There is an interesting story about the power of preaching that Serge Lancel recounts in his St Augustine (SCM Press, 2002), 351 (found in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, IV, 53).  In the years 418-419 Augustine had to deal with numerous pastoral issues over a hectic two-year period.  At one point, while in Caesarea during this time, he discovered a certain custom in this city.  On certain days of the year the citizens of the city would divide into two groups and would try and stone one another to death (called the caterva, "free-for-all").  Augustine chose to preach against this practice, and as Lancel recounts, Augustine "overwhelmed them, moved them to tears and, by the power of his words, achieved what no urban policing had ever managed--the eradication of a barbaric custom, to the extent that several years later it had not reappeared." 

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