Overview

Preachers have long been faced with two options. On the one hand they can appeal to their congregations' intellects, teaching them the substance of the faith from the pulpit. On the other they can seek to stir their hearers' emotions, wooing or warning them with the gospel. Usually we reserve these two forms of preaching for different tasks or audiences. If you are preaching an evangelistic message to the unchurned, then your preaching style will draw more heavily on the emotional aspects. If you are leading the faithful into a deeper grasp of the Christian message, then you will more likely draw on the intellectual components of preaching. While most preachers know that the choice between the head and the heart is a false one, they often don't know how to bring the two together effectively. In this book Thomas Swears offers detailed, practical advice on how to preach to both head and heart. He shows how both emotions and intellect function any time one tried to convey meaning from the pulpit, regardless of the kind of message one is preaching. Without abandoning the conventional wisdom on evangelistic vs. teaching sermons, he nonetheless insists that preaching with integrity--in which the Word is truly embodied--will always involve the whole person and personality of both the preacher and the congregation.

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9781532690105

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Reviews

The encouragement offered here is a stimulating mix of substance and passion, of cognitive learnings and reflection on pastoral experience. The author is an enthusiastic, dependable fellow-traveler and guide. --Richard L. Thulin, Editor, Homiletic, from the Foreword Preaching to Head and Heart is a book on preaching that is at once original in perspective, stimulating in content, and warm with the understanding of a fellow pilgrim on the arduous journey between head and heart. It is a journey that all who preach regularly make--within themselves, and between themselves and those in whose midst they have been called to minister to the Word. Thomas Swears writes gracefully--in every sense of the word--and helpfully out of his wide reading and his deep reflection on his own experience of that essential journey. --Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., Lutheran Theological Seminary

The encouragement offered here is a stimulating mix of substance and passion, of cognitive learnings and reflection on pastoral experience. The author is an enthusiastic, dependable fellow-traveler and guide. --Richard L. Thulin, Editor, Homiletic, from the Foreword Preaching to Head and Heart is a book on preaching that is at once original in perspective, stimulating in content, and warm with the understanding of a fellow pilgrim on the arduous journey between head and heart. It is a journey that all who preach regularly make--within themselves, and between themselves and those in whose midst they have been called to minister to the Word. Thomas Swears writes gracefully--in every sense of the word--and helpfully out of his wide reading and his deep reflection on his own experience of that essential journey. --Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., Lutheran Theological Seminary

Author Information

Thomas R. Swears is a pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Wilmington, Delaware.

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