If you’re in the Winnipeg area on November 1, think about joining us at Providence Theological Seminary for my upcoming public lecture, “A Plea for Pointless Preaching.”  My colleague Lissa Wray Beal, Professor of Old Testament, will be responding to the presentation. Here’s a little teaser for the lecture to whet your appetite:

Like ships passing in the night, the disciplines of homiletics and theology have often been content to go their separate ways. As a result, preachers may shape their ministry by insights from the trending speakers and communicators of the day. Often, however, these trends reflect atheological accounts of communication. However, if Jesus is not only the truth, but also the way and the life, how the message is communicated is inseparable from the content of the proclamation itself. This paper will argue for the necessity of recovering a theologically-robust account of preaching which understands proclamation as participation in the Spirit’s work of inscribing the people of God into the continuing story of Jesus Christ.