'Better be a Good Sermon' - Preaching for Special Occasions and Contexts Editors Keith Weller and Adrian Lane
Published by Acorn Press Ltd ISBN 9780908284870 (pbk.) Preachers often face the prospect of preaching at a variety of occasions that can be deemed 'special' in some way, perhaps because of the occasion itself or the make-up of the particular audience. The regular Christian festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are examples of these, as are hte pastoral services of baptism, weddings and funerals that arise irregularly, sometimes frequently and with little warning. Then there are the 'one-off' special occasions such as a time of national tragedy or an Annual General Meeting of an organisation. Each occasion has its particular challenges and the preacher must be attuned to the subtleties that need to be attended to in each.
Audiences may be in rural, school, multicultural or secular settings with varying demographics such as age, socio-economic status and ethnicity. And especially on these occasions, preachers' words and their lives are very much open to public scrutiny. Therefore how preachers live out their everyday lives in their communities will also deliver a powerful sermon to those who watch and listen.
This book provides practical advice as to how to tackle sermons on these occasions and samples of actual sermons preached on a variety of occasions in recent times in an Australian context. (From the foreward by Bishop Keith Rayner).
Price: $29.95 plus $10 postage and handling.
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A new book on preaching for Australians An exciting new title, with a range of talented contributors including:
- Peter Adam
- Richard Condie
- John Dickson
- Harry Goodhew
- Michael Gourlay
- Adrian Lane
- Robin Payne
- Keith Rayner
- David Williams
Foreword by Bishop John Noble. Check the Downloads Page to listen to a recording of the Brisbane Book Launch by Jude D J McGill. Price: $30.50 AUD including postage and handling. |   | Or online, securely using PayPal by clicking the "buy now" button. "Whether in the hands of someone just starting out as a preacher, or taken up by someone who has been preaching for many years, there will be something here which will be helpful in improving this central part of our work." Bishop John Noble "Although designed for a small target audience, this book has potentially significant benefit to the Christian community if it is read, taken to heart and applied by preachers. Well suited for the primary target audience - preachers; both new and experienced - this is also good reading for the person sitting in the pew, so that we know what we're supposed to be hearing! Excellent practical advice from an eminent range of preachers, including sample sermons." These comments come from the judges for the 2008 Australian Christian Book of the Year Awards
Reviews No ordinary view: A season of faith and mission in the Himalayas Naomi Reed
Ark House Press ISBN 9780980452341 A gripping story, compellingly told. An Australian missionary, wife and mother in Nepal during the recent Maoist revolution, Naomi Reed involves the reader in the drama that enveloped her family. From within the uncertainty of Nepal’s political unrest, Naomi continues the story of her family’s vision to share God’s love in words and action, training Nepali physiotherapists. With refreshing candor, she builds into her story helpful reflections on how Christ was at their side during the worst (and the best) moments. It’s all about trust. Naomi is a gifted writer who holds the reader spellbound in this sequel to her first book My seventh monsoon. More than once we were moved to ask ourselves, what are we doing with our lives? The Himalayan view from our back porch was normally breathtaking but that day I sat there and wondered. Ten years of civil war, a deteriorating health care system, an economic crisis and a political stalemate. It was a background of hopelessness for the lives of our Nepali friends and the community that we lived in. In such a setting of pain and darkness, how could God reveal his nature? And how could he call me by name? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think it was possible. Price: $29.00AUD including postage and handling. |  | Southpaw: a matter of reversal Adrian Lane
Ginninderra Press ISBN 978 1 74027 533 0
Adrian Lane is a straight-talking poet, inhabiting a complex and contradictory world. We’re always reminded we’re round the wrong way, he writes in Left-Handers. It’s not just that scissors and irons make us feel clumsy/Or the belt’s the wrong way/And the keys the wrong side.In fact, left-handers have to live with being gauche, clumsy, sinister even. They live with superstition, yet Lane concludes that they think differently, are maybe a mite more sensitive, while concluding that our worlds are a side more complex/And that’s our gift to you.
So Adrian Lane appeals to our quizzical nature. But just as he makes light of his own foibles and failings, Lane is also engaged in the business of living with others. Many of the poems in this first collection are personal messages to friends, and the longest poem, A Father’s Love, is also for me the most moving. Do you remember sandy summers at Paradise/teaching me to surf, /throwing me before the waves, he asks, or Do you remember preaching at Castle Hill Meths/with those faithful old-timers fundraising from their cake stalls. Lane’s conversation with his father contains a lifetime of shared wonders, possibilities, and losses.
The motive needs expressed in the poetry, both to humour and to succour, make sense once you learn that Lane is an Anglican minister. Many of the poems are his own digressions on hymn verses, or tiny homilies on biblical verses. Affable and self-deprecating, he wants to share the good times. He can be polemical though and doesn’t shirk politics. His natural speaking voice has control of vernacular speech and the reflective mode. This makes him terribly good at description of Australian life, of which the summer holiday poems and those about his native Hunter Valley are special treats. The theology in these two verses of Southern Christmas couldn’t be more to the point:
The season’s wrong, the reasons wrong
We only want to party
The light is long, the heat is high
Drought makes brown, wind makes dry:
No candles for a baby.
But the season’s right, the reasons right
We must indeed have party
For God has come to heal his home
So sail and swim and rest and feast:
It is God who makes the party.
Adrian Lane has an easy mastery of plain speaking, but don’t think for a moment there is anything plain about the contents. At his best, Lane offers a marvellous variety of ideas and subjects for our attention and amusement, inspired by books, art, nature, conversation, religion, but above all from his own lived experience.
Reviewed by Philip Harvey. First published in TMA (The Melbourne Anglican) Sept 2009, reprinted courtesy Anglican Media Melbourne.
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