Paul S. Wilson, General Editor, is Professor of Homiletics at Emmanuel College in the University of Toronto. He is one of the most respected and recognized teachers of homiletics in North America. He is the author of a number of books, including The Practice of Preaching, Imagination of the Heart, The Four Pages of the Sermon, and God Sense: Reading the Bible for Preaching, all published by Abingdon Press.

Jana Childers is Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Homiletics and Speech-Communication at San Francisco Theological Seminary. She is a Presbyterian minister who served congregations in Kansas and New Jersey before joining the seminary faculty. She holds a B.A. from Wheaton College, an M.Div degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Interests in the arts, spirituality and worship supplement Jana’s “central and great love” – preaching. She has appeared at churches and conferences across the country in the one-woman show Berries Red (1987-1997), produced the original musical Push Up the Sky (1997-1999) at the GTU and is currently working to bring Aimee!, a play about the life of Aimee Semple Mc Pherson, to the stage. She is the author of Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre (Abingdon Press, 1998), co-editor of The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, Series I, editor of Birthing the Sermon: Women Preachers on Creative Process (Chalice Press, 2001) which was awarded the Religious Communication Association’s Book of the Year award, and editor of the forthcoming Purpose of Preaching (Chalice Press,2003). Jana has appeared several times on Thirty Good Minutes, the television program produced by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club and was recently featured on the Odyssey Channel’s Great Preachers series.

Cleophus J. LaRue (Cleo) is Francis Landey Patton Associate Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. He specializes in the theory and method of African American preaching and worship. Appointed to the Princeton faculty in 1996, LaRue is an ordained minister in the National Baptist Convention of America. He is the former pastor of two churches in Texas as well as the former interim pastor of churches in Harlem and Jamaica Queens, New York. A frequent speaker in churches and seminaries throughout the country, LaRue is a member of the Academy of Homiletics and the Society for the Study of Black Religion. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Baylor University in Waco, Texas and his M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Heart of Black Preaching and the editor of Power in the Pulpit: How America’s Most Effective Black Preachers Prepare Their Sermons. He is also the editor of a forthcoming book entitled: This is My Story: Testimonies and Sermons of Black Women in Ministry. All three books are published by Westminster John Knox Press.

John Rottman is Associate Professor of Preaching, Calvin Theological Seminary.

Paul Franklyn is director of Bible, Reference and ePublishing at Abingdon Press. After the PhD in Old Testament from Vanderbilt University he has edited more than five hundred books, eBooks, CD-ROMs, and DVDs, and web sites for pastors, scholars, and congregational leaders.