"For everything there is a season," as the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, and that includes preaching. Beyond ordinary Sunday morning worship, many other "seasons"--special occasions--arise for preaching in the life of the church, whether by virtue of the secular calendar or celebrations or circumstances in the congregation or community. For Every Matter under Heaven: Preaching on Special Occasions offers preachers a process for creating sermons that are biblically grounded and relevant to the occasion. Two obvious occasions of this sort are weddings and funerals; however, church anniversaries, dedications of new buildings or furnishings, commitment of pledges in stewardship season, and ordination and installation services also call for preaching on a special theme or topic. In addition, some congregations acknowledge secular holidays, such as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day, in worship. Pastors are often called on to preach at events outside the church. And all congregations face local or national tragedies and crises that call for a word from the Lord. These occasions require a different kind of sermon--or at least a different process of preparation. Most preachers have been taught that sermons begin with a biblical text, usually a text prescribed by a standard lectionary. Beverly Zink-Sawyer and Donna Giver-Johnston offer preachers a process for finding appropriate sermon texts for special occasions by considering the occasion itself, the listeners who might be gathered, and the ways God is at work in that time and place. Through this process, preachers can offer a word for every matter under heaven.
Beverly Zink-Sawyer is professor emerita of preaching and worship at Union Presbyterian Seminary and an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She is the editor of the Abingdon Women's Preaching Annual Series 3, the author of From Preachers to Suffragists: Woman's Rights and Religious Conviction in the Lives of Three Nineteenth-Century American Clergywomen, and one of the authors of the 2008 New Proclamation commentary. Donna Giver-Johnston is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and pastor of Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She teaches preaching as an adjunct professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt University and is the author of Claiming the Call to Preach (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Writing for the Ear, Preaching from the Heart (Fortress Press, 2021).
