Preaching with Empathy

Preachers can find help from many resources to get the text right, the structure right, and the delivery right. Preaching with Empathy aims to help preachers and homiletics students learn to deeply understand and love their listeners, in order to get preaching right. Preachers who profess a love for God, Scripture, and preaching, but who lack loving empathy for the listener, betray their three professed loves and limit their fruitfulness in ministry. This book teaches how to practice preaching in new ways, incorporating a heightened awareness and empathy for the people in the preacher’s community. Author Lenny Luchetti provides immediately useful tools, all based on the foundations of scripture, theology, history, and social awareness. Readers will learn to embody Christ for their congregations, as they empathically love God and humanity.


This book is part of the successful Artistry in Preaching series, edited by Paul Scott Wilson. Other books in the series include Preaching as Poetry: Beauty, Goodness and Truth in Every Sermon, by Paul Scott Wilson; Actuality: Real Life Stories for Sermons that Matter, by Scott Hoezee; and Preaching in Pictures: Using Images for Sermons that Connect, by Peter Jonker.

Your sermon is faultlessly structured. Your message is based on well-researched documentation. Your delivery is spot on. What more does your congregation need? How about a little love and understanding? If you want your sermons to resonate with those who sit in the pews, you need to know them, listen to them and become aware of what is going on within your community. Preaching with Empathy offers useful tools—based on the foundations of Scripture, theology, history, and social awareness—that will provide you with a new way to prepare and write your sermons. Through this unique approach to the homiletic challenge, you will learn how to connect authentically with your congregation…and that’s when you’ll get preaching right.

Part of the successful Artistry in Preaching series, edited by Paul Scott Wilson. Other books in the series include Preaching as Poetry: Beauty, Goodness and Truth in Every Sermon, by Paul Scott Wilson; Actuality: Real Life Stories for Sermons that Matter, by Scott Hoezee; and Preaching in Pictures: Using Images for Sermons that Connect, by Peter Jonker.