Of Seeds and the People of God

"Michael Knowles has written a stunning and demanding book on preaching. His central point is the life-giving power of God, which is exemplified in Jesus's agricultural parables. Over and against 'how to' books, Knowles advocates homiletical helplessness as a primary virtue, which involves putting to death our reliance upon rhetorical techniques. Preaching is testimony to what God does rather than to what the preacher does. The book is richly exegetical, theologically expansive, and ultimately deeply practical because everything is cast upon the practice of God."

--Andrew Purves, Professor of Reformed Theology, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA



"Studies of homiletical method are legion. Michael Knowles offers us something finer, richer, and more honest: a deep consideration of the God of life, whose cruciform Spirit graces our inadequacy and failures in the pulpit to bear faithful witness to a power that is not our own. Professor Knowles's approach is at once profoundly scriptural, traditionally sensitive, theologically grounded, and spiritual in the most authentically Christian sense. Only an author of seasoned wisdom and great compassion could have written Of Seeds and the People of God. May it find its way into the hands of all who preach, particularly those doubtful that their preaching makes a difference. It does--as surely as we depend on the trustworthy God 'who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.'"

--C. Clifton Black, Otto A. Piper Professor of Biblical Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ



"How does preaching convey the life-giving power of God? In an age of self-absorbed preachers and preaching, Michael Knowles answers with a 'parabolic' and 'cruciform' homiletics of dependence, dying and rising with Christ, and testimony that points away from the preacher. A must-read for those serious about the possibility of Christian preaching today."

--Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology, St. Mary's Seminary & University, Baltimore, MD