Garwood Anderson of Nashota House (Episcopal Seminary) has an wonderful post about preaching at livingchurch.org (link below). I’ve pulled out a couple of quotes below:
Let’s say — and I think this is about right — that there are three kinds of preachers. There are preachers who are interesting. There are preachers who imagine themselves interesting. There are preachers who aspire to be interesting. The first category is relatively small, and the discipline of homiletics can claim neither responsibility nor blame for the sparse population. Interesting people were interesting before they took any training in homiletics and would still be interesting without it. They are interesting because they read and think and wonder and care and long and probably have people in their lives who tell them the truth. They don’t try to be interesting; they can’t help it.
Preachers who think they are interesting understand the pulpit not as a sacred and holy trust of which they are unworthy but as their gift to the congregation. More importantly, the pulpit meets a need for them as well. God anoints them for fifteen minutes as week — or sometimes longer, it seems — such that things that have happened to them, movies they have watched, and opinions they cherish become opportunities of transformation for people who might have been preachers themselves if only they too had watched movies, had life experiences, and held opinions.
Read the post here.
Jeff Gissing 