Kindling Desire for God: Preaching As Spiritual Direction

The discipline of preaching has undergone several evolutionary moments in the past century, focusing on its purpose as being variously persuasion, explanation, and, most recently, communication. Of particular and lingering influence has been Harry Emerson Fosdick's "preaching as counseling" model, which urged therapeutic, individualistic methods upon the pastor. In the search for a model of preaching that is apt for our postmodern moment, Kay Northcutt respectfully eschews these earlier models and suggests that the "what" of preaching should consist in spiritual formation or the practice of "spiritual direction" - pointing listeners to God. Taking an evocative, rather than "how-to," approach, Northcutt notes the gaps created by these earlier models and makes a case not only for framing preaching as an "attractive art" but also for understanding the preacher's authority as particularly religious in nature. By demonstrating the dynamics of her model of preaching as spiritual direction, the author provides readers with a new paradigm for developing their own homiletical discipline.