According to homilitician, Don Wardlaw, the most effective preaching comes from the area where the biblical world, the current society and the life of our local communities overlap.

Let's week's article took us behind the homiletic "camera" to explore various angles and focal points. This week's post features an illustration of how elements like tension and action heighten the homiletic effect.

Sunday worshipers are “straddling two worlds,” according to Barbara Brown Taylor in her book The Preaching Life. While celebrating the liturgy, they inhabit a world governed by love. Once they are dismissed, they “cross a border into another country governed by other, less forgiving laws”.

Each year the Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati offers up a tour of newly built or newly renovated homes. It’s called Homearama and features outstanding homes in a variety of architectural styles. The homes are pricey: from $1,000,000-$2,450,000. They’re also large: from 5,800 to 12,500 square feet. That doesn’t stop ordinary people from joining the tour to pick up new ideas on cabinetry, color, kitchen design or landscaping. But, when it comes to learning new insights and concepts for preaching, there’s a better approach.

Last week’s post identified the use of description as a rhetorical strategy particularly suited to homiletic preaching. Below is my Pentecost homily for 2014.