The Future of Preaching - Geoffrey Stevenson

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given to the way ‘delight’ might be created in the hearts of those listening to sermons.

      I was sure there would be a reference within these pages to the classical definition of preaching given by Phillips Brooks in his 1877 Lectures on Preaching given at Yale. There invariably is, but I didn’t expect it to appear quite as late in the book as it does. ‘Truth through personality’ remains as good a starting point for understanding the essence of preaching as any. I’ve used it often enough myself. But how I wish someone would amplify that definition with just a little more reference to what Brooks wrote just a few sentences later. This how he went on:

      The truth [proclaimed] must come really through the person, not merely over his lips, not merely into his understanding and out through his pen. It must come through his character, his affections, his whole intellectual and moral being. It must come genuinely through him.

      The gender-exclusive language employed by Brooks is, of course, of its time but our insistence on a literary style more generous to all its readers cannot prevent us from sensing and agreeing with the thrust of his argument. Nor from recognizing the distinction he makes between two different kinds of preacher. He writes how

      the Gospel has come over one of them and reaches us tinged and flavoured with his superficial characteristics, belittled with his littleness. The Gospel has come through the other, and we received it impressed and winged with all the earnestness and strength that there is in him.

      Brooks brings his case to its conclusion with a graphic contrast. ‘In the first case’, he writes, ‘the [preacher] has been but a printing machine or a trumpet. In the other case he has been a true [human being] and a real messenger of God.’

      I and, I suspect, all of us who attempt the noble art of preaching, can easily acknowledge that we have gone down each of these paths from time to time. Preaching has been both an exercise emanating from our thinking selves, an exhortation lacking depth or subtlety, and also something altogether more profound. When our words are conceived in the deepest parts of our being, when they resonate with everything we try to do in the rest of our lives, when they are marked with the ring of sincerity and truth, it is not difficult to recognize the way our words acquire an energy and strength which is not of our own making. The God-given-ness, God-blessedness, of the humble work of ordinary men and women who endeavour to say something meaningful about the extraordinary generosity of their Maker, the unfathomable love of their Heavenly Father, is surely as much a miracle as any ever recorded. Here is the bread from heaven that feeds us and our listeners now and evermore – humble scraps which somehow nourish multitudes.

      Those of us who preach know how passionate an exercise it all is. Those who listen deserve only the best fare, food which offers a foretaste of the heavenly banquet itself. And those who have put their heads together, given some serious thought to the preacher’s task, and now offer their work to the public are to be commended for continuing the struggle to give preaching a future at least as significant and transformative as its past.

      Leslie Griffiths, One of Mr Wesley’s Preachers

      Contributors

      Ruthlyn Bradshaw has been in ministry for 37 years. A native of Montserrat, she migrated at an early age to Boston, USA, where she received most of her formal education and early theological training. After some years she returned to her homeland, Montserrat, and for several years served as pastor, until the volcanic eruption caused her to migrate in 1997 to England, where she currently serves as senior pastor for two branches of the New Life Assembly Fellowship of Churches. Her penchant for learning, culminating in a Master’s degree in Applied Theology from Spurgeon’s College in the UK, has added to her capacity to preach and counsel with uncommon insight. She is currently a doctoral student and faculty member in two theological institutions.

      Susan Durber is a minister of the United Reformed Church, presently serving as Principal of Westminster College, Cambridge, where she is leading the college in its development from a traditional theological college to a resource centre for the whole of the URC. She has served churches in rural, inner city, suburban and city centre settings. She publishes prayers, books and articles on preaching, and contributes regularly to the URC’s Reform magazine. She is also on the Standing Commission of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.

      Leslie J. Francis is Professor of Religions and Education within the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, University of Warwick, England, and Canon Theologian at Bangor Cathedral, Wales. His research interests are in practical theology, empirical theology and the psychology of religion. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which research traditions within the field of ‘personality and individual differences’ may help to inform a ‘theology of individual differences’. It is this theological approach that has given rise to the SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching.

      Paul Johns is a Methodist Local Preacher and Director of the College of Preachers. He has spent most of his working life as a management consultant working in industries as diverse as food production, finance and football. As well as tutoring in preaching, he writes plays and stories and is a former contributor to BBC’s Thought for the Day. He also works voluntarily for a small Christian–Muslim development agency promoting interfaith co-operation in Bosnia and visits that country frequently. He has Masters degrees in History from Oxford and in Theology (preaching) from the University of Wales.

      Richard Littledale is the Minister of Teddington Baptist Church, in West London, and has always had an interest in innovative and creative communication. He has written books for the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Saint Andrew Press on the subject. His first book with Saint Andrew Press, Stale Bread, is a guide to narrative preaching, and his second, the Preacher’s A to Z, is a preacher’s companion on the craft and practice of preaching. Richard is a regular contributor to Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2 and a tutor with the College of Preachers.

      Duncan Macpherson is a Roman Catholic Permanent Deacon in the Diocese of Westminster. He preaches regularly in several Catholic churches as well as in those of other Christian traditions. Retiring from lecturing in Theology and Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s University College, Twickenham, in 2000, he obtained his D.Min. in Preaching from the Aquinas Institute in St Louis Missouri in 2003. He is a tutor and executive member of the College of Preachers and is the features editor of The Preacher. His publications include Pilgrim Preacher: Palestine, Pilgrimage and Preaching (foreword by Naim Ateek; 2004 and 2008). He belongs to the US-based Academy of Homiletics and the Catholic Association of Teachers of Homiletics. He is a research fellow at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and teaches the MA module on ‘Proclamation and Preaching’ at Saint Mary’s University College.

      Ian Paul is Dean of Studies at St John’s, Nottingham, where he teaches New Testament, philosophy of language and homiletics. From a Roman Catholic background, he came to personal faith as a teenager and studied Pure Maths and Operational Research (logistics) and made chocolate before training for ordination in the Church of England at St John’s. After completing a Ph.D. on metaphor and the book of Revelation, he was involved in church leadership in Poole, Dorset, for ten years before returning to join the staff in Nottingham. He is married to Maggie and they have three children.

      Trevor Pitt was ordained in 1970 to parish ministry in Sheffield, and worked in local radio. He moved to Kent in 1979, combining parish ministry with teaching in theological education, and served as a Six Preacher at Canterbury Cathedral. In 1991 he became Principal of the North East Oecumenical Course (NEOC) and Hon. Canon of Newcastle Cathedral. His primary academic interests, since postgraduate work in liturgy and philosophical theology, have been in liturgical theology, performance and practice, and in preaching, communication and understanding of the faith, and practical ecumenism.

      David J. Schlafer is an Episcopal priest who has taught philosophy, theology and homiletics at a number of seminaries in different denominational traditions, and has served on the staff of the College of Preachers (USA). He currently focuses professional energy as a conference leader and preaching consultant. Author and editor of 18 books, he contributes

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