Home By Another Way

In these sermons, Barabra Brown Taylor walks us through the church year from the expectancy of Advent to the fires of Pentecost and beyond. Her themes arise not only from a particular feast or fast, but out of the perennial questions of faith: doubt, grace, anger, and jubilation. These sermons are simply great stories well told.

About the Author :
Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest. She holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in northeastern Georgia and serves as adjunct professor of Christian spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur. Recognized as one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English language by Baylor University in 1995, Taylor has published numerous collections of her sermons and theological reflections, including Mixed Blessings, The Preaching Life, Home By Another Way, The Luminous Web, Speaking of Sin, and Gospel Medicine.

Review :
Taylor is extraordinarily skillful at bringing the biblical message to life and linking it to human experience. She does not hover on the surface of either text or experience, but instead probes both deeply, bringing text into ever broader and deeper resonances with life and vice versa. She possesses an imaginative vision revealed in her attention to detail—she paints concrete biblical portraits and landscapes and then invites readers in. She makes the bible stories seem ‘real' in compelling ways. In effect, she tells us that the lives and struggles of these colorful characters from millennia ago are not all that different from our own. Sermons have been thought of as an art form for a very long time, but rarely have they been pure storytelling. Stories have embellished sermons for a variety of reasons and in this way have served to edify, inform, and inspire. Professor/priest Barbara Brown Taylor has elevated the pure story form and given it a new place in the pulpit. And she does it with the skills required of storytellers. . . . One would hope that this book will start a revolution in homiletics. Another set of superb sermons by an Episcopal priest known for her preaching. These read remarkably well for what is meant to be an oral form. Hearing them must be a gift of another kind, a gift this reader would dearly like to have. Taylor brings several extraordinary gifts together in this book. She is a first-class storyteller, a wonderful writer and rewriter of her sermons. . . . Barbara Brown Taylor has worked and worked to become as good as she is. Those of us who preach should read and study what she does with texts and stories. Those who sit in the pew will find these sermons quite wonderful. Barbara Brown Taylor is a dynamic, skilled storyteller. Her crisp, down-to-earth language is engaging, provocative, and accessible to the widest possible audience—a sine qua non of good worship. Convicted of our constrictedness as human beings and our exceptional possibilities as children of God, Barbara Brown Taylor provides an invitation, a map to follow, and ideas, images, and topographies to companion us on our journey.