PREACHER TO PREACHER

From the Editors

In this issue of Preacher’s Magazine, we are pleased to present sermon helps from two esteemed colleagues. The material for the season of Lent and Easter Sunday comes from Brad Estep. Brad is senior pastor of First Church of the Nazarene in Winter Haven, Florida. The next set of preaching suggestions for the Gospel of Matthew comes from Ed Robinson, professor of religious education at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. We think you will benefit from the excellent work of both of these men.

In his latest release, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry,1 Will Willimon makes the case that preaching is art. As such it involves not only giftedness but also learned abilities. The “gifted” part is entirely up to God. We can do something about the “learned” part, though. One of the best things we can do is to engage in apprenticeship, which Willimon describes as “a novice looking over the shoulder of an experienced master of the art in order to get the insights, moves, and gestures required to practice that art.”2 We believe Willimon is right on. That’s why Preacher’s Magazine has in the past three years or so taken the approach of “listening in” on the exegetical and homiletical work of our colleagues. It’s not that we are promoting laziness by spoon-feeding “Saturday night specials” to unmotivated preachers. It comes from the conviction that preaching is learned, at least in part, by listening to good preaching and emulating good preachers. John Wesley told his preachers to preach all of his sermons before they attempted to preach on their own.3

The best preachers we know are students of preaching. They read sermons. They listen to sermons. They take careful note of the preaching of others, marking not only the homiletical moves but also the style, voicing, rhythm, and tempo of the delivery. Just as good musicians study the way other musicians carry their art, so good preachers study the way other preachers give voice to the Word of the Lord.
You may never take a Preacher’s Magazine idea directly to the pulpit. That is fine. But may we encourage you to listen to these preachers in order to broaden your own sense of how this wonderful art of preaching is to be practiced?

By the way, we are pleased to present Dr. Willimon in this issue of Preacher’s Magazine in our feature called The Preaching Life. We have expanded this feature in order to allow his wonderful insights to be shared with our readers. We hope you enjoy his work as much as we do.

1. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002. ISBN 068-704-5320.
2. Ibid., 153.
3. Ibid., 156.