This article gives ideas for presenting the Bible orally to familiarize worshippers and clergy with Scripture, helping them to learn how to make the Spoken Word more interesting and relevant to both those who proclaim and to those who hear the Word.

By Uriah Y. Kim

When preparing sermons on King David, preachers over the years have pored over every detail of David’s life and every trait of his character to expound lessons and examples for believers to learn and imitate.  Lessons, examples, types, or symbols become even more apparent when King Saul is introduced as David’s foil.  In this article I examine David and Saul in their “multi-people” environment so that we can appreciate some characteristics of their leadership that are useful in our multicultural context.

This revealing analysis of Jacob’s night alone at Peniel gives preachers added avenues as to how to use this familiar and dramatic story for prophetic preaching and interesting teaching.

The author explores the question of who became leaders in the churches founded by Paul and what was the social status of those leaders with respect to the strict, hierarchical social structure of Greco-Roman society. Like Jesus, Paul selects leaders from among those whom he serves. He expects them, as he does of himself, to serve even to the point of risk and sacrifice.

Bible engagement is an intentional, goal-directed activity. As language shapes an individual’s thought categories and empowers him or her to transcend those categories, engagement with biblical narratives involves social processes that can build and transform character. Individuals and communities have the capacity to be informed by the Word and the narratives of Judeo-Christian faith traditions—to become like Christ.

The focus here is on the crisis barriers that severe trauma constructs between victims and an encounter with God’s Word; and how the project of American Bible Society, She’s My Sister, helps these people learn that crimes committed against them do not bring them shame and shows them how to be set free from their pain.

By Walter Brueggemann

The ancient memory of Jubilee is very odd. The term “Jubilee” is from the Hebrew YBL, “trumpet.” When the “trumpet sounds,” debts are forgiven and property is returned. These actions are not undertaken out of an emotional “rush,” but “on signal,” under discipline, in response to a regular communal expectation.