Alive to the Word. Stephen I. Wright

      George Herbert, ‘The Windows’

      Introduction

      My aim in this book is to develop a theological understanding of the Christian ministry of preaching, with a view to encouraging a mature and reflective approach to this historic and contemporary practice of the Church.

      The book follows a process of ‘practical theology’. In one sense, of course, all theology should be ‘practical’. Yet ‘practical theology’ has become a distinct and important discipline in its own right, which consciously and explicitly reflects on the practices of the Church, or indeed phenomena of the world, seeking to understand them in the light of God’s revelation in Christ, and to allow that understanding to inform proposals for more adequate forms of practice. My hope is that the book will be helpful on two levels: first, for the Church as a whole as it continues the debate about what forms of preaching are most adequate to its mission today; but second, for individual churches and preachers who wish to review their own preaching ministry. Pointers as to how the general discussion might be brought to earth in a specific and local review of preaching, or indeed of particular sermons, are included at the end of each chapter.

Each part of the book follows one stage of this practical theological process. For these stages I am indebted to the terminology and descriptions in Richard Osmer’s book Practical Theology (2008).[1] The first stage is to describe the practice of preaching as it has been carried on over two millennia, and as it fulfils particular functions today. This is the ‘descriptive–empirical’ task, in which the practice or phenomenon to be studied is laid bare as clearly as possible. The second stage is the ‘interpretive’ one, in which we analyse preaching from the point of view of the human sciences, especially those concerning communication within society. The third stage entails the task of ‘prophetic discernment’, in which the understanding developed in the previous stage is placed within a theological matrix, with the purpose of discovering how it is that God is involved in this human activity and what norms might follow from this to guide our practice. The fourth and final stage is called the ‘pragmatic’ one, in which we draw conclusions from this theological discernment for the way in which preaching is to be carried out.

      It will become clear that in each stage I can only outline a sample of the questions that are naturally raised by the discussion. As an additional feature at the end of each chapter, I will suggest some possible lines of research on that topic. Research in the area of preaching continues to be much sparser in Britain than it is in North America, and there are many avenues which could be pursued.

      Let me highlight three features of the book which are entailed in this attempt to provide a ‘practical theology of preaching’.

First, this is a reflective book rather than a prescriptive one. The principle here is familiar. A child needs basic boundaries and rules, but as she grows into adulthood, she needs to develop the art of making moral and practical judgements for herself. Everyday life demands that we go on making decisions for which no simple guidelines are sufficient. So it is with learning to hear and speak God’s word. There comes a point where we must move beyond the safety of maxims and structures which served us so well as a foundation, into the less charted territory of taking responsibility for our own listening and voicing. Important as it is to have basic instruction and guidelines in preaching (for which a number of excellent books are available),[2] not least for those just setting out on the journey, it is even more vital that we should grow in the ability to consider our task maturely and creatively for ourselves.

In fact there is a great practical difficulty for anyone who does try to offer prescriptive advice about preaching today, which is simply that the Christian ‘community’ and its practices (not to mention the individuals who inhabit them) are so diverse. Many books on preaching run the risk of addressing one particular segment of that ‘community’ but leave others feeling ‘this isn’t me’ or, especially, ‘this isn’t us’. They may thus serve a particular denomination or tradition well, but reinforce a sense that each stream of church life must course through its own well-formed channel without being allowed to feed into the others, and form larger rivers that do a better job of irrigating the land or empowering its people. This is unfortunate at a time when there is, in fact, a good deal of ‘breaking the banks’, of merging of streams. For example, many Anglican services would be quite unrecognizable as ‘Anglican’ to many of that denomination thirty or fifty years ago (and indeed today!), so much have they adopted styles, patterns and moods that would previously have been associated with the less formal end of ‘Free Church’ life. At the same time, fascinatingly, many of those in the Free Churches are rediscovering the wealth of ‘catholic’ tradition, for instance in liturgical structures, the use of symbol in worship, and sacramental understandings of word and ministry.[3] A part of what is indicated by terms such as ‘emerging church’, ‘deep church’ or ‘ancient–future church’ is impatience with old distinctions and a readiness to be eclectic in the communal expressions of Christian life.[4] I want this book to serve precisely this fascinating contemporary reality of a Church whose contours are not as familiar as once they were. That means, now like perhaps never before, that serious guidance cannot mean prescriptive guidance; listening for and uttering the word of God is bound to take different and often unexpected forms in different places.

      Second, this aims to be a theological book, not a merely pragmatic one. It recognizes that the fundamental meaning of our life, out of which all our practices and behaviour emerge, is a meaning shaped by God our Creator and Redeemer. All we do is to be understood theologically, and our lives are a perpetual ebb and flow between God-inspired action and God-directed reflection. Above all, surely, this must be so when we consider the very activities through which we seek most visibly and specifically to pay attention to what God has said and is saying. Without understanding the event of preaching theologically, our ‘wisdom’ descends to mere ‘communication skills’ or even advertising techniques, and we have no way in which to grapple with either the meaning or the practical implications of an activity through which we hope and pray that God himself will speak.

      This does not mean that the insights of ‘the world’ concerning communication are to be rejected or ignored. On the contrary, they are taken very seriously, since the world is created by God and despite its fallenness, continues to reflect something of his wisdom. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament displays this readiness to draw on observation of ‘the way the world works’ in order to instruct people in the wisdom of Yahweh, the Creator. Thus in Part 2 we seek ‘wisdom’ related to preaching in a variety of disciplines of thought, while in Part 3 we seek to evaluate what we have found in the light of an explicit theological framework.

      Third, this book is for the Church and not only for preachers. The task of discerning how God may be directing us within and through the community of Christian faith, so that we live out our lives with God-shaped meaning and focus, surely belongs to the Church as a whole. Certainly I envisage that many readers will be either experienced preachers, who want to review their ministry in some depth, or students of preaching who have moved beyond the foundational stage to a position of greater critical reflection on the practice. However, a noticeable and welcome feature of church life across the spectrum today is a readiness to widen responsibility for the Church’s fundamental task of attending to the word of God. More people are being given opportunity to voice that word in public – with or without some official authorization. There is a hunger, in some quarters at least, for smaller, more informal gatherings in which the Scriptures may be studied, insights shared, God’s will sought, and some serious theological learning may take place. ‘Believers’ learn to be honest about their doubts and questions and ‘non-believers’ feel safe acknowledging theirs. In such an atmosphere, there is no place for a ‘preacher’ in the familiar sense, yet the word of God has not been silenced. Some would say it has been liberated. It does not, therefore, make sense to me to design a book such as this for ‘preachers’ in a narrowly defined