As I write this column, the 2024 presidential election in the United States is just over three weeks away, and by the time you read this, you will know what happened and what the aftermath has been, one way or the other. Your congregation might not be located in the United States, but I am sure you can relate to a situation in which your congregation, or at least your community, is of two very different minds—a situation in which friends might begin to view each other as adversaries. How does such a taut atmosphere affect preaching? Like the proverbial coin with two sides, that question can be asked in two different ways: How does this environment influence how preachers write their sermons, and, on the flipside, how does this environment affect how people hear sermons?
If I could satisfactorily answer these questions, I would write a best-selling book and retire! Instead I will only venture a few tentative thoughts. First, all of us who preach know that in recent years being a preacher has been a very lonely experience. And preachers have professed to me in various encounters that they feel not just lonely, but vulnerable and afraid. Many preachers have a keen sense that they could be one verbal misstep away from being shown the door—or at least be subject to withering criticism.
The result for many is a new tentativeness. Caution seems to be the name of the game now in crafting sermons. But not a few preachers feel guilty about this. Aren’t we called to be bold proclaimers of the gospel? Aren’t we called to challenge people in their lives of discipleship, to help them see their lives bathed in a saving and renewing grace that ought to make a significant difference in most everything they do? But these days that may be just the kind of boldness that will not be received well. So preachers hedge. They come within sight of boundary lines, but they don’t dare get too close, and they surely don’t cross them.
This sense of a heightened critical atmosphere is not something preachers are imagining. The exact same words and phrases and sentiments that people might have heard as a whisper thirty years ago now come across as shrill, partisan screams.
This is due in part to social media. Too many people spend their weeks being ginned up by peers to watch out for triggering words or phrases that might mean the person uttering them is woke or divisive or sharpening a partisan political axe. Churchgoers may be parsing their pastor’s every word in public prayers and sermons to make sure no one gets away with smuggling in rhetoric they have been taught to reject in the echo chambers of Facebook and X.
Ours is a difficult cultural and ecclesiastical moment. So what to do? A recent documentary film provides one picture of what it might look like for pastors trying to live in this fraught moment. Leap of Faith is directed by Nicholas Ma, who also directed the recent Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Ma made this new movie in conjunction with The Colossian Forum. Led by Michael Gulker—who features prominently in the film—The Colossian Forum is an organization based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that is dedicated to helping congregations and individuals speak together about divisive issues in the hopes of modeling civil dialogue that helps people respect and care for one another, even across fierce political, theological, and ecclesial divides.
Leap of Faith documents the organization’s efforts across one year to help twelve pastors from the Grand Rapids area talk to one another and try to come to care about one another despite big differences of opinion. Ma collected three hundred hours of footage from interviews and from multiple four-day retreats attended by the dozen pastors and Colossian Forum staff. The pastors no doubt discussed many topics, but for the sake of the film, issues relating to LGBTQ+ discussions became the focus. Since one of the pastors is a woman who is in a same-sex marriage, the conversations were frequently fraught, deeply emotional, and frankly quite painful for all of the pastors in the group. If you are a preacher reading this column and have not seen the film, I highly recommend you do so.
So far as I can tell, in that group of twelve pastors no one significantly changed their views. But by listening well to one another, they got closer to the goal of seeing the person with whom they disagree as a real human being made in the image of God. The person with whom you disagree is not just a walking aggregate of opinions, but a flesh-and-blood person with a beating heart and with feelings as real as your own.
In our congregations, can we talk with one another in ways that help congregants see their pastor as not just the sum of varying ideas and opinions, but as a fellow disciple of Jesus who loves the Lord as much as anyone and is seeking to be faithful to their calling to serve that Savior? Can pastors in turn see even those whom they deem to be the most suspicious members of the congregation as disciples of Christ trying to do their best for the God and Savior they also love? This is something the church needs to be praying about. We need to be praying together about this.
Could preachers and congregants also find creative ways to widen the circle of sermon preparation? Perhaps discussion groups could be convened to generate ideas for a given sermon ahead of its being written. Similarly, after a sermon is delivered, various people could come together with the preacher to talk about what went well, how a sermon was heard or perceived, and how going forward the preacher could articulate certain ideas in ways that will reach more people instead of fewer, thus heading off unnecessary misunderstandings.
None of this is free of peril. While ideally groups like this could become a place of constructive understanding and healing, on the other hand they could become places where a different spirit takes over and damage gets done. But if there is one thing recent years have proven to many preachers it is that not addressing such things head on produces nothing positive.
Over the years of my writing these columns in Reformed Worship, I hope I have made it clear how much I esteem the preaching craft and care deeply for all who engage in it every week. Most regular subscribers to this journal know that this is my second-to-last column before the magazine transitions to a new online format. Thus, I hope you receive this column as a kind of “Before I go . . .” plea for the church to find ways to live together as preachers and congregants such that preaching is strengthened and God receives glory.
The proclaimed word of God is in a measure of peril just now. We look to the Spirit of God to lead us to a better moment.