WACO, Texas (ABP) – Joel Gregory compares commenting on sermons to raising political questions at a holiday meal among extended family. Still, the professor of preaching at George W. Truett Theological Seminary shouldered the risky task of critiquing 24 sermons from the six Baptist World Alliance regions for a presentation at a recent global meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Gregory read and analyzed the sermons submitted by recommended preachers from BWA’s Europe, Africa, North America, Latin America, Asia and Caribbean regions. He then wrote a critique of each to provide a “snapshot of Baptist preaching” worldwide.
The sermons and critiques, along with others to be solicited, will be compiled into a book published by Baylor University Press in 2013.
Joel Gregory (right) with BWA President John Upton at July 4-9 meeting in Malaysia.
|
“To comment on preaching is to comment on Baptist life at its heart,” said Gregory, widely acknowledged as a pre-eminent and effective practitioner of the preaching craft.
George Bullard, general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship, helped Gregory solicit nominations for representative preachers from member bodies of the North American Baptist Fellowship.
“It was a case of so many preachers, but so few could be chosen as representative of North America,” Bullard said. “On any given day another whole set of representative preachers could have been chosen.”
Overall, Gregory was encouraged.
“There is a lot of great preaching going on in cultures beyond our own,” said Gregory, who travels worldwide in his preaching and teaching ministry. “We tend to think in North America we own preaching. That’s not so.”
Representative preachers from the North American Baptist Fellowship included Tonya Vickery from Cullowhee, N.C.; J. Peter Holmes from Toronto, Canada; George Mason from Dallas; John Piper from Minneapolis; and Ralph West from Houston.
Vickery, 42, shares the pastorate with her husband Jeffrey. It was “very humbling” to be selected for inclusion in the anthology, she said.
“If you’re wanting a slice of life in Baptist preaching, that’s what you get with me,” Vickery said. “I’m not at a huge church and am not a well-known name, but I hope I’ve been faithful to my calling and that I’ve done well in representing Baptist pastors who are just in normal situations of life.”
Vickery, a graduate of Clemson University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was careful to select a sermon not so contextually limited that it would have no appeal to an audience outside the North Carolina mountains. “I had to be careful that my stories made sense to people that were not at Cullowhee Baptist Church,” said the mother of two girls.
Gregory said the two dozen sermons he studied “informed” him theologically and “blessed” him devotionally. They were primarily “deductive” messages, telling the audience what was coming, and then telling them again what you told them.
He said also the majority of messages were to “insiders,” preached to Christians about their new life in Christ and urging them to share that new life with others.
Gregory is a member on the BWA Commission on Worship and Spirituality, chaired by Les Hollon, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.
Known for his adamant commitment to the biblical text as the root of any sermon, Gregory was encouraged by sermon samples “overwhelmingly biblical and textual.”
Other generalities he gleaned from his study were:
The sermons were primarily in “teaching voice,” particularly those not from North America or Europe.
Gregory said sample sermons dealt more with being human, explaining “who we are as Baptists,” than they were “from above,” explaining to Baptists about God.
Many of the sermons were delivered in contexts other than a worship service, such as a special event, anniversary or denominational event.
Clear style markers existed by region, with sermons from Latin America and Africa “highly energetic.”
Good preaching does not occur in a vacuum, and Gregory said the African sermons in particular were contextualized in the midst of government corruption, AIDS and poverty.
“The Latin American sermons are not far behind that,” he said, “dealing with empowerment or liberation.”
Others contextualized their messages to explore where the Christian faith fits with the pluralistic religions of their region, or how it can be explained in the face of tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters.
For the book Gregory wants to get further “inside” the preachers’ minds to “to get an even better take on the preaching cultures.”
Gregory hopes the resulting book will provide the first snapshot “in a long time” of the current state of Baptist preaching for Baptist preachers, students and teachers. He hopes it will “enable us to assess our preaching and enable us regionally to talk with one another about our preaching.” That, he said, would strengthen preaching in Baptist pulpits worldwide.
Preachers included in the anthology represent Baptists in all their diversity, from Stephen Asante in Kumasi, Ghana to Karl Henlin in Jamaica, to Teun van der Leer in the Netherlands, to Solomon Ademola Ishola in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Ishola upbraided government officials in attendance as he spoke at the 60th birthday observance for one of them. “We cannot afford to allow jungle law where everybody becomes law to himself or herself,” he said while preaching respect for government from Romans 13. “It is a shame that we can still be talking about corruption in high places, thus depriving us of necessary funds for development for all. Enough must be enough!”
John Kok of the host city, Kuala Lumpur, urged Christians to stand firm to the end in the face of natural and man-made disasters, putting the gospel squarely in the context of Asian suffering from tsunamis and earthquakes and terrorist strikes.
Gregory said he is encouraged by the examples and believes the state of preaching in Baptist pulpits is strong.
-30-
Norman Jameson is a freelance writer in North Carolina. This article was commissioned by the North American Baptist Fellowship.