mgpcpastor's blog

It is common enough to equate preaching that challenges people to be thought ‘prophetic’ (and preaching that encourages people to be thought ‘pastoral’).
But prophetic proclamation is not a heralding of people’s need to improve their behaviour (nor is pastoral exhortation assuring people that they’re doing okay).
Prophetic preaching is an invitation to turn and meet the God who we were heading away from, but who has pursued us instead of cutting us off.

It’s fine for preachers to call out human sinfulness, screwed-upedness, bias, and idolatrousness. I do so frequently, which helps me feel better about my own moral compromises. Yet we are not free to belabour human depravity without stressing that we are sinners to whom God in Christ has turned, “For us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it. Moralistic, judgmental preaching “is often mistaken for prophetic preaching,” says Richard Lischer, moral hectoring rather than proclamation. The good news is not that we might make moral headway but rather that the God from whom we sinners turned away has come out to meet us.

Preachers Dare, Will Willimon, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2020, pgs 12-13.

A sound understanding of what the Gospel is forms a reliable foundation for understanding the form and nature of preaching.
With true Gospel the focus is on God, the implications of which are the basis of human response.

Gospel is not a set of ideas, a precious something tucked into our hearts, a decision we made, much less a feeling we experienced, nor is gospel a procedure for getting right with God. Gospel is news of what God has done and (because of resurrection) is now doing. Gospel is not how we wind up at an optimum ultimate destination, nor is it an exhortation to industriously, work justice to make the world more inhabitable for victims of our injustice. Gospel – who God is, what God is up to, and how are part of it – is a sermon that Paul did not come up with on his own, an announcement “which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which you are being saved,” this story “that I proclaimed to you.” Christians – saved by a true story of how Christ enfolds us into God’s story.

Preachers Dare, Will Willimon, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2020, pgs 9-10.