Preaching

Preaching is a long and varied tradition. It has been carried out by a variety of people, in a variety of contexts, in a plethora of styles, for a variety of purposes. Recent research has helpfully highlighted the preaching of previously marginalized peoples. There is no one fixed way to preach. There is plenty of room for craft and creativity. 

Jesus embedded preaching in his radical ministry. If you take the references to preaching out of the prophetic Nazareth Manifesto of Luke 4:16-30, you are not left with much! In the tradition of the prophets, Jesus came preaching. We can like or loathe it, but preaching in various forms seemed to play an essential part in the mission and ministry of the prophets, Jesus and Apostles.

Preaching gets a lot of bad press in the Church. One reason is that there is a lot of bad preaching. Most of us have preached a “dog.” Yet, Sunday by Sunday, whether through expectation, call, or gifting, people get up to preach. As long as this is the case and preachers ask people to give up their time to listen; then our goal should be to offer the best preaching we can. This involves work.

To offer the best preaching we can requires paying attention to preaching as an act of human communication. Treating preaching as human communication does not deny the working of God in preaching. It is instead to recognize that God has chosen to operate through this event of one human being speaking to others. Consequently, it is our responsibility to bring our best to that task. This is our work.

There are many possible definitions and descriptions of preaching. My working description is that “preaching is the embodied oral/aural public communication of biblically informed Christian convictions in the hope of the Holy Spirit to bring about some transformation.” 

The sermon below was delivered on a formal occasion, to a mixed audience, in the Festival Theatre in Wolfville.

This next sermon was a pre-recorded sermon for Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in the Summer of 2021. Therefore, it was a sermon delivered in a mediated format. The Scripture text was Hebrews 5:1-10.

The title was “Who the Heck is Melchizedek?”