Determining the Form: Structures for Preaching (Elements of Preaching)

This fifth title in the Elements of Preaching series offers preaching students and clergy an overview of some of the most common sermonic forms and provides insights for determining which forms are most - and least - amenable to the claim that they want to make in their sermon. Many, if not most, sermons wind up being somewhat formless and thus less effective than they might be in communicating the gospel. Rather than training students in a single rhetorical form, this volume will demonstrate a variety of options without advocating for any particular form.

Accomplished preachers can think of rhetorical strategy in a nuanced manner, but beginning preachers are well-served by having a knapsack of simple sermonic forms they can turn to when building a sermon out of a sermonic claim. This book will offer preachers a strong foundation in considering sermonic form and a handful of basic, reliable rhetorical structures to use in the pulpit.

• The Witness of Preaching, Third Edition
• Delivering the Sermon: Voice, Body, and Animation in Proclamation (Elements of Preaching) (Elements of Preaching)
• Interpreting the Bible: Approaching the Text in Preparation for Preaching (Elements of Preaching)
• Preaching on Your Feet: Connecting God and The Audience in the Preachable Moment
• Shaping the Claim: Moving from Text to Sermon (Elements of Preaching)
• The Six Deadly Sins of Preaching: Becoming Responsible for the Faith We Proclaim
• Birthing the Sermon: Women Preachers on the Creative Process
• Thinking Theologically: The Preacher As Theologian (Elements of Preaching)
• Ways of the Word: Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place
• Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible