Lanterns at Dusk?: Preaching after Modernity

Description

From the very beginning, preaching has been central to the church’s 
understanding of its life and ministry. Does the ministry of preaching have a 
future and, if so, how must it change if it is to be effective in the formation 
of the lives of contemporary disciples of Jesus?

This is not a book on the subject of homiletics as that enterprise has 
conventionally been understood. That is, it is not a manual attempting to teach 
how to preach. Rather, the sermons included are intended to illustrate the 
conclusions that have been argued for in the early sections. The opening 
chapters offer an interpretation of the significant shifts that systematic 
theology has had to engage with in Western culture, culminating in the 
contemporary legacy of rising atheism in popular culture, and the increasingly 
widespread disillusionment with religion.

Author

Bruce Barber is a retired Uniting Church minister. He was educated in Melbourne, completing Arts and Divinity degrees, followed by post-graduate study in Europe and the United States of America from 1963 to 1965. After two years of parish ministry, he spent his remaining working life engaged in theological education, first in Perth, Western Australia, and later in Melbourne where for more than twenty years he was Dean of the United Faculty of Theology. In both places, he taught in the fields of systematic theology and homiletics.