Reader Recommendation: Preaching Luke-Acts, by Ronald J. Allen
Recommended by: Esther Robles
Why it might be helpful: Allen masterfully provided me with fresh insights on some of the greatest themes of life and how to use them for profound preaching. I especially appreciated his insights on the restoration of women in Jesus’s ministry. And while we are not there yet completely, he emphasized that this was and is the Kingdom’s intention.

Preaching Luke-Acts is a guide to one of the most theologically rich and homiletically generative portions of the New Testament. Ronald J. Allen — a Disciples minister and longtime professor of preaching at Christian Theological Seminary — brings both scholarly precision and pastoral attentiveness to Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The book helps preachers identify the major theological themes running through these two texts and think through how to make them live in contemporary proclamation.

Recommender Esther Robles highlights Allen’s treatment of women’s restoration in Jesus’s ministry as a particular strength — a theme that Luke develops with unusual clarity and that offers profound homiletical territory for preachers engaged with questions of gender, justice, and the shape of God’s Kingdom. Allen’s rootedness in both the Disciples tradition and the academy makes this an especially fitting resource for the preachers this library serves.

Check it out

You might also find helpful:

• Preaching the Story, by Jeffrey W. Frymire — A guide to narrative preaching and communicating God’s word through story.
• Preaching God’s Grand Drama — Ahmi Lee’s theodramatic framework for biblical preaching, a Preacher Book Club selection.
• A Lover’s Quarrel — Weekly lectionary reflections from Disciples New Testament scholar Eric C. Smith.

Reader Recommendations are submitted by Disciples preachers and are not created or fully reviewed by the Proclamation Project.