One of the more prominent homiletical metaphors that is operative in the imaginations of preachers of many different stripes and backgrounds is that of the preacher as a bridge-builder between the ancient world of Scripture and our current cultural moment. Through careful rhetorical engineering, the preacher is able to construct a bridge that is capable of carrying the biblical freight across the chasm of the ages, in the process demonstrating its relevance for today. (more…)
Upon returning from holidays last week, I found myself thrust back into a series of meetings and obligations. As things settle down, I hope to catch up on a few posts that I have had in mind. This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at First Presbyterian Church in Kenora. While some significant challenges lay before the city of Kenora, it is a beautiful spot and home to my family’s favourite town mascot/statue: Husky the Muskie! This morning, in the wake of Tullian Tchividjian’s announcement that he was starting a new church, I talked with Alissa Moffit at CHVN 95.1 FM in Winnipeg about the potential of pastors being restored to ministry after abusing their authority. You can read excerpts from the interview here.
“Yet the preacher of the gospel of grace cannot be a mere minstrel, grinning good cheer in an age of despair. The preacher’s struggle against the darkness of this present world must be furnished with a full kit: the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, understandable now as it was not understood prior to modernity;[1. While not denying the gains of modern biblical scholarship, I would be inclined to see the legacy of the historical critical method of interpreting the Bible in more ambiguous terms than McClendon seems to at this point.] the history of God’s peaceable Israel old and ongoing (called in Scripture the preparation of the gospel of peace); and supremely (though like the Trinity never so named in Scripture) the primary theology that gives our sermon its center, its raison d’être, its point. (more…)
There is an excellent essay by Hans Boersma in the current issue of First Things entitled “Fear of the Word” that grapples with some of the fundamental struggles and assumptions about Scripture that haunt preachers today. Here’s an excerpt: (more…)
I was recently politely chided by a friend for not posting anything on the blog in recent days. I’ll have more to say in the days to come about some of the projects I’ve been working on, but in the meantime here is a beautiful and compelling passage from the first volume of James McClendon’s three volume Systematic Theology: (more…)
Faith and Leadership have published a lovely piece by Stanley Hauerwas on his friendship with Jean Vanier. The following is an excerpt in which Hauerwas recounts the first time he heard the L’Arche founder speak: (more…)
“God commanded Noah to make an Ark, in which he and his family — that is, his wife, his sons and his sons’ wives —were to be saved from the devastation of the Flood, together with the animals that went into the Ark in accordance with God’s directions. Without doubt this is a symbol of the City of God on pilgrimage in this world: that is, of the Church which is saved through the wood upon which hung ‘the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’.” (XV.26) [1. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).]
“I do not know why this is so, but the love we bear for the blessed martyrs makes us desire to see in the kingdom of heaven the marks of the wounds which they received for Christ’s name; and it may be that we shall indeed see them. For this will not be a deformity, but a badge of honour, and the beauty of their virtue — a beauty which is in the body, but not of the body — will shine forth in it. (more…)
