Conflict stories appear throughout the Synoptic Gospels, and although they are familiar and dramatic, the stories are particularly challenging for pastors to interpret and teach. In this book, David Buttrick delves into each conflict story, analyzing the particular controversy at hand and highlighting problems that these passages pose for preachers--including anti-Jewish attitudes in the text. As he moves through each story, he helps readers correct long-standing biases, shows how many of these controversies are still with us, and provides sample sermons to demonstrate how these stories might be preached more effectively.

Once again, renowned homiletician David Buttrick has written a highly practical book that conveys and makes contagious his excitement for the theological task of preaching. In "Speaking Jesus," Buttrick delineates the theological issues inherent in the Sermon on the Mount and presents a homiletical strategy for preaching its meaning and relevance. In Part One, Buttrick gives a general overview of the text and raises central theological issues imperative to its preaching, particularly the authenticity of Jesus' words and the sermon's relevance for today. In Part Two, he offers his commentary on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, provides suggestions for preaching, and includes some of his own sermons as examples.

David Buttrick provides an introduction to the parables with a discussion of particular homiletical issues preachers face in interpreting parables. "Speaking Parables" includes commentary on thirty-three different parables with suggestions for preaching each one.

The image of the kingdom of God has all but disappeared in preaching today. Here, David Buttrick critiques the state of the church, society, and preaching today and discusses Old and New Testament understandings of the rule of God, the presence of the kingdom, and the tensions between kingdom and church.

In "A Captive Voice," David Buttrick encourages pastors to look afresh at the Bible, church, culture, and Christian identity in order to answer the question of how to preach. Buttrick examines the renewal of ecclesiology in the mid-twentieth century, a time when the high-hung pulpits were scaled down as preaching came to be seen as a conversation among friends in Christ. While this was a positive development, Buttrick argues that preaching must now become the articulation of our common faith, a speaking from the Spirit we all possess.

Buttrick presents a complete homiletic that focuses on how sermons form in consciousness and how the language of preaching functions in the communal consciousness of a congregation. His "phenomenological" approach marks a sharp departure from older homiletics.