The reform of the liturgy has dramatically changed the way Roman Catholics and all Christians understand their worship. The arena of the encounter has shifted from a passive experience of observation of the great Mysteries to one that invites active participation on many levels. Yet, the imagination of many who preach, preside, and gather to worship continues to be shaped by a passive model as well as by the notion of sacramental activity as a product to be received or given. In The Holy Preaching, Janowiak deepens the discussion of Christ's presence in the Word by offering reflection on the disparity between the theology and the practice of preaching and some explanation as to why that disparity exists.

Leading Scholar Offers a Theological Approach to Preaching This primer on the ministry of preaching connects reading the Bible theologically with preparing and preaching sermons. Hans Boersma explains that exegesis involves looking beyond the historical and literal meaning of the text to the hidden sacramental reality of Christ himself, which enables us to reach the deepest meaning of the Scriptures. He provides models for theological sermons along with commentary on exegetical and homiletical method and explains that patristic exegesis is relevant for reading the Bible today. The book includes a foreword by Eugene H. Peterson.

In the time of the church, transformation, renewal, and the process of coming-to-faith rely on the symbolic efficacy of speech, where God is encountered as a word. The Sacramentality of Preaching examines the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and incorporates it into contemporary homiletical theory in order to bolster and renew Christian proclamation that has an intentionally sacramental character. Liturgical preachers will find practical pathways, frameworks, and common language through the use of this innovative sacramentology.

In failing to take the sacramentality of the word of God seriously, the preaching of the church has suffered negative consequences. As a result, preaching has often become, at best, a form of instruction or, at worst, an incantation of sorts rather than an integral part of deepening our relationship with Christ by functioning sacramentally to bring about divine participation with Jesus’ corporeal humanity in his living word. In order to recover this sacramental reality, this volume argues that one should consider the annunciation to Mary where, with the sermon of Gabriel, the corporeal Christ took up residence in the flesh of his hearer, and delivered to her precisely what was contained within his own flesh: the fullness of the Godhead (Col. 2:9). When understood as a biblical paradigm for the church, it becomes clear that what happened to Mary can, indeed, happen to Christians of the present day. Proclamation, thus, delivers the Christ to us.

The Preached God' speaks directly to preachers, calling them to deliver the truths of forgiveness, life, and salvation through both word and sacrament to all who listen.

Moralizing about justice from the pulpit is easy. Explore what it means to genuinely preach justice, and to teach congregations what it means to put justice at the heart and soul of the church's mission and witness.

Drawing on performance studies and sacramental and liturgical theology, Ruthanna B. Hooke develops a theology of proclamation grounded in the body’s experience of preaching. The author explores the claim that preaching is a sacramental event of communion with the triune God by comparing the steps involved in voice production with the fourfold shape of the Eucharist. This comparison yields a description of preaching as an event of self-offering that allows space for the humanity of the preacher and as an encounter with the Holy Spirit that is communal and prophetic. Preaching draws participants into Christ’s dying and rising, and hence into a mode of power known in vulnerability. Calling hearers into the eschatological event of the resurrection, preaching inherently moves toward proclamation on political and ethical issues. Hooke uses this theological framework to offer ways of preaching on environmental crisis and on racism. The author calls preachers to embodied engagement with preaching and describes a way for preachers to bear witness to Jesus Christ not only in the content of their proclamation, but in their way of being in the preaching event.

It is not a lack of training in the art of rhetoric that accounts for the ineffectiveness of preaching within the Christian churches. More significant is the lack of adequate theological foundations. While recognizing the great contribution that neo-orthodoxy and the "dialectical imagination" have made, Hilkert's major contribution is a scholarly examination of the resources of the "sacramental imagination".

Christians tend to divide into three camps: evangelical, sacramental, and pentecostal. But must we choose between them? Drawing on the New Testament, Christian history, and years of experience in Christian ministry, Gordon T. Smith argues that the church not only can be all three, but in fact must be all three in order to truly be the church.