The Crisis of Bad Preaching is an audacious response to a long-simmering pastoral crisis: poorly prepared, often stale, and largely irrelevant homilies that are fueling the mass exodus of people from the Church. Echoing Popes Benedict and Francis, Rev. Joshua Whitfield confronts what is perhaps the most common complaint of Catholics around the world: hollow, vacuous preaching. A parish priest in Dallas, Whitfield encourages fellow preachers to profound renewal, reminding them that preaching is not just something they do, it is essential to who they are. Catholic preaching today often achieves the opposite of what it should, which is connecting the People of God with the Gospel of Christ in a compelling and motivating way. With an insider’s candor, biting honesty, and persuasive conviction, Whitfield stresses that preachers need to return to this ideal because the wellbeing of the Church depends on it. More than just another how-to book, The Crisis of Bad Preaching is at once deeply challenging and uplifting and full of practical advice for a reversal of the status quo. In Part I, Whitfield explores the essential role of the preacher as a public intellectual and member of the communion of preachers that spans the history of the Church. Whitfield offers advice about which great preachers—from Origen, Augustine , and Aquinas to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bishop Robert Barron—to study and what to learn from them. Whitfield also explains why preachers must submit in humility to the fullness of the Church—its teachings, authority, practices, and structures. In Part II, Whitfield explores the important habits of prayer, preparation, cultivating rhetorical skill, and learning to take full advantage of both positive and negative criticism. He explains how the way of the preacher must be the way of the Holy Spirit and argues that without the preacher opening his heart to the fire of evangelical proclamation, he will lack the capacity to preach the transforming grace of the Gospel, his mandate. In a brief epilogue, Whitfield encourages ten habits for listening. Addressed to both laity and the ordained, he asserts that fixing preaching will take the concerted effort of all members of the Church.

A compendium of wise and useful advice about preaching: what works and what doesn't.

Practical advice for preachers everywhere, written out of long experience and deep learning. Homilists will welcome its advice about language, the role of the imagination, preaching and prophecy, the liturgical setting of the preached word, and social justice. +

Nearly forty years ago, Ralph Martin’s bestselling A Crisis of Truth exposed the damaging trends in Catholic teaching and preaching that, combined with attacks from secular society, threatened the mission and life of the Catholic Church. While much has been done to counter false teaching over the last four decades, today the Church faces even more insidious threats—from outside and within. In A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward, Martin offers a detailed look at the growing hostility to the Catholic Church and its teaching. With copious evidence, Martin uncovers the forces working to undermine the Body of Christ and offers hope to those looking for clarity. A Church in Crisis covers: -polarization in the Church caused by ambiguous teachings -initiatives that accommodate the culture without calling for conversion -Vatican-sponsored partnerships with organizations that actively contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church -and the recycling of theological errors long settled by Vatican II, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. Powerfully written, A Church in Crisis reminds all readers to heed Jesus’ express command not to lead His children astray. With ample resources to encourage readers, Ralph Martin provides the solid foundation of Catholic teaching—both Scripture and Tradition—to fortify Catholics against the errors that threaten us from all directions.

Ideal for priests, deacons, and those in formation for these ministries, this book offers a practical examination of the principal ingredients for effective homilies.

After traveling the globe and speaking to thousands of churches worldwide, Paul David Tripp has discovered a serious problem within pastoral culture. He is not only concerned about the spiritual life of the pastor, but also with the very community of people that trains him, calls him, relates to him, and restores him if necessary. Dangerous Calling reveals the truth that the culture surrounding our pastors is spiritually unhealthy—an environment that actively undermines the wellbeing and efficacy of our church leaders and thus the entire church body. Here is a book that both diagnoses and offers cures for issues that impact every member and church leader, and gives solid strategies for fighting the all-important war that rages in our churches today.

Lisa Hendey, Catholic social media expert and creator of CatholicMom.com, presents five-minute daily devotions to help Catholic households embrace the spiritual riches of Advent. This daily prayer book is created for use around an Advent wreath in Catholic households of any configuration. It contains twenty-eight devotional services, each designed to last only five minutes--an achievable goal for busy families. The single-page service includes: 1) a simple candle lighting, 2) a brief scripture passage paired with a reflection question for adults and older children and one for younger children, 3) silence, and 4) a closing prayer. Rooted in scriptural images of light, the booklet can be used perennially.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, famines, diseases, wars -- these and other devastating forces lead Christians to ask painful questions. Is God all-powerful? Is God good? How can God allow so much innocent human suffering? These questions, taken together, have been called the "theodicy problem," and in this book Thomas Long explores what preachers can and should say in response ... he offers biblically based approaches to preaching on theodicy, guided by Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares and the "greatest theodicy text in Scripture"--The book of Job. - from book jacket.

Thomas Scirghi, SJ, has trained priests, deacons, and lay ecclesial ministers in the art and theology of preaching for decades. In Longing to See Your Face, he makes his insights and experience accessible to a much wider audience. Scirghi begins with a discussion of the purpose of preaching and offers a theological sounding on proclamation, taking up several descriptions of the role of the preacher in relation to the congregation. He also addresses current theological issues for the contemporary preacher. The second part of the book discusses the practical matter of preparing to preach and proposes a method of preparation by following a pattern of reflection, research, writing, and rehearsing. The third part focuses on two specific sacramental celebrations: funeral and weddings. "

In this national bestseller, the most influential layman in the United States reports that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either profoundly reform or lapse into permanent irrelevance.