an appeal to shared values and beliefs ceases to be as obvious as it once seemed. The values of freedom and equality, for example, are not self-explanatory; they will be shown by our public preaching to arise from a vision of human flourishing that is inseparable from the image of God in Christ. Conversely, preaching will meticulously expose the ‘black hole’ in the nation’s life which it believed to be the ultimate cause of the pervasive collapse of trust and social disease. This concerted campaign of attrition will enlist the artistic idiom of story, song, praise as well as satire and mockery as deployed by the ancient prophets, in order to wear down and undermine the prevailing worldview (Brueggemann, 1989).
The Anglican tradition has sought to focus on the wider community rather than merely the congregation and to address through its preaching issues of wider cultural and community interests rather than being over-absorbed with the narrow and particular interests of the faithful Christians. This perspective needs careful nurture at a time of institutional decline when pressure on the local church for the survival of its ministry can lead to an unhealthy parochialism and inwardness. In the manner of the major prophets who were preachers to the nations, not simply to their own constituency, it is to be hoped that the preaching ministry of the ‘national church’ will address the whole creation (Croft, 1999, pp. 115–17).
The preaching in parish churches in England has been shaped by pastoral, rather than missionary, assumptions and has sought to maintain the reassuring continuities of faith and culture and the latent faith of the nation.
Some find new reassurance for this traditional position from the burgeoning interest in spirituality. However, the default character of much contemporary spirituality when divorced from its religious framework renders it impotent, while Gracie Davie’s latest analysis of religion points to the vocation of believers acting in proxy, and by consent, for society as a whole (see also Wells and Coakley, 2008, pp. 147–69). The shrinking of the believing community, however, dilutes the Christian witness, and this points to the need for preaching to assume an intentionally educative role. The postmodern insight that we live in different ‘worlds’ created by language and that experience, including of course religious experience, is linguistically structured should give new confidence to preaching as the means by which people may be transported to and inhabit an explicitly Christian story-centred ‘world’.
Arising, again, from an inherently pastoral model, the preacher has been inclined to maintain a conspiracy with biblical scholarship that evades the voicing of problems presented by the text. The faith of the preacher can thus be different in kind from that of the congregation (Fenton, 1975). An Advent sermon I recently heard, on Luke 21.25–36, unusually began with the candid acknowledgement by the preacher that ‘I don’t understand this Gospel’ and went on to spell out the difficulties he encountered in the text. I suspect that the thoughtful hearer would be conscripted to their own intense engagement with the text and the shattering of some of the superficial comforts that resulted from the honest exposition of the problems it presents as a result of this approach. In doing so it gave permission for the honest voicing of intractable problems whether with the interpretation of the text or with our own personal issues.
The preachers and their authorization
As well as clergy, lay people who become Readers in the Church of England are licensed by their bishop to preach and to perform liturgical functions. The demanding training equips them to be authoritative interpreters of Scripture, while they are particularly well placed through their rootedness in the world of work to act as ‘street theologians’ and to equip members of congregations to connect theologically with their own working lives. Their role is particularly crucial because the local church can often seem uncomfortable with the world of work and fails to equip its members to mount a reasoned defence against the fierce challenges they are likely to face. Congregations may, for their part, be thankful not to be reminded of or bring their working life into church, and Readers may find it more rewarding to ape their clergy colleagues in theological erudition than draw on their own unique experience and insight from their rich and diverse working lives. The ministry of Readers is the primary lay ministry and its members, whose numbers outweigh those of clergy, have been vital to the continuance of the preaching and liturgical ministry. However, the age profile of Readers remains high and the recruitment of younger members has not been encouraging. Reader ministry may be caught in a generational trap. It is generally recognized that with the growth in opportunities for lay members to preach on an occasional basis, there is little incentive to undertake a three-year intensive course to become a Reader.
The burgeoning numbers of those preaching on an occasional basis in many of our churches has brought vitality into worship and has been the catalyst for many once-hesitant lay people to discover their gifts and exercise a valued ministry, often going on to full-time ministry. If, as seems likely, a local lay preaching ministry will continue alongside that of Readers for some time to come, this presents important questions about the assessment of gifts, the supervision and training that is required, the frequency with which an ‘occasional’ preacher is expected to preach in relation to their Reader counterparts and the level of authorization and accountability that is felt appropriate. This has to be managed in a way that affirms and liberates, rather than controls, while also ensuring the quality and theological consistency of preaching for the edification of the congregation.
This can be no more than a brief and personal snapshot on the fast-changing preaching landscape in the Church of England.
In future we can expect to see an expansion in the number, age and background of those being given the opportunity to preach. Informal non-church settings will be usual settings for preaching, while preachers will employ testimony, story, conversation and dialogue and licensed clergy will discover the power of the narrative shaping of preaching, whether as story, as argument or as images. More will be invested by colleges and dioceses in resourcing people on a continuous basis for their preaching ministry. The decline of preaching is, as they say, greatly exaggerated and will remain so while people continue to discover that the young man who hung to death on a cross one dark Friday afternoon is the Father’s way of restoring the whole inhabited world.
Notes
1. Canon B5.
2. Held at Birmingham Cathedral, 13 June 1997, and addressed by Professor Sir John Polkinghorne.
3. Weddings Project of the Church of England. See [email protected].
References
Barley, Lynda, 2006, Christian Roots, Contemporary Spirituality, London: Church House Publishing.
Brueggemann, Walter, 1989, Finally Comes the Poet, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.
Common Worship: Daily Prayer, 2005, London: Church House Publishing.
Croft, S., 1999, Ministry in Three Dimensions, London: Darton, Longman and Todd.
Fenton, J. C., 1975, ‘The preacher and the biblical critic’, in What about the New Testament? Essays in Honour of Christopher Evans, ed. Morna Hooker and Colin Hickling, London: SCM Press, pp. 178–86.
Lynch,
