Let the Church Say Amen
Practicing a Black Communal Homiletic
- Preaching & Worship
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2026
FritzSearch.com earns a commission on purchases made through Bookshop.org links.
Publisher's Description
Timothy Adkins-Jones argues that a contemporary world with decreased acceptance of institutional authority and shorter attention spans leaves preachers and congregations alike searching for ways to experience renewed engagement during the preaching moment. In response, Adkins-Jones explores a homiletical practice that expands on the history of communal preaching in the Black church tradition. He argues that exploring the depth of such communal approaches can help to quicken congregants' spiritual growth as they experience the process of co-creating the sermon with the preacher. Let the Church Say Amen! traces ways congregational involvement in the Black preaching process can be witnessed historically before, during, and after the sermon. Through its theological examination of these patterns, the book explores how Black preachers cultivate congregational participation during the conception, performance, and evaluation of the sermon in contemporary contexts. Let the Church Say Amen! engages in a generative conversation regarding the future of Black communal homiletics, including possibilities in virtual spaces, and its potential impacts in other congregational contexts.
Endorsements (4)
“Let the Church Say Amen! makes a pivotal contribution to the recovery of Black preaching’s histories and rhetorical traditions. Timothy Adkins-Jones offers a thoughtful analysis that invites a reexamination of our assumptions about the shape of authority in preaching and in communities of faith. It is a must-read for those seeking nuanced understandings of how enduring traditions function as both keepers and builders of communal practice—one that begins before a sermon takes place and continues well beyond its ending, reaching into the wider world.”
“a thorough and engaging history of call-and-response as a homiletical tool in the historic Black church, while adding to the conversation on how this communal act of preaching builds strength, support, and courage within the congregation that shares in building the sermon. Homileticians, historians, preachers in the church—no matter their ethnicity or race—and students will need this book.”
“In Let the Church Say Amen!, Timothy Adkins-Jones gathers the cultural wisdom of a people who have historically co-labored with the preacher in the African-originated practice of call-and-response. Expanding the canon of Black homiletical scholarship as one of the most skilled postmodern theorist-practitioners in the discipline, Adkins-Jones reminds readers of the co-creative, co-revelationary revelationary power of Black Church worship, and why Black preaching, as a central element of it, is not reducible to one-off or one-act performances. Through careful examination of antiphonal practices that remain vibrant today, Adkins-Jones provides readers—irrespective of their cultural tribe—with a Black communal homiletic that honors the preached word as a liberative, radically inclusive, and embodied theological practice, incarnated in the preacher’s creative imagination and the congregation’s co-facilitation. Any serious student of the Black preaching traditions would be wise to secure this important work.”
“With pastoral wisdom and scholarly depth, Timothy Adkins-Jones makes clear that congregational involvement in Black preaching is not a mere feature of sermonic performance but rather evidence of a deeply theological communal homiletic. Let the Church Say Amen! is an indispensable guide empowering preachers and their congregations to both claim and expand communal preaching practices that lead to revelation and renewal.”
See something wrong on this page? Report a problem