Preaching Summit

Today (Monday April 20) Fuller is hosting a Preaching Summit. It is part kickoff for the new Lloyd Ogilvie Chair in Preaching and part conversation between some of the most recognizable scholars in preaching. Some of the participants are James Earl Massey (Dean Emeritus of both Anderson School of Theology and the Tuskegee Chapel), Wil Willimon (Former Dean of the Chapel at Duke and now Methodist Bishop for Alabama), Lloyd Ogilvie (Former pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and the retired Chaplain of the U.S. Senate), Jana Childers (Professor of Speech and Preaching at San Franciso Theological Seminary), Ken Fong (Pastor of a large Asian-American Church in L.A.), Peter Story (Methodist Bishop in South Africa and Professor of Preaching at Duke) and Renita Weems (Former O.T. Professor at Vanderbilt and now an AME pastor and one of the top women preacher's in America). It is quite a lineup.
I spent the morning listening in on their conversation about the future of preaching. Two hours of hearing from some of the great teachers of preaching about where they think (in some cases fear) preaching is headed. Then at lunch and in the afternoon I had opportunity to spend some time one on one with some of them. I thought you might be interested in a few snapshots of the things they shared.

1. Peter Story made the comment that he is more convinced than ever that preaching is all about location. If you do not know that location in which you are preaching (this includes the social construction of the audience, the theological tradition of the hearers, the major issues revolving around them) then you can do great harm to the gospel.
   
2. James Earl Massey was deeply concerned about the importance of preaching out of a tradition. Not some dry, historical past but a living, breathing, alive tradition that informs and helps to shape our preaching.
3. Many of those there were convinced that much of today's preaching is therapeutic in nature but not missional. It makes the person feel better but does little to affect the culture with the gospel. Preaching has become too individualistic, concentrating on the needs of the individual rather than the mission of the church to the world around us.
4. Ken Fong feared we were producing "Pharisee Factories" where we are more concerned about how things are done and less concerned with whether the gospel mission is being accomplished.
   
5. Jana Childers, Will Willimon, and Peter Story all lamented the inability of seminaries to get all their staff together in conversation about how to produce better preaching in the church. They also expressed some insightful ideas about building the entirety of the seminary curiculum around the development of preaching so that the church history department and the systematic theology department would be forming the preacher and the preaching rather than creating academicians. Willimon made the comment that he had found few laypeople who were impressed that their pastor could produced a 20 page resource paper. He had suggested at Duke that every class culminate with students preaching a sermon. That way they could come to understand how other disciplines inform preaching.
   

Tonight these folks will all gather together for a Q&A session being led by Andy Crouch. It will give them all a chance to share about the ministry of preaching in the 21st Century. It should be rich. I'll tell you all about it later.