Twelve Virtues
Sermons That Unite Honest Scholarship with the Good News of a Living Faith
- Preaching & Worship
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2026
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Publisher's Description
Twelve Virtues is a collection of sermons rooted in historical-critical interpretation but also alive with proclamation and imagination. The book moves beyond pious platitudes on the one hand, and academic lectures in disguise on the other. Each sermon centers on a classical virtue—faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage, justice, and more—showing how the ancient texts can still speak powerfully to the challenges of our time. With the best of modern scholarship in the background, these sermons do not shrink from difficult questions about what Jesus did and did not say. Yet they remain grounded in the good news: that Scripture, when heard honestly and imaginatively, can still transform lives. In an age when liberal theology finds itself too academic and secular for some, and too religious for others, this book offers another way. By making the biblical text more fully available—both to the church and to those who have drifted from it—Twelve Virtues points toward a faith that is critical, courageous, and profoundly hopeful. For pastors, teachers, and thoughtful seekers alike, these sermons invite readers to discover how ancient words can still shape a living faith.
Endorsements (3)
Foreword
“Throughout this delightful book of sermons, Craig Mindrum brings to the Scriptures all the tools of modern biblical criticism and then crafts sermons that are profound, faithful, pastoral, and as timely as the daily newspaper. Mindrum’s aim is ‘not a dismantling of faith, but a deepening of it,’ as he states in his introduction. I commend these erudite sermons for personal devotional use or group study and discussion. Most likely, they will provoke lively conversation.”
“Craig Mindrum has here gifted us with a fresh and creative approach to biblical interpretation in the service of preaching. He invites us to bring responsible scholarly interpretation into practical engagement with challenges of faithful living in our time. The chapters demonstrate how that is possible and why it is essential. Mindrum’s writing is prophetic and profoundly insightful. It is spiced with humor and down-to-earth grappling with real-life issues. The book is commendably accessible and will prove usable for devotional reading, small group discussions, and for pastors as an aid to more faithful and effective preaching.”
“Before sermons emerge in the preaching moment, they must first crack open new life and space in the preacher. The most powerful sermons come from the wrestling of the one giving the sermon—wrestling with the text, the historical context, our own complicated experiences, our honest questions, communities searching for a way forward, and even with God’s own self. One of the gifts of this collection of sermons is permission—permission to wrestle with hard questions, serious scholarship, and counter the rising tide of Christian nationalism. What begins to emerge on these pages are examples of sermons that model a different kind of Christianity—one that gives permission to center the virtues that mirror what we pray when we plead, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”
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