What are we learning about the craft of preaching in the Iowa Preachers Project? That’s the Lilly Endowment-funded initiative at Grand View University that is partnering with Mockingbird to explore what makes for compelling preaching. We’ve assembled an inaugural cohort of ten preachers from across denominations to support them and deepen their understanding of what the public proclamation of the gospel looks like. At the NYC gathering in May, we’ll have a panel to report on what we’re doing and what we’re discovering.
For now, though, we can say that the state of preaching in this culture, no matter the theological tradition, looks quite a lot like the nineteenth-century German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich’s painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. The somber, unidentifiable figure in black stands on a lonely outcrop, his impenetrable back to the viewer, gazing at thick fog swirling the peaks and valleys before him with few clear glimpses of what’s ahead. An ecclesiastical decline, steepened in these post-pandemic years and combined with mutually opposed visions of what the church is in this era — for preachers to imagine a moment where they climb to a place above the fray to consider the landscape is, for most, a distant hope. Who’s got the time or bandwidth for that? And once there, how to make sense of the terrain?
Apart from current political and societal exigencies, the task of the preacher has never been easy. Yet the role of the pastor has never been as ill-defined as it is today. Spiritually leaning therapist? Cheerleader for successful suburban living? Community organizer for a justice league, on one side of the political aisle or the other? Personal chaplain and devotional exemplar? Divinely appointed moral arbiter? Activity director for a barely floating cruise ship? A religious NGO’s one-person CEO-CFO-CTO-COO and maintenance engineer? Or the innocuous buffoon portrayed on our screens?
Our funding grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Compelling Preaching Initiative requires that the Iowa Preachers Project use its programming to come to an understanding of the elements that make for such preaching. One of the questions we need to answer in our research is why pastoral identity is in a state of disarray. We know that, because we work with preachers from multiple denominational backgrounds, it doesn’t depend on what seminary delivered them into the church or even what their particular strand of clerical theology is. As we look at our own sea of fog and ask more questions, I suspect we’ll see that preachers today have all these roles thrust on them by a culture that demands something other than the “little word” of Luther’s hymn that would undo the culture’s house of cards.
For what is the preacher in the pulpit but one who stands on an outcrop with a word that addresses the fog swirling among those who hear it in the pews, read a post, or watch a short-form video that the wordsmith has crafted for them? Any one of the various roles foisted upon them — even the buffoon as a fool for Christ’s sake — may serve a purpose. But those service stations can only be penultimate ones, never the actual, most pointed place where God chooses to enter into the fog.
A compelling preacher who brings the word in its truth and purity, can’t be the unidentifiable figure of Friedrich’s Romantic painting, because, for the gospel to be heard as authentic, accessible, and true, it must be spoken by those who have experienced it themselves as a living Word that has grasped them. Thus, in the Iowa Preachers Project, we aim to steep our preaching fellows in the gospel, making sure to put the Word in their ears (and give them chances to deliver the goods to one another). But it’s not about offering exemplars of good technique. The emphasis is on giving a for-you kind of word that’s crafted specifically for them — for their pressures, burdens, questions, and hopes.
Neither can a compelling preacher be a solitary scaler of heights. What a sad figure Friedrich’s wanderer is, gazing at the mists with no companions to share the view or wander the territory with. Contrary to the impression some have of Christianity as centering on a me-and-Jesus relationship, the biblical picture of a life of faith consistently presents believers ensconced in a community of faith. The sixteenth-century reformers talked about the mutual conversation and consolation of the saints (see Luther’s Smalcald Articles). It’s just as important for preachers to be linked to one another, to be connected to the sisters and brothers who share their calling.
That’s why the Project’s programming brings the cohort together in a true ecumenical group that recognizes differences while also discovering common cause with those our forebears in an earlier age may have slapped anathemas on. You haven’t seen ecumenism done right if you haven’t been in a room of preachers bantering across plates of seafood or cheering one another on as they workshop three-paragraph mini-sermons that attempt to combine an Amazon review with the Old Testament reading for Ash Wednesday. Bonds are forged. Hands are joined. And the craggy perch becomes less perilous, less lonely.
Finally, the fog swirling around us becomes less confusing when you already know the lay of the land. This is why the Preachers Project is so keen in our attachment to classic theological categories and themes like the Law/Gospel distinction, justification by faith, the bondage of the will, and the uses of the Law, among others. Doctrine is not to be disdained. Instead, it marks the trail for the preacher and makes the path to the pulpit hikeable. It can be relied on not to be a solipsistic thing that teaches itself for its own sake, but to teach us what to look for in God’s Word and how to speak it in return.
We’re past the midpoint of the Iowa Preachers Project’s first year. We’ve already done a premortem to find ways to make our programming better next year and to make it an even stronger element of Mockingbird’s mission. When the world casts the public proclaimers of the gospel as solitary observers of the fog, we’re finding great joy in being connected to preachers for whom God is present and accounted for in the face of fog, storm, and distracting pleasures.
Applications for our next cohort will open at the time of the New York Mockingbird Conference in May. Right now, you can learn more here. Even in the face of confusion over roles and strategies for meeting the present need, one thing is certain: it’s possible for a solo hike to become a volksmarch. Join us.
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