Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog

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Book Reviews of Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog

Book Review: I have found what I'm looking for...
Summary: 5 Stars

One of the strengths of a book such as this is that it pushes the boundaries of ordinary preaching. Both editors Raewynne Whiteley and Beth Maynard have been involved in the Episcopal Church's Gathering the neXt Generation network, a group dedicated to looking for ways to involve more of Generation X into the church - what better way than to go to where Generation X lives, the popular culture, dominated by music.

The book grew out of an initial conversation of the editors and a third person, Mike Kinman, at a conference where Whiteley presented a paper on U2 and preaching to the GenX group. It became apparent that this was not a solitary glimpse, but had the aspects of communal revelation. Through various contacts, Whiteley and Maynard collected homilies preached by fellow ministers that involved key songs or elements of U2. There are 26 sermons in all, organised according to broad themes each introduced by a meditation by Sarah Dylan Breuer. The appendices include a paper by Whiteley on pop-culture and preaching, a brief history (for those who are new) of U2 by Maynard, and a very useful 6-session outline for an adult study series incorporating U2 and this text. This is bound to be of great interest to churches who might want to reach out to the GenX population, and can be a great evangelism tool. The adult series requires extra material (including important pieces of the U2 corpus, music and video), for this kind of study requires more of an MTV approach incorporating different media, but it does not assume that the participants are necessarily fans of U2 beforehand.

Just as U2 speaks with a strong voice and tells various stories of importance, so too do these sermons. These certainly do not read like the sermons from dusty seminary shelves, so-called 'classic' sermons that highlight particular preaching methods or hermeneutic devices; these are fresh and vibrant with an energy quite new. With regard to this text, I would never say 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for.' Perhaps this will be an answer for whom that lyric still holds true.

So, is U2 a prophetic voice? The authors in this text would say yes. They expose the bad, proclaim the good, call for the acting for good - this makes up the core of good prophecy and good preaching.

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