While everyone might affirm that preaching needs to engage its listeners deeply, the initial move for novice preachers is to think this can be attained by livelier content and delivery of the sermon. All too quickly, however, one learns that there are many factors beyond what a preacher says and how she or he may say it that affect whether proclamation can actually be heard. Effective preaching requires the complex work of knowing the context in which preaching occurs, while avoiding the twin dangers of pandering to a situation's particulars or generalizing them into stereotypes. Knowing the Context reveals how to engage contexts for preaching, especially ways to examine contexts more responsibly, so that the sermon might more amply bring the word of Scripture to bear on the worlds and lives of listeners. In one of the initial titles in the Elements of Preaching series, James Nieman shows how preaching is oriented to specific locales, cultural situations, audiences, and occasions. Unlike other books that tell preachers how to preach to specific audiences, Knowing the Context helps readers analyze the situations in which they find themselves and shows how text and context are in a continuing dialogue and how to tailor sermons to their context. Keyed to online sermon samples and other Web-based features to enhance teaching.

The growing cultural diversity of American society is mirrored in the pews and parishes of mainline denominations and represents a dynamic challenge to the effective proclamation of the gospel on both Sunday mornings and in parish educational venues. When people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds listen to the same sermon, it is more than likely that they will not "hear" the same message. Preaching to Every Pew, based on extensive field research, takes on the challenge of preaching in such a context. Valuable both as a seminary text and as a text to help practicing pastor "re-tool" for more effective proclamation of the gospel.

Why is the very kind of knowledge that people need to live well - practical wisdom - often the least understood, the hardest to learn, and the most devalued kind of knowledge? In this book five distinguished practical theologians examine the wisdom that is basic for faithful Christian living, question why it has been largely devalued, and advocate for its renewal. After first showing several concrete situations in which this kind of wisdom is visible - marriage, church, community, culture, and more - the authors then delve into the reasons for the decline of practical wisdom and set forth constructive cases for its renewal through biblical imagination and spiritual practice.