Jacob D. Myers's Books

Stand-Up Preaching

Homiletical Insights from Contemporary Comedians

By: Jacob D. Myers

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Stand-Up Preaching

Homiletical Insights from Contemporary Comedians

By: Jacob D. Myers

Few vocations share more in common with preaching than stand-up comedy. Each profession demands attention to the speaker’s bodily and facial gestures, tone and inflection, timing, and thoughtful engagement with contemporary contexts. Furthermore, both preaching and stand-up arise out of creative tension with homiletic or comedic traditions, respectively. Every time the preacher steps into the pulpit or the comedian steps onto the stage, they must measure their words and gestures against their audience’s expectations and assumptions. They participate in a kind of dance that is at once choreographed and open to improvisation. It is these and similar commonalities between preaching and stand-up comedy that this book engages. Stand-Up Preaching does not aim to help preachers tell better jokes. The focus of this book is far more expansive. Given the recent popularity of comedy specials, preachers have greater access to a broad array of emerging comics who showcase fresh comedic styles and variations on comedic traditions. Coupled with the perennial Def Comedy Jams on HBO, preachers also have ready access to the work of classic comics who have exhibited great storytelling and stage presence. This book will offer readers tools to discern what is homiletically significant in historical and contemporary stand-up routines, equipping them with fresh ways to riff off of their respective preaching traditions, and nuanced ways to engage issues of contemporary sociopolitical importance.

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Page Count

277

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666702803

ISBN 13

9781666702804

Making Love with Scripture

Why the Bible Doens't Mean How You Think It Means

By: Jacob D. Myers

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Making Love with Scripture

Why the Bible Doens't Mean How You Think It Means

By: Jacob D. Myers

Nothing has been more contentious in the history of Christianity than the meaning of the Bible, and that debate continues today. Arguments over scripture have divided denominations, churches, and families, and these squabbles have led many to abandon the faith altogether. Jacob D. Myers, a rising young scholar, has a solution to the problem with scripture. The instability of the BibleÕs meaning, he argues, is not a weakness but a strength, and it can benefit conservatives and liberals alike. In a conversational style peppered with pop culture references, Myers provides a variety of tools for readers of the Bible, helping the experienced and inexperienced alike appreciate the sacred text in new ways. Finally, he proposes the intriguing alternative of an ÒeroticÓ interpretation, one that makes love with the Bible and opens new vistas of understanding.

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Page Count

192

Publisher

Fortress Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1506402607

ISBN 13

9781506402604

Preaching Must Die!

Troubling Homiletical Theology

By: Jacob D. Myers

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Preaching Must Die!

Troubling Homiletical Theology

By: Jacob D. Myers

The real question for homiletics in our increasingly postmodern, post-Christian contexts is not how we are going to prevent preaching from dying, but how we are going to help it die a good death. Preaching was not made to live. At most, preaching is a witness, a sign, a crimson X marking a demolition site. The church has developed sophisticated technologies in modernity to give preaching the semblance of life, belying the truth: preaching was born under a death sentence. It was born to die. Only when preaching embraces its own death is it able to live. This book, then, is a bold homiletical manifesto against preaching in support of preaching, and beyond preaching to the entire worship experience. It troubles modern homiletical theologies in light of the trouble always already at work within preaching. Hereby, it supports a way of preaching--and teaching preaching--that moves counter to the "wisdom of this world." It aims to joins in Gods self-revealed counterlogic of superabundance that saturates and thereby breaks open worldly systems of thought and practice. The purpose of this book is to expose preaching to its own death-to help it embrace its death-so that it can discover what eternal and abundant life might look and feels like.

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Page Count

234

Publisher

Fortress Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1506411878

ISBN 13

9781506411873

In Tongues of Mortals and Angels

A Deconstructive Theology of God-Talk in Acts and Corinthians

By: Eric D. Barreto,Jacob D. Myers,Thelathia “Nikki” Young

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In Tongues of Mortals and Angels

A Deconstructive Theology of God-Talk in Acts and Corinthians

By: Eric D. Barreto,Jacob D. Myers,Thelathia “Nikki” Young

Through close textual engagement, theological exposition, ethical reflection, and interdisciplinary collaboration, this book presents a constructive theology of divine speech in the Acts of the Apostles and 1 Corinthians in critical conversation with contemporary issues of sociopolitical, ecclesial, and theological importance. In particular, the authors attend to pericopes in Acts and Paul that open up fresh ways of thinking about divine discourse, preaching, and advocacy in light of contemporary matters of theological and ethical import. In addition to classical modes of textual and theological analysis, the authors attend to the sociopolitical and sociolinguistic aspects of speech as they arise in these pericopes. As such, the authors are simultaneously deconstructing these texts through postcolonial and post-structural analyses to expose these texts to an alterity at work therein, an alterity that has been muted by centuries of biblical interpretation.

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Page Count

142

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1978706820

ISBN 13

9781978706828

Curating Church

Strategies for Innovative Worship

By: Jacob Daniel Myers

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Curating Church

Strategies for Innovative Worship

By: Jacob Daniel Myers

If we are willing to shift our approach to church, we will better connect with increasingly heterogeneous cultures. This shifting requires curation. Church leaders must learn to be curators! Churches in modernity were set up to facilitate a particular kind of experience with God. Church was its own (protected) culture. In the wake of postmodernity, facilitated by new forms of (digital) communication, we are entering a new epoch in the history of the church. Curators manage the tasks of connection, preservation, and transformation, in their care for cultural artifacts and communities. When someone serves as a curator, they make connections between different elements in the culture, preserving the best of cultural traditions, and promoting fresh ways of thinking and being in the world. What might this work of curation mean for us? In Curating Church, readers learn how curation can reorient and sharpen the ways and work of the church. Curation can inform how we connect with cultures beyond the church, preserve what is best in the rich history of Christian thought and expression, and nurture spaces where contemporary persons may be transformed by the gospel. This book helps readers to understand with new richness the church and the world, and it equips them to become active in making those connections—as curators—with and for others.

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