Warren W. Wiersbe, Developing a Christian Imagination (Wheaton, IL: Viktor Books, 1995), 286 pp., paper.

This companion volume to Wiersbe's outstanding Preaching and Teaching With Imagination (Victor, 1994) is a collection of delightful literary resources that are likely to both demonstrate and spark imagination. The bulk of the book consists of creative sermons that will be of interest to anyone who regularly stands in the pulpit.

Wiersbe has gathered a diverse assortment of literary and homiletical gems, ranging from Charles Spurgeon and Henry Ward Beecher to Eugene H. Peterson. Preachers will find a wealth of material to encourage greater imagination in our own efforts.

Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, and James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV Year A (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), 589 pp., hardcover, $32.00.

Preachers who follow the Revised Common Lectionary will find much of value in this third (of three) volumes providing resources for preaching on lectionary texts. The book covers each Sunday (plus important liturgical holidays) of the year; each listing includes introductory material on the texts, and a commentary on each of the four texts (Old Testament, Psalter, Gospel and Epistle).

Written primarily for a mainline audience, readers will find many good exegetical insights and suggestions for practical implications of the biblical texts.

Gaventa is a professor at Princeton Seminary; the other three compilers are on the faculty of Columbia Seminary in Atlanta.

Paul Scott Wilson, The Practice of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 329 pp., hardcover.

Wilson has added his contribution to the ever-growing list of preaching textbooks. It is written specifically for the classroom, but will still be of interest to the preaching minister who wishes to stay in touch with the academic side of homiletics. As a text, preachers will find it better than many, less helpful than some. Much material will be helpful to beginning preachers, while more experienced preachers will urge the author to "get on with it."

I particularly like Wilson's idea of the "hermeneutical square," which represents "the four-step progression we make: from receiving a (biblical) text, to providing an interpretation of it in the form of another text (which in the case of homiletics is the sermon). The stages then repeat for the next interpreter (in this case, the congregation)." The four parts of the "hermeneutical square" are: 1. What the text says (study of the biblical text); 2. What the text means (study of what others say about the text); 3. What experience says (application of the text); 4. What the preacher says (the sermon).

Wilson is professor of homiletics at Emmanuel College in Canada's Toronto School of Theology.

Barry L. Callen, ed., Sharing Heaven's Music: The Heart of Christian Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 230 pp., hardcover.

James Earl Massey is one of the outstanding preachers of our day, and this collection of essays is a festschrift compiled and published in his honor. Massey has recently retired as dean of the School of Theology of Anderson University, and this book was edited by Barry L. Callen, a professor at Anderson and Massey's predecessor as dean.