Methodist presenter is Seminary's 'Preaching Days' keynoter

PHILADELPHIA (June 2000)-- Good preaching fills in the gaps of life in an age when many find religion irrelevant, dull and repressive - authoritarian instead of compassionate, a noted preacher from Philadelphia's Germantown section told a seminary audience of preachers this month.

In a "Preaching Days" presentation filled with emotion, drama and moving literary references, United Methodist Pastor Theodore Loder challenged dozens of professional church leaders to be evocatively and creatively bold in their sermons. Avoid "diddling around," as author Annie Dillard puts it, in the celebrity of friendships or sulking along at the edge of rage. The preaching challenge, Loder suggested, is to make Christians sufficiently sensible toward the conditions of the world and to impel listeners to make a difference as they are transformed.

"Worship is a defining, central, unique institution of the church, and it is hard work," Loder said in delivering the Stephenson Lecture for the annual Preaching Days event at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. The event is sponsored each spring by the Academy of Preachers, which exists to help pastors from all kinds of backgrounds improve their approach to and delivery of sermons through continuing education and mutual support.

"Preaching takes blood and sweat," Loder said. "There is no shortcut to the place where God comes among us." He added that good preaching is not tepid or boring in delivering the message of a Christ, who "shocks, surprises, challenges, ruffles and loves us." Loder recently retired after serving more than 30 years as pastor of First United Methodist Church of Germantown, where he was widely known not only for his sense of social consciousness, but also for his distinctly diverse and dramatic approach to preaching.

If preaching works, Loder said, listeners will be surprised, scandalized and saved, and the entire human family will be reflected in preaching's content if it truly fills in the gaps of life. "Preaching will challenge our nationalism, chauvinism and power. It will bring our (the preacher's) humanity before God. There is no room for cant, posturing, shallowness or dishonesty. And preaching doesn't just delve into the biblical world. It brings the biblical world into our world, Loder said. A goal is for preaching to be "relevant to people as they are, not as they should be," he said.

A special challenge for preachers is to be truly open to discovery and imagination, open to the mystery of God's grace. "Preachers don't have answers," he said. "They don't know what God is really up to. The truth of God breaks through and beyond Scripture," Loder said. "God didn't run out of ideas with Scripture or with Peter, (Martin) Luther or (John) Wesley."

The greatest freedom for a preacher, Loder said, is not the freedom of choice but rather the freedom not to be afraid of new things, a new heaven, or a new world. Creativity through courage, he mused, is the defeat of habit, which makes it possible for a preacher to stand on his or her head and look at the world differently.

"Imagination is the dancing partner of faith," Loder said. "The resurrection itself came out of the imagination of God. God broke the rules. God's miracles were set against the rules and defeated madness, sickness and storms." Just as God broke the rules of humanity in Scripture, Loder urged preachers not to hang onto the past but rather to "break into their own mystery… Where uncertainty lives,God awaits."

Other keynoters for the mid-June event were Somerville Lecturer Dr. Charles L. Campbell, Associate Professor of Homiletics (Preaching) at Columbia theological Seminary, Decatur, GA, and Dr. Adele Stiles Resmer, Associate Professor of Homiletics at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.