Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide, Paperback

Preaching in the Purple Zone is a resource for helping the church understand the challenges facing parish pastors, while encouraging and equipping preachers to address the vital justice issues of our time.This book provides practical instruction for navigating the hazards of prophetic preaching with tested strategies and prudent tactics grounded in biblical and theological foundations. Key to this endeavor is using a method of civil discourse called "deliberative dialogue" for finding common values among politically diverse parishioners. Unique to this book is instruction on using the sermon-dialogue-sermon process developed by the author that expands the pastor's level of engagement on justice issues with parishioners beyond the single sermon. Preaching in the Purple Zone equips clergy to help their congregations respectfully engage in deliberation about "hot topics," find the values that bind them together, and respond faithfully to God's Word.

Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade is assistant professor of preaching and worship at Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky. She is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America with, twenty years of experience. She has pastored three different Pennsylvania churches, in suburban, urban and rural settings with members spanning the red-blue political spectrum. Leah earned both her MDiv and PhD degrees from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and is author of the book Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015). She has been an activist for environmental justice issues for over a decade.