Recently published
How to preach the good news when you are suffering
It’s difficult to preach a message of hope when you feel hopeless. But there are ways to revitalize your preaching while still being honest, says a pastor at Reservoir Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

‘Balcony time’ offers a fresh perspective
After metaphorically moving from the “dance floor” to the “balcony,” a pastor refocuses on personal connections with parishioners and priorities for the church.

Leah Schade: Prophetic preaching requires awareness of each pastor’s context
In a new book, a professor of preaching offers a method of assessing a preacher’s context in order to faithfully address social issues without unnecessarily causing conflict.
Mariann Edgar Budde’s national prayer service homily falls within the prophetic tradition
The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington preached to a nation at a crossroads with a call to faithful witness, writes a director of programs and grants for Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

Luke A. Powery: A preacher must humanize suffering
A preacher’s main task is not to make a political stand but to preach the gospel by showing how God lives in the midst of human suffering, says the dean of Duke Chapel.
Will Willimon: Preachers are a pain
The preaching and leadership necessary for the church to fulfill its mission inevitably produces discomfort in the people and in their leader, writes the theologian and retired UMC bishop.

Erin S. Lane: What kind of family is the family of God?
We’ve celebrated church as “family” without ever clarifying what kind of family we’re called to be, says an adoptive mother in this sermon. What kind of family is the church if not an adopted one?

Samuel Chuin Ming Oo: What does it mean to be baptized in the name of God?
This baptism that Jesus called us to is fundamentally a call for allegiance -- a “pickling” in the ways of Christ, the English pastor of the Chinese Christian Mission Church in Durham, North Carolina, says in this sermon.
G. Lee Ramsey Jr.: Las Vegas and the violence in God's vineyard
In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, a homiletics professor and UMC pastor finds an important message in the parable of the vineyard owner’s son: Enough is enough. God did not mean for us to live this way.

Phil Woodson: Who is Jesus?
Hundreds of people, like Peter, left the safety of the ship and threw themselves into the jaws of death to counter a rally of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, writes a pastor at First United Methodist Church Charlottesville.
