Perhaps you are like many preachers. As you preach week in and week out, you are aware that the work sometimes places you on a lonely path. To repair this homiletical isolation, many preaching pastors assemble with colleagues who share our preaching journey. Sometimes preachers gather weekly or monthly in "study clusters" or "lectionary groups." Yet for many rural preachers, maybe even urban preachers, assembling regularly with other preachers in this fashion is neither convenient nor feasible. Happily, with the Internet we can hear other preachers practice our art. But listening to many sermons tends to be time-consuming—a luxury that few preachers have. Providing preachers a venue by which to delve into texts and ideas with other preachers is the intention behind the 2011 Abingdon Preaching Annual (APA). The APA employs The Revised Common Lectionary for half its entries, while sermon series make up the other half. Thus, for each Sunday of the calendar year—January through December—each preachable day's section offers not only a thousand-word sermon on one of the three primary lectionary texts for the day, but also a sermon from a series as well.

The purpose of the APA is to help preachers plan a full yearly schedule for preaching the biblical good news. Each preacher has her or his own method for planning a preaching program for individual congregations. The book in your hands or the CD in your computer allows preachers to sketch a preaching agenda from January through December—or for any segment of the year. Some may use the lectionary exclusively; some the series; others a combination. For any approach by which one plans preaching, the APA can be a useful portion of a planning method.

Perceptive preachers might ask, "For what kinds of preachers has Abingdon Press prepared this book?" The answer would be those who want to be in conversation with other preachers who approach the preaching task with the seriousness that biblical exposition calls forth. Preachers who may benefit from this book may be old or young, novice or experienced, rural or urban. The Abingdon Preaching Annual's intention is to stimulate biblical discourse. We all know that faithful preachers need and want this kind of spiritual and cerebral stimulation.

Each of the sermons in this 2011 edition of the APA possesses some superior feature that prompted the editors to place it in this book. Some of the sermons simply provide excellent biblical or historical exegesis of a particular text; others offer an application or a story that may help bring biblical texts to life for congregations. We point the APA toward those who desire to see how others use and understand the texts in delivering the biblical message to God's people. However you choose to make use of this book, we trust it will be of assistance to those who want to preach more effective sermons for believers in 2011.

Critics sometimes allege that books like The Abingdon Preaching Annual lure preachers into laziness or even plagiarism. Plainly, with the surplus of sermons and preaching helps accessible in print and online, this concern may be valid. However, the task of preaching is so difficult that we can not adequately prepare alone. The Abingdon Preaching Annual is one voice among many that preachers listen to with discernment. It offers unique sermon ideas and themes, biblical commentaries, and insights from other pastors' life experiences. Faithful preaching can and does happen when we use our individual gifts in concert with the insights of others.

Naturally we all bring our own gifts in preparing a word for our distinctive congregations. In the ekklesia of Jesus Christ, "one size fits all" does not apply. Only in the particularity of God's word spoken in a particular place and time can the church grasp the command of Jesus to "follow me" and live out this command in the world. Each pastor and congregation has an exacting and sacred association that no other person can imitate. Only the pastor as preacher can preach well to her or his individual congregation. In fact, I know many pastors who say that everything else they do—administration, pastoral care, fund-raising, and so on—supports their work of preaching God's word. Therefore, we trust that no authentic preacher would be so lifeless or lacking in zest as to let the enticement for shortcuts weaken his or her effectiveness.

In an earlier time, preachers steadfastly read what other preachers wrote in newspapers, books, and periodicals. In our contemporary world, many shun the reading of sermons, claiming lack of time. Yet to walk through a text and experience it with a sister or brother in the ministry can be one of the most helpful ways to learn. No preacher is ever a finished product. We all continually learn from others and from sharing our own small victories as well as our large mistakes. Through this conversation we and the church are blessed.

In addition to the weekly sermons on lectionary and series themes, each with worship aids intended to help "prime the pump," the APA furnishes commentary on lectionary texts not used for the primary sermon. The enclosed CD-ROM includes the full text of the print edition as well as the full lectionary text of each week's readings, and offers search capabilities and hyperlinks for easy navigation. The CD-ROM also provides pre-sermon, offertory, and pastoral prayers for major liturgical celebrations, an extensive annotated bibliography of biblical commentaries to help preachers in their preparation, classical and contemporary prayers and affirmations, and a classic sermon from the past for inspiration.

Finally, I write a word of appreciation to the many preachers who labor under relative anonymity and produce faithful sermons to feed their congregations each week. To them I say a grateful word of thanks.

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Romans 10:14-15)

David Neil Mosser

FUMC, Arlington, Texas

"Juneteenth" 2009