Preaching Sermons That Connect by Craig A. Loscalzo, Inter Varsity, $9.99

Author: Craig A. Loscalzo is associate professor of Christian preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Main Help: Loscalzo shows that building rapport with listeners is crucial if we want to reach people who resist authoritarian preaching. He gives practical strategies to help preachers connect with their hearers.

Practical Takeaway: We can identify with hearers even when they face struggles we ourselves have never faced. The key is to develop empathetic imagination, the ability to feel what they feel and think as they think. We can cultivate our capacity for understanding people by imagining what it would be like to live in someone else's skin.

Key Quote: "Preaching that speaks to the lives of people in the oncoming years of the twenty-first century must move beyond the rhetoric of authority. People in the pews and those outside the church no longer respond favorably to an authoritarian ...