and practice of preaching and aim to fire the imagination, build confidence and develop creativity. It draws on a wide range of range of writers and theologians on preaching and the creative arts and incorporates voices as diverse as Stanley Hauerwas, Sam Wells and Miles Davis.

Based on a decade's experience of preparing ministry students to become preachers and his own experience as one of today's most gifted preachers, Doug Gay offers an imaginative, practical and inspiring guide for all who are privileged with the task of preaching.

Doug Gay

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Dedication

Introduction

Part 1: Preaching

1.1 Finding the year

1.2 Naming the presence of God

1.3 What do you see?

1.4 Who do you see? 

1.5 Focus – what was the sermon about?

1.6 Function – what was the sermon doing?

1.7 Take them to the table

1.8 Take me to the water

1.9 When we come to die

1.10 God be in my mouth

Part 2: Reading

2.1 On learning to read

2.2 What are you reading?

2.3 Are you expository?

2.4 On having (and being) a hermeneutic

2.5 Converging literacies

2.6 Cues for the sermon

2.7 Working the verbs

2.8 Working the nouns

2.9 Losing control – knots in the text

2.10 Preach like Jacob

Part 3: Speaking

3.1 Beginnings and endings

3.2 Don’t preach like Jacob

3.3 Writing for the ear

3.4 How literary form informs the sermon

3.5 Preaching without a script

3.6 Preaching with a script

3.7 How long (has this been going on)

3.8 Feel it with me

3.9 Head, heart (gut), hand

3.10 Getting out of the way

Part 4: Living

4.1 Pathos – being human

4.2 Look at me when I’m talking to you

4.3 Ethos – trust me, I’m a preacher

4.4 It’s a gig

4.5 God is with you in the pulpit

4.6 God-talk – other ways to hear the word

4.7 Be preached to

4.8 Preaching in love

4.9 Logos − the mind of the preacher

4.10 How was it for you?

Conclusion

References and Bibliography

Based on a decade’s experience of preparing ministry students to become preachers and his own experience as one of today’s most gifted preachers, Doug Gay offers an imaginative, practical and inspiring guide for all who are privileged with the task of preaching. 40 short, pithy and often humorous reflections consider different aspects of the nature and practice of preaching and aim to fire the imagination, build confidence and develop creativity. It draws on a wide range of range of writers and theologians on preaching and the creative arts and incorporates voices as diverse as Stanley Hauerwas, Sam Wells and Miles Davis.

Based on a decade's experience of preparing ministry students to become preachers and his own experience as one of today's most gifted preachers, Doug Gay offers an imaginative, practical and inspiring guide for all who are privileged with the task of preaching. 40 short, pithy and often humorous reflections consider different aspects of the nature and practice of preaching and aim to fire the imagination, build confidence and develop creativity. It draws on a wide range of range of writers and theologians on preaching and the creative arts and incorporates voices as diverse as Stanley Hauerwas, Sam Wells and Miles Davis. Arranged in four parts, What is Preaching?, Learning to Read, Learning to Speak, Living and Preaching it includes topics such as: \* Finding your voice \* Naming the presence of God \* Knowing your people \* Knowing you place and time \* Preaching as nourishment \* Knotty texts \* Wrestling your own blessing from the text \* Choosing the best words \* Preaching without notes \* Preaching from a script \* Putting your heart and your head into preaching \* Getting out of God's way and more.

DOUG GAY is a Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow and has taught preaching to ministry students for the past ten years. He is a Church of Scotland minister, has worked as a columnist for the Times, and is author of Remixing the Church (SCM) and co-author with Jonny Baker of Alternative Worship (SPCK).

• Nurture and practical wisdom for seasoned preachers and beginners alike. • Based on ten year's practical experience of teaching ministry students • The author is a popular figure at Greenbelt and in the emergent church networks

Based on a decade's experience of preparing ministry students to become preachers and his own experience as one of today's most gifted preachers, Doug Gay offers an imaginative, practical and inspiring guide for all who are privileged with the task of preaching. 40 short, pithy and often humorous reflections consider different aspects of the nature and practice of preaching and aim to fire the imagination, build confidence and develop creativity. It draws on a wide range of range of writers and theologians on preaching and the creative arts and incorporates voices as diverse as Stanley Hauerwas, Sam Wells and Miles Davis. Arranged in four parts, What is Preaching?, Learning to Read, Learning to Speak, Living and Preaching it includes topics such as: • Finding your voice • Naming the presence of God • Knowing your people • Preaching as nourishment • Wrestling your own blessing from the text • Choosing the best words

Doug Gay opens up the art and sacrament of preaching. And he doesn't just open it, he inhabits it. This is a book that deepens the practice of language in public.

Gay's book of short reflections on the preacher's calling and craft is engaging and recommendable. A beatitudes-inspired baptism homily included here is delightful ('blessed are babies who cry when they need to...'); and a funeral eulogy for a close friend is profound. This is one to return to.

This is one of the most stimulating and refreshing books on preaching that I have read in years. The book is divided into four sections: Preaching – Reading – Speaking – Living. In 40 bite-sized chapters Doug Gay provides a fast-moving feast of homiletic tapas. Years of thinking about preaching and teaching preachers are carefully distilled into a brief but substantial primer for preachers. The book teaches so many helpful lessons, delights with many well presented examples, and persuades the reader to develop a more varied preaching palette. Along the way, the author introduces the reader to some of the preachers and thinkers who have helped preachers over the years (it was great see a chapter inspired by Samuel Wells; an undervalued national treasure). Peppered with some of the best ideas about preaching, the book includes Tom Long's brilliant, and deceptively simple concepts: focus and function. Doug Gay has not written an exhaustive book on preaching but he has liberally scattered numerous highly suggestive ideas that like seeds, which if allowed to take root, might just prove to be very fruitful. If you are a preacher buy this book and read it. If you love your pastor, buy this book and give him it as a gift...worth every penny!

\["For Church leaders and teachers","This book with teach you to preach with conviction and clarity","You'll be equipped with purpose and passion to share deep, Godly truths"\]

Giving you 40 distinct ways to grow in you preaching style and content, this guide is useful and immediately applicable

God Be in My Mouth

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