“Will our congregations even allow us to preach sermons that change people?”
It was a passing comment in the middle of a conversation with a friend over coffee. He didn’t ask whether pastors were capable. He didn’t ask whether seminaries were preparing us. He didn’t even ask whether we still knew how to preach. He asked whether the church would allow it.
That question has lingered much longer than I expected. Not because I think the answer is simple. But because I fear it exposes something much deeper than the quality of our sermons. It exposes our expectations.
I write this not as someone standing outside the white Baptist church throwing stones.
Every Sunday, I worship in a predominantly white Baptist congregation. I love my pastor. I have learned from my pastor. He has spent years studying African American preaching and the Black homiletic tradition, allowing its theology and imagination to shape his own proclamation. I have watched him refuse the false choice between thoughtful preaching and transformative preaching.
Which is precisely why this question feels less like criticism and more like grief.
Over the last several months, I have listened to 35 sermons preached in predominantly white Baptist churches. Conservative. Progressive. Men. Women. Eight-minute sermons. Thirty-five-minute sermons. I wasn’t listening to decide who was right. I wasn’t keeping score. I was listening for something much more fundamental: What do we believe God is doing during the sermonic moment?
“We’ve become remarkably good at talking about Jesus without expecting Jesus to interrupt the room.”
And somewhere around sermon 20 or so, another question began following me home: Has the white Baptist church forgotten what preaching is for? Not because I heard bad preaching. Quite the opposite. I heard thoughtful preaching. Compassionate preaching. Historically informed preaching. Biblically responsible preaching. I heard sermons that taught. Sermons that inspired. Sermons that offered practical wisdom. What I rarely heard was proclamation.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve become remarkably good at talking about Jesus without expecting Jesus to interrupt the room. We’ve become experts at remembering the gospel. I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to announce it.
There is a difference. A profound one. Jesus did not stand in Nazareth and offer an interesting interpretation of Isaiah. He stood up, opened the scroll and declared, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Today. Not yesterday. Not someday. Today. The Sermon on the Mount was not merely an ethical lecture. It was an announcement that another kingdom had broken into this one. Jesus wasn’t simply describing reality. He was creating a crisis. Every sermon forced a decision: Follow me, repent, believe, leave your nets, take up your cross.
The earliest Christians understood this. They did not gather simply to remember what Jesus had done. They gathered expecting an encounter with the risen Christ. Peter preached and hearts were cut to the quick. Stephen preached and the powers of the empire were exposed. Paul preached and cities erupted.
Their sermons weren’t merely education. They were an announcement that another kingdom had invaded this one. Somewhere along the way, I wonder if we have domesticated the sermonic moment.
“I wonder if we have domesticated the sermonic moment.”
We have learned how to make preaching safe. Predictable. Informative. We admire a well-crafted sermon. We compliment the exegesis over coffee. We discuss an illustration on the drive home. Yet too often we leave having evaluated the sermon rather than having been addressed by the living God. We have become connoisseurs of preaching while forgetting why the church preached in the first place.
A sermon can be historically responsible, theologically careful and rhetorically compelling and still fall short of proclamation if neither preacher nor congregation expects God to do anything with it beyond informing our minds. Good preaching certainly teaches. But Christian preaching never has been less than teaching. It is the announcement that Christ is present among his people, still speaking through Scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have reduced preaching to the portion of worship where the pastor explains the text, offers a few practical insights and sends us home with something to think about.
But what if preaching was never meant to leave us merely thinking? What if it was meant to leave us changing? Believing. Trembling. Hoping. Following. What if the sermon is not simply where we learn about God but where God addresses God’s people?
Perhaps this is why I found myself unsettled listening across theological lines. The differences between conservative and progressive preaching were easy enough to identify. One often emphasized repentance, forgiveness and the saving work of Christ. The other often emphasized justice, reconciliation and the social demands of the gospel.
Those differences matter. But they were not the thing that kept following me home. The deeper question was what we believed the gospel was accomplishing while we preached it.
Does preaching merely communicate Christian ideas? Or do we actually believe the risen Christ is confronting, comforting, liberating and transforming people through the proclamation of the gospel itself?
Does Christ merely become the subject of our sermons? Or is Christ still the preacher?
This is where the Black Baptist tradition continues to teach me. Not because it is louder. Not because it is longer. Not because of cadence, call and response, or whooping. Those are the least interesting things about Black preaching.
“The Black Church has refused to preach as though God has retired.”
Its deepest gift is theological. The Black Church has refused to preach as though God has retired. The sermon never has been simply a recollection of Calvary. It has been an announcement that Calvary still has something to say. The blood is remembered differently. Not merely as the means by which guilty sinners get to heaven. Not as language to be quietly abandoned because modern ears have grown uncomfortable with it.
The blood is God’s declaration that death does not get the final word. That empire does not get the final word. That despair does not get the final word. The blood is not merely about what happened. It is about what God is still doing.
Perhaps that is why the sermonic moment has remained so sacred within the Black Church. People do not gather expecting better religious information. They gather expecting an encounter.
They come believing that somewhere between “Good morning, church” and the benediction, the Holy Spirit might call a sinner, strengthen a weary mother, unsettle a politician, comfort the grieving, heal a marriage, ignite a movement or whisper hope into someone who has spent all week believing God was silent.
That expectation changes everything.
And maybe my friend was right. Maybe this isn’t ultimately a question about preachers. Maybe it’s about us.
We say we want prophetic preaching until the prophet starts naming us. We ask pastors to challenge the culture as long as they leave our culture alone. We quote, “Blessed are the poor,” but grow uneasy when a sermon asks why the poor still exist. We proclaim, “Love your enemies” but recoil when that command reaches across political parties, racial divisions or national borders.
If Jesus preached his first sermon in many of our churches next Sunday, would we recognize it as good news? Or would we schedule a meeting on Monday morning?
Braxton Wade
Braxton Wade is a Clemons Fellow with BNG. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Chicago Theological Seminary and lives in Richmond, Va.