Ministry

Christ's sheep need shepherding. That's where you come in.
With more than 60 years of ministry between them, Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford have come to understand that everything in ministry--even administration, leadership, and planning--revolves around the ancient tradition of the care of souls. Pastors are entrusted with the care of a flock by the Good Shepherd and are called to be faithful to this task. But pastoring seems to be getting more and more difficult.

Based on a sound theological framework, Senkbeil and Woodford present a set of practical tools for church leadership and strategy. Calling on their vast experience, they encourage pastors to protect, guide, and feed their flock as Jesus would, bridging the eternal wisdom of the word of God with the everyday practicality of hands-on leadership. Originally published as Church Leadership & Strategy, this revision includes a new chapter and litany.

This collection of sermons by noted homileticians illustrates thirty-four distinct styles of contemporary and traditional preaching.

Your work as a pastor can make it easy to overlook the deep needs of your own soul. These 43 questions and answers, written to reflect the format of historic catechisms, seek to provide nourishment for weary pastors in the thick of ministry. Each chapter features content designed to care for your spiritual health, feeding your mind and heart with life-giving truth aimed at helping you press on in ministry with endurance, contentment, and joy.

Long argues that the literary form and dynamics of biblical texts can and should make a difference in the kinds of sermons created from those texts, not only because of what the texts say but because of how they say it. He presents a methodology for taking the literary characteristics of biblical texts into account in the text-to-sermon process and then applies that methodology in separate chapters on preaching on psalms, proverbs, narratives, parables, and epistles.

There's a seemingly innocuous villain that is taking up residence in the pulpits of countless churches, disrupting the connection between the pastor and the people and keeping the proclamation of God's word from having its full effect. That villain is the preacher's notes. Preachers know this all too well. Many wish that they could ""preach by heart"" without the aid of notes, but are unsure how to do so--and are left feeling frustrated and discouraged by the presence of that disruptive interloper. Author Ryan Tinetti shares an unexpected solution in the form of an ancient and time-tested practice known as the method of loci, or Memory Palace. Surveying portions of classical rhetoric that are especially relevant for contemporary preachers and diving deep into the theory and practice of the Memory Palace, Preaching by Heart plunders these ancient treasures that have been so formative for preachers through the ages but too oft neglected in our own time. When pastors preach by heart, they find greater satisfaction in the homiletic task and their proclamation is even more effective. Preaching by Heart shows how to pitch the notes and reach that goal.

Preaching is arguably the most important work of the Christian pastor. Multiple contexts surround the sermon and impact the sermon, even when the preacher is unaware of them. Homileticians may identify as many as seven preaching contexts: theological, literary, historical, personal, cultural, pastoral, and liturgical. The last of these is the primary focus of this book. This book provides essays that will help professors prepare students for preaching in the context of the Church Year, Divine Service, and parish concerns, in addition to helping pastors renew their efforts toward sound liturgical preaching.

Inspired by real-world events and experiences - real-world challenges - Prep Talks is a collection of fictional accounts that address critical issues in contemporary education, providing school leaders with studies they can use for professional staff development so educators can better prepare for and address the challenges of being a Christian school in the modern world.

Proclaiming the Parables contains a general discussion of the term parable, followed by a thorough exegetical, textual, and homiletical study of five parables: Mark 4:26-29 (Parable of the Growing Seed), Matthew 21:28-32 (Parable of the Two Sons), Luke 13:6-9 (Parable of the Fig Tree), Luke 18:1-8 (Parable of the Persistent Widow), and Luke 16:1-13 (Parable of the Shrewd Manager)

Each outline can be used as a basis for a powerful, meaningful message on God's kingdom. The strength of this book is its sincere and constructive endeavor to demonstrate the positive, affirmative use of biblical scholarship and how such scholarship can give new depth and substance to the scriptural message of redemption and the proclamation of God's kingdom.

Concordia Publishing House introduces a collection spanning 50 years of sermons by master homiletician, Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel. This book offers pastors an opportunity to closely examine Nagel's rich use of the English language to couple illustrations and biblical insight, as well as deliver the imaginative phrases, quotes, and stories that made his sermons memorable and enriching. The collection covers sermons from 1949 to 1999, including his years in London, England, and at Cambridge, Valparaiso University, Holden Village, and Concordia Seminary, his alma mater.