her congregation most weeks in the year is not just engaged in the delivery of necessary information to an anonymous group (like the radio or TV news presenter), nor the regular performance of scripts to equally anonymous groups (like an actor). He or she is in a peculiar and privileged relationship to these people, and preaching is neither an interruption to this relationship nor the main driver of it. It is an integral part of it.
Again, we must recognize this as a fact before we begin to talk about ‘what’ and ‘how’ we preach. Whatever we as preachers may think we are doing – if, for instance, we imagine that we can get away with a distinctly non-pastoral tirade on Sunday morning and resume normal church meetings on Monday evening or pastoral visits on Tuesday afternoon – we will soon find out that the congregation thinks differently. There is a relationship there, and preaching holds out the possibilities of either deepening it or damaging it.
Yet the relationship is not an ordinary one, but is inevitably bound up with the preacher’s role. Across the spectrum of theologies of ministry, there is common ground in the recognition that where there are ministers, they are set apart by the Church under, it believes, the guidance and inspiration of God, for guiding his flock. Not only the preacher’s compassion and motivation, therefore, are at stake, and his or her sensitivity to the fact of pastoral relationship, but the fittingness of the way in which he or she exercises the entire pastoral role. Thus a preacher may avoid the danger mentioned above of real damage to the relationship, yet still court weakening the preaching event if it is not seen in a healthy balance with other elements of the ministerial calling. Others apart from the preacher will, one hopes, share in the pastoral care of a congregation; but a preacher who preaches about care yet appears to give little time to caring, or to leave it all to others, risks damaging the pastoral relationship in perhaps a less immediate, but more long-term way than the one who offloads grudges or hostility in a single sermon. The same is equally true, conversely, of those who spend large amounts of time on personal pastoral caring but insufficient time reflecting how most helpfully to advance the pastoral cause in preaching. No minister should be thought of – or think of themselves – as omnicompetent, but there are central ministerial tasks which rightly require to be held in proper balance.
An aspect of exercising a pastoral function through preaching is leadership. The relationship between preaching and leadership is a delicate one.[25] The tasks of preacher, pastor and leader come together in the calling to build Christian community based on the word of God.[26] On the one hand, a pastor who preaches is de facto exercising leadership. He or she is acting at the very least as a guide to those hearing. And the preacher who is sensitive both to the revelation of God and to the needs of the people will rightly seek a sense of how God may be wanting to lead the people on in their specific circumstances and their Christian community life. On the other hand, when preaching is understood purely as a function of leadership, the Godward dimension is easily lost (even if God-language is used). Preaching as an event which serves to enable worship, transform cultures and shape theology cannot at the same time be preaching that is equivalent to motivational management.
The relationship of preaching to pastoral care is intimately linked to its relationship to theology. It is the pastoring impulse which motivates and directs the preacher to articulate not necessarily what the congregation wants to hear, but what it is able to hear of the gospel vision the preacher has received. It is this same impulse which drives the preacher to utter not just a resumé of their own beliefs, but whatever from Scripture and Christian tradition will most helpfully enlarge, redirect and engage with the various beliefs and perspectives already held by the congregation. The reality is that people will be adjusting those beliefs and perspectives all the time – notwithstanding the periods of resistance to change which we all live through. The pastoral preacher fulfils an important function contributing to that process.
Questions for the local church
In what ways is the preaching you experience, whether as preacher or hearer, fulfilling or seeking to fulfil these functions?
Does it fulfil one or more of them better than others, and if so, why?
Are there other functions which preaching is fulfilling, or could or should fulfil?
Areas for research
The way in which preaching in fact fulfils any of the four functions identified in this chapter is an important topic for empirical research. For example, one could build on the foundations being laid in the study of ‘ordinary hermeneutics’ to study the way in which preaching in fact contributes to the worshipping life and theological development of a congregation.
Further reading
Martyn D. Atkins, 2001, Preaching in a Cultural Context, Peterborough: Foundery Press.
Neville Clark, 1991, Preaching in Context: Word, Worship and the People of God, Bury St Edmunds: Kevin Mayhew.
G. Lee Ramsey Jr, 2000, Care-full Preaching: From Sermon to Caring Community, St Louis: Chalice Press.
William H. Willimon, 2005, Proclamation and Theology, Nashville: Abingdon.
[1] We will consider this further in Chapter 9.
[2] For an attempt at a representative survey, with examples, of what preaching looks and sounds like in the range of worship settings in Britain today, see Geoffrey Stevenson and Stephen Wright, 2008, Preaching with Humanity: A Practical Guide for Today’s Church, London: Church House Publishing, pp. 12–28. Seminal influences on my thinking on this subject have been Neville Clark, 1991, Preaching in Context: Word, Worship and the People of God, Bury St Edmunds: Kevin Mayhew; Ian Paton, 2004, ‘Preaching in Worship’, in Geoffrey Hunter, Gethin Thomas and Stephen Wright (eds), A Preacher’s Companion: Essays from the College of Preachers, Oxford: Bible Reading Fellowship, pp. 114–17, and the longer lecture on which it was based. See also Carol M. Norén, ‘The Word of God in Worship: Preaching in Relationship to Liturgy’, in Cheslyn Jones et al. (eds), 1992, The Study of Liturgy, rev. edn, London: SPCK, pp. 31–49.
[3] See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘The Proclaimed Word’, in Richard Lischer (ed.), 2002, The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching from Augustine to the Present, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 31–7, here p. 37. On the combination of grace and judgement in preaching see Paul Scott Wilson, 2004, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, St Louis: Chalice Press, pp. 73–115; 1999, The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching, Nashville: Abingdon. Wilson here develops an approach to preaching based on the recognition of ‘trouble’ in the world and the text, and the announcement of ‘grace’ in the world and the text.
[4] For a penetrating account of how important it is that worship and preaching should usher worshippers into the sphere of the kingdom, in which God’s grace is found, see Clark, Preaching, pp. 35–8.
[5] See H. Richard Niebuhr, 1951, Christ and Culture, New York: Harper & Row, pp. 190–229.
[6] For examples of the positive effect of preaching in transforming cultures we might look to the effect of Augustine’s preaching in the fourth and fifth centuries on a decaying imperial culture, the social effects of Wesleyan preaching in the eighteenth, or those of Spurgeon or the Salvation Army in the nineteenth. On Augustine see the important work
