Impassioned: A Guide to Progressive Preaching

An engaging and timely guide to preaching with passion from minister and professor Lucas Hergert.

Done well, preaching engages mind and heart, soul and body. Passionate preaching offers more than discussion about topics held at a distance; it claims a stake in them. This is especially true right now, as progressive preachers must address today’s social issues with power and conviction. But how does a preacher ensure the congregation not only receives but also feels the message?

In Impassioned, minister and professor Lucas Hergert provides practical and detailed advice on how to craft and deliver passionate sermons, including changing the way one selects topics, structuring the sermon, understanding the centrality of emotion, and attending to embodiment and delivery. Hergert draws on resources that are religious and secular, artistic and dramatic, psychological and philosophical, to offer a range of techniques and inspiration to help each preacher find their path forward.

And while Impassioned will be a powerful resource for working clergy, busy seminary students, and interested lay leaders, it also provides seasoned preachers with a different angle on the craft. Rethinking the sermon in this way will help preachers offer a heartfelt word as they work to create change in the lives of their community members and their broader social context.

Hergert shows exactly how progressives can—and why they should—preach with feeling and force.

Rev. Lucas Hergert holds a doctorate in homiletics and teaches preaching at Meadville Lombard Theological School. He is the minister of the North Shore Unitarian Church in Deerfield, Illinois.