Preachers Dare

As they head home after a church service, most people typically have at least a brief conversation about whether or not you, the pastor, gave a good sermon. If week after week you get a thumbs up…you might need to shake things up a bit. In Preachers Dare, Will Willimon presents a bold theology of preaching, emphasizing preaching as a distinctively theological endeavor that begins with and is enabled by God. God speaks, preachers dare to speak the speech of God, and the church dares to listen. Willimon shows how by moving from the biblical text to the contemporary context, you can dare to speak up for God so that God might speak today. With fresh biblical insights, creativity, and pointed humor, Willimon gives today’s preachers and congregations encouragement to speak with the God who has so graciously and effusively spoken to us.

Preachers Dare is adapted from Will Willimon’s Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale and is inspired by a quote from the great theologian Karl Barth. In a world in which sermons too often become hackneyed conventional wisdom or tame common sense, preachers dare to speak about the God who speaks to us as Jesus Christ. Willimon draws upon his decades of preaching, as well as his many books on the practice of homiletics, to present a bold theology of preaching. This work emphasizes preaching as a distinctively theological endeavor that begins with and is enabled by God. God speaks, preachers dare to speak the speech of God, and the church dares to listen. By moving from the biblical text to the contemporary context, preachers dare to speak up for God so that God might speak today. With fresh biblical insights, creativity and pointed humor, Willimon gives today’s preachers and congregations encouragement to speak with the God who has so graciously and effusively spoken to us.