John C. Holbert – författare

In this humorous guide, John C. Holbert and Alyce M. McKenzie provide helpful and practical advice for avoiding the common mistakes that many preachers make in their sermons. Useful for preachers, students, and teachers alike, What Not to Say addresses how to use language about God, how to use stories in preaching, and what not to say (and what to say) in the beginning, middle, and end of sermons. A companion video with preaching illustrations is available online at wjkbooks.com.

In this humorous guide, John C. Holbert and Alyce M. McKenzie provide helpful and practical advice for avoiding the common mistakes that many preachers make in their sermons. Useful for preachers, students, and teachers alike, What Not to Say addresses how to use language about God, how to use stories in preaching, and what not to say (and what to say) in the beginning, middle, and end of sermons. A companion video with preaching illustrations is available online at wjkbooks.com.

The human race, along with the animals and plants that make up the creation of God, face a difficult future due to the multiple ways that the ecosystem on which they all depend is currently under stress. Temperatures are rising along with the oceans. Rain forests are falling along with the polar ice caps. Questions of the environment are now front and center in any catalog of concerns. Those who are called to preach need to include in the subjects of their sermons these environmental issues. Our Bible contains significant resources, often overlooked, as bases on which powerful environmental sermons can be preached. This book introduces the subject of preaching and the environment, offering close looks at important biblical passages that address the cosmos of God, and presenting sample sermons founded on those passages. The book calls for preachers both to name the vast problems we face and to offer the hope of the gospel of God to address them.

Telling the Whole Story is both a book about preaching and reading the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. John C. Holbert (PhD in Hebrew Bible) was a longtime teacher of preaching and Hebrew Bible at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, having retired in 2012 after thirty-three years. In this volume he combines his two skills of careful narrative reading and imaginative story preaching to offer the first comprehensive look at this particular kind of sermon proclamation. The reader will also find here an introduction to the long history of story preaching in the history of the church, as well as a primer both in ways to read the narratives more effectively and ways to preach several varieties of story sermons.At the heart of this book four narratives from the Hebrew Bible are exegeted and are accompanied by four story sermons based on those texts: Genesis 2-3; 1 Samuel 15; Judges 4; and Jonah. The goal of the book is to help preachers who are looking for effective ways to proclaim the gospel using narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible to allow the rich stories of the texts to sound their ancient truth to the modern world

King Saul is based on the Biblical story of the first king of Israel. It retells the story in a fresh way, offering new looks at the three major characters--Saul, Samuel, and David--and the events that brought them together at the very foundation of the nation of Israel three millennia ago. Holbert''s retelling reveals how this old story is surprisingly modern as it turns its gaze on power politics, personal rivalries, and religious use and abuse as the life of early Israel unfolds.