Preaching Life (Paperback)

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Taylor, an Episcopal priest and acclaimed preacher, begins with a series of personal reflections on her life, her perception of the church, and issues of vocation, imagination, Bible, worship, and preaching. Her reflections on post-Christian environments (from a visit to Turkey and her own life in America), on baptism and ordination, and on studying the Bible critically lead the reader to a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the familiar words of faith. The second half of the book consists of 13 of Taylor's sermons, which continue her emphasis on story. Throughout, there is a good balance between biographical material and algeneral reflection; the sermons support the discussion. Taylor's work is recommended for seminary, church, and large public libraries.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

So who is the best preacher of them all? This week Baylor University unveils its list of the 12 'most effective' preachers in the English-speaking world. The list includes: ...Barbara Brown Taylor, rector of Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church, Clarkesville, GA. -- Newsweek

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Product Details

• Paperback: 174 pages
• Publisher: Cowley Publications (January 25, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156101074X
• ISBN-13: 978-1561010745
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,792 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for preachers, July 3, 2000

By	Dr. Linda L. Clader (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I require my homiletics students to read this book. Not only does the author offer approaches, ideas and stories to nudge their imaginations, but she also models a way of reflecting on ministry that has honestry and integrity. One of my students suggested that this book should be required reading for seminarians BEFORE they begin their studies. I think that the book is so on target that it would appeal to preachers at any stage of experience.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh and much needed., December 5, 1998

By	Tim Parsley ([e-mail]) (Cincinnati, OH) - See all my reviews

Taylor has a gift for capturing the tiniest detail of life and seeing the infinite God of heaven. Her creativity and freshness was very filling. This book has already helped catalyst the growth of significant fruit in my ministry. Thank you, Barbara, for sharing.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Master of Gray, April 12, 2004

By	Mark D. Wilson (Bath, ME) - See all my reviews

There is little that can be said about Barbara Brown Taylor's The Preaching Life that has not already been said in the 10 years since its publication, except, perhaps, to quote Luke 24:11 as the official church response to her work: " . . . these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them." Like Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James the Younger, and Joanna (and many others) Barbara Brown Taylor's Christian witness hits home. She has been to the cross: "As best I can figure, the Christian era ended during my lifetime." (5). She knows death prefigures life: " . . . it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for truth." (8) And like those first witnesses of the Resurrection, she isn't afraid to speak her hope: " . . . fear of the unknown takes on an element of wonder as the disillusioned turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is." (9).
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men (sic) - that is genius." This is also the genius of Tayor's book: an autobiographical tale, even an old-school confession of how one articulate person was called by God even in the midst of a church in ruins and how she followed that call and lived into her calling as the years went by. The Preaching Life she speaks of is full of a cast of characters that, seven years into the ministry, I know too well, including myself: the lay woman who says "I don't want to be that important" (28) when asked that she understand herself to be God's person in and for the world; the mourner who didn't know what to believe anymore (7); stepping into the pulpit like you are walking on a tightrope (76) and having someone "quote" part of your sermon back to you that you never said (85); even the little girl, who, hearing the cup as "the blood of Christ" says "Yuck!" (73). It is her life, but it could be any preacher's life. The work has a nice progression to it, like she is writing as if she is walking beside herself on this path. The steps are in order and they go somewhere. She traces her pilgrimage from her calling to acceptance of her vocation to the imagination necessary to reveal a church renewed, and then how that vision plays itself out from reading the Bible almost like the Germans must have in the 1500's, into Worship, and through Preaching.
Having then reached the culmination of her preaching life, she proceeds to give us thirteen examples of her preaching. My favorites were I Am Who I Am ("We tried to nail him down once but he got loose"), The One To Watch, where she points out that the widow gave her mite to a corrupt institution just as Jesus gave his life to a corrupt world, and None of Us Is Home Yet for its painful yearning for God. I got the feeling in reading her sermons that she was open to her life during the course of the week for sermon illustrations (the broken down car on Thursday in Do Love, for instance). This made me feel better for no other reason than I often do the same, by chance or choice. I liked her real-life choices and conflicts, her thinking out loud rhetoric, her careful reading of scripture ("Did you notice that?" she asks more than once), her not being afraid to cop to mistakes and "un-Christian" behavior; and in the middle of it all one slippery Jesus.
She writes as a person living as comfortably as one can in the gray areas of life, and that is where a preaching life is often lived as we act as God's midwives, helping God to be born in the world, often pulling people kicking and screaming from darkness to light.