So That All Might Know: Preaching That Engages the Whole Congregation

Become a more effective preacher by understanding the multiple intelligences and learning styles present in your congregation.



Most preachers experience the conundrum of reaching some people in the congregation, and not others. Is this problem just a matter of some folks being “tuned in” to the gospel, while others aren’t? Probably not, say Thomas H. Troeger and H. Edward Everding, Jr. Instead, it results from the diverse intelligences and learning styles represented throughout the congregation. A great deal of research in recent years has demonstrated that people receive and process information and communication in wildly different ways. Troeger and Everding use that research to show their readers how to craft the sermon to speak to each of those multiple learning styles each time they step into the pulpit. View the Table of ContentsRead a sample

Thomas H. Troeger was Lantz Professor emeritus at Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music. He wrote more than 20 books in the fields of preaching, poetry, hymnody and worship, including A Sermon Workbook: Exercises in the Art and Craft of Preaching, Imagining a Sermon, and Music as Prayer: The Theology and Practice of Church Music.
Troeger held ordinations in both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches. He was also a flutist and a poet whose work appears in the hymnals of most denominations and is frequently set as choral anthems.
Professor Troeger was a graduate of Yale University, Colgate Rochester Divinity School and Dickinson College. In 2014 the University of Basel, Switzerland, awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology for his international work in homiletics and his development of “a contemporary religious language which does justice to both aesthetic and theological demands.”
In 2016 he gave the Beecher Lectures at Yale University. His final book, The End of Preaching, was based on these lectures.