Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Brueggeman's finest exegesis is applied specifically to preaching in the 21st century. Application for today's preachers is powerful amidst a culture absorbed with materialism.

Rating:
Summary: Great book on the preaching to the church in 'exile'
Review: This book is simply the best book on theological preaching that I have ever read. Forget all the other evangelica books on preaching techniques and tricks. This book drives to the core what preaching, or more simply speaking the word means when we consider it as part of the activity of the people of God who are attempting to maintain their lives in 'exile.'

Brueggemann's use of the theme of exile as a metaphor for understanding the condition of the church in modern culture is amazing and insightful. He shows, by analogy with Israel's history as 1) Wandering in the Wilderness (= New Church Start/Early Church), 2) The Monarchy (= a culturally legitimated church/Christendom), and 3) Exile (= a culturally displaced church/the church today).

Brueggemann builds off of the important work done by George Lindbeck and Stanley Hauerwas onthe church to support his case the preaching is essentially the communal rehersing of its constitutive narrative to cultivate ans sistain the Christain vision of reality in the face of the idls and ideologies of the hegemonic powers of our age.

Bruggemann's case is lucid and persuasive. I cannot recommend this work highly enough. For pastors that want to truly understand preaching and Christians that want to truly understand what it might mean to proclaim the scriptures in the face of today's empire(s) this book will be a great help.