Description: King Saul is based on the Biblical story of the first king of Israel. It retells the story in a fresh way, offering new looks at the three major characters--Saul, Samuel, and David--and the events that brought them together at the very foundation of the nation of Israel three millennia ago. Holbert's retelling reveals how this old story is surprisingly modern as it turns its gaze on power politics, personal rivalries, and religious use and abuse as the life of early Israel unfolds.

Description: The human race, along with the animals and plants that make up the creation of God, face a difficult future due to the multiple ways that the ecosystem on which they all depend is currently under stress. Temperatures are rising along with the oceans. Rain forests are falling along with the polar ice caps. Questions of the environment are now front and center in any catalog of concerns. Those who are called to preach need to include in the subjects of their sermons these environmental issues. Our Bible contains significant resources, often overlooked, as bases on which powerful environmental sermons can be preached. This book introduces the subject of preaching and the environment, offering close looks at important biblical passages that address the cosmos of God, and presenting sample sermons founded on those passages. The book calls for preachers both to name the vast problems we face and to offer the hope of the gospel of God to address them. Endorsements: ""This is a 'must have' book for every preacher who seeks to help congregations towards a faithful understanding of how human beings can join God's purposes for the created world. John Holbert's work is comprehensive: from the creation narratives in Genesis through the Prophets and Wisdom Literature to the less-often-considered role of creation in the Letters, Gospels, and Book of Revelation, John offers incisive (and highly quotable) exegesis and epigrammatic sample sermons."" --Ronald J. Allen Professor of Preaching and New Testament Christian Theological Seminary ""As various pseudo-experts make hay of dubious environmental science, John Holbert offers us reliable and exegetically sound biblical theology in order to help us address a creation that human beings are 'trashing.' Not just this, but Holbert helps the church address these ecological issues via the faith we preach."" --Rev. David N. Mosser, PhD Senior Pastor of First United Methodist Church of Arlington, Texas and author of Transitions: Leading Churches through Change (2011) "" T]his book . . . changed my thinking about what the Bible says and left me with both help to preach on the subject and the passionate desire to do so This is a powerful book, the kind that drags you through your resistance and persuades you to enjoy the trip. . . . John Holbert offers fresh exegetical insights, compelling arguments, and examples of the kind of sermons that prime a preacher's pump. But you will come away from this book with more than good compasses and maps, this is a book filled with hope."" --Jana Childers Professor of Homiletics and Speech Communication San Francisco Theological Seminary ""What word can preachers bring to human creatures who are putting the earth at risk? Holbert answers the question with incisive biblical interpretation, scientific knowledge, and lively sermons. He dispels the misuse of religious faith to deny or ignore the environmental crisis, and he demonstrates how to preach a scientifically informed faith that honors the Creator by redefining our role as lovers and partners of the natural order. An essential book for preachers now."" --Thomas H. Troeger Lantz Professor of Christian Communication Yale Divinity School & Institute of Sacred Music About the Contributor(s): John C. Holbert is Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, where he has been a member of the faculty for thirty-two years. He is the author of seven previous books, each having to do with the relationships between the Bible and the work of preaching.

Telling the Whole Story is both a book about preaching and reading the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. John C. Holbert (PhD in Hebrew Bible) was a longtime teacher of preaching and Hebrew Bible at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, having retired in 2012 after thirty-three years. In this volume he combines his two skills of careful narrative reading and imaginative story preaching to offer the first comprehensive look at this particular kind of sermon proclamation. The reader will also find here an introduction to the long history of story preaching in the history of the church, as well as a primer both in ways to read the narratives more effectively and ways to preach several varieties of story sermons. At the heart of this book four narratives from the Hebrew Bible are exegeted and are accompanied by four story sermons based on those texts: Genesis 2-3; 1 Samuel 15; Judges 4; and Jonah. The goal of the book is to help preachers who are looking for effective ways to proclaim the gospel using narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible to allow the rich stories of the texts to sound their ancient truth to the modern world

Drawing on both pastoral and scholarly experience, John Holbert offers a fresh approach to the preaching of a familiar scripture.To be a Joban preacher, he says, is to draw on the pain and honesty inherent in the text. Holbert understands the preacher's task as interpreting the whole of the book of job, not just the narrative and the poetry.This integrative approach allows the book's entire theology to inform sermons. Included for illustration are an embodied sermon and a narrative sermon based on passages from Job.

In this humorous guide, John C. Holbert and Alyce M. McKenzie provide helpful and practical advice for avoiding the common mistakes that many preachers make in their sermons. Useful for preachers, students, and teachers alike, What Not to Say addresses how to use language about God, how to use stories in preaching, and what not to say (and what to say) in the beginning, middle, and end of sermons. A companion video with preaching illustrations is available online at wjkbooks.com.

Many resources have been written to offer assistance in exploring and understanding the lectionary texts for the purpose of preaching. However, few have sought to provide this kind of preaching commentary on texts that do not follow the lectionary's grouping. For those whose preaching does not customarily follow the lectionary, and for those who depart from the lectionary text during certain periods of the year, little guidance has been offered for how to select, and preach on, important biblical texts.

The Ten Commandments: A Preaching Commentary, the first book in The Great Texts series, gives guidance to preachers on preaching about this central part of faith. The principles by which volumes in The Great Texts series have been chosen are primarily two-fold: (1) Thematic: Texts on certain overarching themes or ideas of the Christian faith are brought together; (2) Biblical/traditional: Texts that have long been recognized as belonging together, and as being particularly beneficial to the work of preaching.

Preaching Old Testament meets the need for more direction in how to preach from the Hebrew Bible. You will learn particularly helpful techniques for preaching the narrative portions of the Bible and why preaching from the Old Testament is theologically important.

After exploring theological reasons for preaching in the narrative mode, Holbert introduces a narrative homiletics and discusses its definition, problems, and possibilities. He then introduces some of the methods and techniques of a literary analysis of the narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible, which includes such elements as plot, actions and speech, contrasting characters, and point of view.

Two sample narrative sermons with brief comments inside the bodies of the sermons and extensive comments at the ends of the sermons illustrate how the pastor can read and interpret the Old Testament story.