Confessions of a Preacher
It’s my first time in Boston. I’m on the campus of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary for homiletical meetings. Members from around the country have come to present papers on preaching. I wasn’t inclined to come at first, but the topic just seemed too inviting—“Toward Excellence In Equipping Preachers.” It’s part of what I do at Western—equipping the next generation of preachers, and if anything has been needed in homiletic education it is excellence. In my own seminary experience, courses in preaching were little more than humorous stories, along with a suggested method for creating sermons that was unhelpful at best. That my notes were lost soon after seminary some 30 years ago—and never missed—underscores the point.
I’m also here because I still preach, and as I look around I realize the need for good preaching is as desperate as ever. The landscape of preaching is, as Barbara Brown Taylor once put it, a swampland of mediocrity. This may be overly generous. It is hard to find a church that stands out for its excellence in preaching today. Speaking to a colleague over lunch, I discovered it is the same in Boston as it is in Portland. Part of it reflects poor training—part of it may reflect a disinterest in putting out the effort.
The reality is, I know of few disciplines that require more careful thought, creativity, prayer, and tenacity than preaching. It is just about the hardest thing I do. No, it is the most challenging thing I face. Every week, the tyranny of time manhandles me around 4:00pm on Saturday and says—it is time to speak. And I am never ready-no matter if I have put 15 or 25 hours in the task. People ask me when I am finished preparing a sermon, and my standard answer is—when I get up to speak. There is a rigor that comes in knowing you must discover the intent of the text, and represent it well. You are asking not only what it says, but what this text is doing. It is rigorous because you are called to be a prophetic voice, and the last you want to do is misrepresent God. Some of my brothers take this discipline way too lightly. Working through the Greek and Hebrew, the argument of the writer, the theology of the passage, the theme of the text—and then communicating it with a passion that sometimes feels like you have emptied your soul—is not for everyone.
And yet, I could not live without preaching. There are few things so meaningful as knowing God is speaking through you. It is a sort of love-hate affair that I came to realize when I retired from preaching in early 2000. I came to Western to teach, relieved to know I was rescued from the weekly trauma, only to find in the span of weeks that I missed preaching terribly. And then God called me to Village, where I have been back in this enigmatic work. I say this for there is also great mystery to the work. When I feel the most confident, it seems to make the least impact. People tell me it was nice—or lovely—which to a preacher can be most depressing. Yet, when I am desperate, in absolute fear, wondering if anyone will comprehend what I will say, God seems to speak the loudest—and people tell me they heard God’s voice. And then there is this: sometimes, after it is all said and done, and I am driving home, God gives the most amazing insight relating to what I have just preached. Am I running ahead, or is He running late, or is God just messing with my mind? And there is this mystery—that people actually listen.
So here I am with this collection of fellow laborers, who also seem to reflect this curious mix of feeling powerfully privileged for getting to do this work, while occasionally screaming—why me God?
