Sermons from Mind and Heart

Struggling to Preach Theologically

Rodney Wallace Kennedy

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610972635
  9781498259804
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630879518
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Sermons from Mind and Heart attempts to show the week-by-week theological work that a pastor does. The combining of the intellectual with the emotional is rooted in the categories of logos and pathos from Aristotle's Rhetoric. Some of the sermons have substantive theological reflections with multiple sources and are thus heavily footnoted; other sermons have no footnotes. This doesn't mean that any sermon lacks logos or pathos but that there is an interplay, a back-and-forth, of a pastor struggling to communicate the Gospel in a "this is that" way that honors both the "then" of Scripture and the "now" of contemporary life. Rhetorical scholarship and methodology are important in understanding the content and the structure of the sermons. What matters most is the sense that these sermons are an ongoing theological conversation between the pastor and his congregation. Sermons, after all, are meant to be heard, and they exist in the moment as authentic rhetorical acts. All other versions of the sermon, including this written form, are only echoes of the primal sermonic experience.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Church of Water and Fire
• Chapter 2: Degrees of Glory
• Chapter 3: The Devil Came Down to America
• Chapter 4: Is the Gospel Socialist?
• Chapter 5: Does Jesus Save?
• Chapter 6: May God ‘Easter’ in Us
• Chapter 7: If Seeing is Believing, Faith is Toast
• Chapter 8: The Reliable God
• Chapter 9: When God Shocks Us
• Chapter 10: A Woman’s Place
• Chapter 11: Understanding Others
• Chapter 12: A Christian Remembrance of Those Who Died in War
• Chapter 13: Lessons in Praying from the Jews
• Chapter 14: Jesus as Trouble
• Chapter 15: Worship: A Sunday Choice
• Chapter 16: Thanksgiving: Are We Still Pilgrims?
• Chapter 17: When the Preacher Is Depressed
• Chapter 18: A Christmas Witness
• Chapter 19: Would You Like to Hold the Baby?
• Chapter 20: Remember Your Baptism
• Chapter 21: The World’s Savior and America’s Prophet
• Chapter 22: Are We Actually Following Jesus?
• Chapter 23: How to Be Blessed