In this recent TMC podcast conversation, Tom Long and Cynthia Hale join host Mark Ramsey to discuss where they still see joy and hope in preaching, the pressures and risks of speaking truthfully in a toxic public climate, and why authentic, Spirit-led boldness and deep formation, rather than performance or punditry, are essential to helping congregations live as disciples of Jesus Christ in the world today.
The following transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mark: Where are you seeing joy and hope in preaching today?
Tom: I think I’m seeing it in preachers who recognize that they’re in the news division of the church, that there is good news, that they look through Biblical texts and they see God at work in the world, and they get to be able to announce how they see that and what that means for us. Rather than a book report on some Biblical passage, they are actually seeing the activity of God and that gives hope.
Cynthia: And I agree with you, Tom. I feel like when people stay with the text, and walk through it, and allow God to speak first to them, and then through them to the people, that’s hope and that’s joy, also. And there needs to be a real passion for the preaching. When there is no passion, then there’s no change. There’s no hope proclaimed… (Therefore,) We as preachers need to have an active devotional life. We need to meet God in the text every day. It may not be the same. There may not be an excitement and joy depending on where you happen to be in life, but it ought to speak to us daily, so that we preach out of the overflow.
Tom: There are some weeks when the word I hear is more powerful than others. I have to simply admit that the rhythm of preaching is like the rhythm of the Christian life itself, sometimes it’s up and sometimes it’s down. Sometimes I stand to the pulpit and say, “Gold and silver have I none, but what I have I give you.“ I think it’s the manna principle that we get enough to go on and the excitement sustains itself, even in low Sundays and valley experiences.
Mark: Where are you seeing hard challenges in preaching today?
Cynthia: It’s difficult to preach in the climate that we’re living in. These are such difficult times, and people are – at least, the people that I preach to – have moments of fear and anxiety. What’s going to happen next? Of course, uncertainty, and how to speak to that. Of course, without sounding Pollyannish, like we have the solution…of course, the word of God has a solution for us, but there are times when I’ve had to say, “It may get worse before it gets better;” and how God will walk with us through the difficult moments. The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light, but maybe the light isn’t shining so brightly right now.
Tom: Preaching is a form of communication, and it exists in the communicational environment of our society. And right now, we have a toxic communicational environment. And that causes a lot of us who preach to, kind of, walk on eggshells and fear the backlash that honest communication can create. … It’s a call to us to be bold. People need not the kind of waffling communication that people who are frightened have, but a bold one which says, “Here is the truth that is beyond all of us that saves all of us… in the midst of this.”
Cynthia: Tom, I couldn’t agree more. (It’s) our “ruthless trust” in God, like Brennan Manning says, that allows us to speak boldly… to throw caution to the wind, to take a risk because it’s God’s word through us and, allowing the Holy Spirit to give us the power and the boldness to speak the truth.
Mark: How do we discern as preachers when the boldness is serving the word of God and the boldness is serving either the pressures we feel from our congregation, or our own internal need to be pundits?
Tom: There is a distinction to be made between getting up in the pulpit and saying what we want to say, and getting up into the pulpit and saying what the Spirit wants to say through us. And I think (it requires) a life of prayer, and also a sense of being surprised by the Biblical text… that we hear a word there that we would not have brought to the table, that comes to us and not from us. And then to get up and tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it, so help you God.
Cynthia: And that does require prayer, and listening, and listening, and listening, because initially you may think you know the answer, but there are so many voices that are coming at you at one time…
Closing Thoughts on the Task of Preaching
Tom: I have moved gradually, over time, from thinking that the crisis in the pew was boredom to thinking that it’s formation, that I’m looking out there at a whole lot of “near Christianities”. While boredom is still a reality, that’s not really the crisis that’s most forefront. It’s, “I don’t know how to be a Christian in this world.” And the task of preaching, it’s almost Pauline with the early churches, to form Christian communities where there have been none, or there’s a faint memory of one. So, I do much more teaching in my preaching, and am much more interested in things that I was not interested in before like, okay, what does this mean with your money? What does this mean with how you raise your kids? What does this mean with how you do your job? I think most of our congregation, who have jobs, have to make a million moral compromises every week. And if their preacher doesn’t get down in the ditch and wrestle with that with them, I think that we’ve forfeited a great responsibility.
Cynthia: And my rule of thumb has always been, be who you are. Be authentic, because what I’m finding is a lot of young ministers that are just starting, we all have the tendency to try to be someone else. We want to preach like Tom Long, but you’re not Tom Long and you must be who you are, and you will grow, but you can listen to other preachers, read other preachers to be informed, but allow that to shape who you are as a person and as a preacher. So, that’s the primary thing that I tell preachers, and have tried to develop that in the life of our congregation, because we have several preachers there, and I want each of them to have their own authentic voice and sound.
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