Recent books on culturally distinct preaching challenge misconceptions and equip diverse pastors to better address a multiethnic world.
In the mid-1980s, as a new believer fresh out of college, I attended a Sandi Patti concert. I’ll never forget the lesson she taught the audience that night. After recounting her fitful childhood attempts to imitate popular female artists, she admitted that “no one really paid attention until I found my own voice. People weren’t interested in the next someone who already existed. My career took off when I began to sing like me.”
Pastors, too, can fall into an imitation trap. This is especially true today, given that anyone with an internet connection can watch the best preachers across the globe showcase their gifts. But artful, effective preaching isn’t mainly a matter of finding someone you admire and crafting your sermons to fit that mold. At some level, you have to factor in your own unique personality and cultural background. In other words, who you are should inform how you preach.
As ministry experts Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong suggest in Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, “Every preacher possesses an identity and communicates out of his or her identity.” This isn’t just true within Asian North American contexts. Two other recent books tackle matters of identity in the pulpit: Say It!: Celebrating Expository Preaching in the African American Tradition, an essay collection edited by Moody Bible Institute professor Eric C. Redmond; and Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity, whose author, David W. Swanson, pastors a multiracial congregation on Chicago’s South Side.
Books like these are arriving at an important moment in American church history, when congregations across the country—monocultural ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3dJdlsb
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