Porter Taylor

CT Pastors Preaching is a scandalous enterprise. As Isaiah reminds us, preachers are individuals of “unclean lips” who bring a word from the Holy One to “a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). Preachers are not chosen by God due to their moral superiority, but rather because he has providentially elected to entrust his word to “jars of clay” (2 Cor. 4:7).

Some of the Words Are Theirs The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon By Austin Carty Eerdmans, 144 pages, $22.99 For the last few years, the art and craft of preaching has been on the national stage. This resurgence is due in part to the Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. As 100-plus ecclesiastical and ecumenical bodies received funds totaling over $90 million to strengthen the teaching and practice of preaching, the book market has seen an uptick as well.

“We have waited too long for exactly this book! Alexander Schmemann was, without question, the most profound liturgical theologian of the twentieth century. Yet, though his writings are eminently relevant to the church in general, up to this point they have been seriously engaged almost exclusively by fellow members of his Orthodox tradition and by members of one of the other ‘higher’ liturgical traditions. Here, at last, we have a truly ecumenical engagement with Schmemann's thought.