I’ll start with a confession: for the better part of the last five years I’ve been losing confidence in preaching. This isn’t a commentary on the preaching I’ve been hearing, I should be clear, as I’ve been quite fortunate to worship in several congregations with engaging preachers. Rather, it’s preaching in general in which I’ve lost confidence, my own preaching included. Why? Two main reasons. First, as I look around at the culture, the form and shape of our preaching seems increasingly out of touch. In a culture that is increasingly participatory, our preaching is still primarily a monologue. In a culture passionate about...

One of the comments to this week’s Dear Partner in Preaching, on “Practicing Advent,” raised a great question: is inviting people to practice sharing their faith law and, if so, where is the Gospel? I ask this kind of question myself all the time. But to help you ask and answer it with me, I’ll offer a little bit of background. I am a Lutheran preacher. And when it comes to preaching, the most important thing for Lutherans is to distinguish rightly between law and gospel. (Actually, it’s not only Lutherans who focus on this distinction, but we certainly talk about it a lot!) In short, law stands for all those things that come to us...

ChurchNext is the website and ministry of Chris Yaw, who spent the first part of his professional life as an interviewer and broadcaster in radio and television. Now an Episcopal priest, Chris uses those same skills to interview leaders, change agents, and skilled practitioners and harvest what they know to make it available to all leaders in the church, lay and ordained. A few weeks ago Chris interviewed me – I’m not sure which of those above categories I fit into 🙂 – and he’s just posted the fruits of the conversation we had via Skype on his site. My topic: moving from performative preaching toward more participatory...