Thanks to the over 200 of you who joined live for a conversation with my friend Chris Green about his new book, All Life Comes from Tenderness.
You can get the book here.
Here is the blurb I wrote for the cover:
“The gospel, as Robert Jenson reminds us, can never be preached the same way twice—and Chris Green never does. Each of these sermons is shaped by his singular voice and a deep sense of occasion. What unites them is the way Chris reads Scripture as a whole, like a novel, and proclaims it with clarity, conviction, and tenderness. I celebrate these sermons because I take Chris to be the finest representative of preaching in what might be called the Wesleyan tradition. Readers should welcome this collection, because Chris will help you read the Bible more faithfully—and in doing so, more clearly discern the Lord’s word for you. The Good Shepherd speaks even in winter, and Chris is one of the ones He calls to speak.”
And here is an excerpt from Chris’s introduction:
“How does a preacher prepare? I’m asked that question often. There is no formula. But Abbot John Chapman’s counsel for prayer certainly applies: we must want to want only what God wills, and preach as we can, not as we can’t.
Good preaching begins with love, or at least the desire to love. Needless to say, the preacher may not feel inspired every time. As often as not, she will be tired, anxious, distracted. But she must care. She must care about God, about the gospel, about the people, about the truth. That care makes space for listening. The aim is not to be clever or profound, but simply to discern as best I can what the Lord is saying here and now through these texts to these people whom he loves and has asked me to help him care for.
Often, the preacher comes to the pulpit troubled. There is no shame in that. Sometimes, it is good to name that troubledness—to speak plainly, not to center the self but to speak of the faithfulness of Christ. It is the Lord’s word that matters, after all. Whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever heals and nourishes, that is the work of the Spirit, not of the pastor’s skill. Like the loaves and fish, what the preacher offers will become enough in God’s hands and with his blessing. The right ending to a sermon, therefore, is not “Well, those are my thoughts; let me know what you think” or “I have spoken; you should agree with me,” but simply “Amen.”
Much that is taught about preaching assumes that good preaching is essentially a matter of clear, powerful communication. But the truth is, great communicators are rarely good preachers.
Preaching is not technique. It is mystery. A sermon is not a performance to be judged by its rhetorical quality or emotional effect. A good sermon, if it is good, is a holy event, a graced happening between God and God’s people in which the preacher is involved, but not in control.
And more often than not, it is the halting, stumbling word that breaks open the heart. Regardless, the word of the Lord does not originate with the preacher. Milk doesn’t come from the mother, as St. Augustine said.
The best sermons, then, are marked not by brilliance but by steadiness—a confidence, however quiet, in the goodness and resourcefulness of God. The people of God do not need eloquence or even insight so much as reassurance, a path opened for prayer. They need to know that they do not have to be afraid. Perhaps this is the truest measure of a sermon: the people come to the Table with the courage they need to draw near to God without shrinking back, and they go from the service with hearts a little more open, their spirits a little freer, touched with light.
I learned from Robert Jenson that sermons become sermons—that is, they take part in the gospel happening—only as the preacher wrestles her way toward truthful speech, trying to say what she has heard the Scriptures say as Christ’s word to this people in this moment. And that means, first and always, obedience to the texts that have been chosen or assigned. Without obedience to the texts, without great care to hear what they are saying on their own terms, we will not be able to speak the gospel. That means we must read the texts, all of them, as the word of the Lord to his people and not approach them with suspicion—as if it were our job to protect people from the Scriptures.
This point cannot be stressed too strongly.”
