Going against the grain : prophetic preaching in an urban Church of Sweden parish context

This project studied if and how prophetic preaching would influence hearers’ way of understanding and expressing commitment to social change, relationship to the church, and relationship to faith in a large urban parish in the Church of Sweden where commitment to social change is highly valued. The project established the crucial importance of focusing on the perspectives of hearers for the sermons to have an impact regardless of form, prophetic or other. The project claimed that, in this context, structural, theological, and psychological reasons make it difficult to establish prophetic preaching and suggested different methods to facilitate this kind of preaching.