Homiletics Festival

This week, I'm attending the 16th Festival of Homiletics, in Minneapolis. This is essentially a meeting of several thousand preachers, to talk about preaching, and hear great preachers. Walter Brueggemann, Jim Wallis, and Michael Curry are among those who spoke yesterday and today; William Willimon and Michael Slaughter are up tomorrow.

Anna Carter Florence gave a talk which connected deeply with me. She said that as homiletic preachers, we must give people faith that they can interpret and empathize with a text. They can do this themselves! We merely show them the way. This is testimony. It is not about telling one's own story, but showing it, but exposing oneself in the process of showing the way.

Barbara Brown Taylor spoke of her lessons as a preacher and a writer. I was glad to see that her advice for preparing sermons was the same advice for writing, things like: establish a writing routine; show, don't tell; use language of the body; welcome provocations; and of course, don't lie (or exaggerate, or plagiarize). Much of this is not new; I've been around Liz all these years, and a bit of this has rubbed off.