The Preaching Institute at Eastern Mennonite Seminary is privileged to help sponsor this book on Anabaptist preaching. The Preaching Institute serves preachers who desire to increase their communication skills. We believe that the present volume makes a specific contribution to that end. The Preaching Institute reaches out from the seminary to help local conferences and congregations. We share in the seminary’s overall purpose, which is stated as follows: Eastern Mennonite Seminary equips men and women to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ, prepared to lead the church in mission with passion and integrity. As a community of disciples, we are humbled by God’s call, formed in Christ, transformed by the Holy Spirit, and empowered to serve with knowledge, wisdom and grace. The Anabaptist Christian tradition has vitally shaped our purpose, particularly our vision for disciple-making. It has also shaped our vision for preaching, which we have summarized in the following phrases: Men and women as servants of the Word empowered by the Holy Spirit proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ amid the worshiping community of God’s people, co-creating with listeners the meaning of God’s message, the power and presence of God’s reign, with justice and mercy for all. The third-to-last line above is echoed in part of the current book title—"a conversation between pulpit, pew and Bible." We believe that listeners as well as preachers help to shape the meaning of God’s message for a particular time. This may happen in different ways, as June Alliman Yoder asserts in her chapter for this book. I highlight June here because her insights sparked particular enthusiasm in Stephanie Bartsch, a student of mine who was wrestling with her call to preach. As part of an assignment in my preaching class, Stephanie read a preview of June’s chapter. About the same time, she received an invitation to become a co-pastor with her husband of an urban congregation. Stephanie hopes to form a circle of people in the congregation who can help to create her sermons. The group will study the Bible and draw relevant lessons for Christian living. Stephanie believes this activity will keep her sermons relevant. It will also help group members to grow in Christian discipleship. She hopes to offer different people the opportunity of participation over time, so that she can encourage Christian formation throughout the whole congregation. Not all preachers will be as enthused as Stephanie about engaging congregational members in the preparation of a sermon. But our hope is that all of the many preachers we expect to study this book will find a chapter or chapters able to generate for their settings the type of enthusiasm Stephanie experienced in applying June’s chapter to her context. Although preachers studying this book alone should find rewards, we also hope many readers will test the book’s insights in communal contexts such as we encourage Preaching Institute students to participate in. Nearly all preachers, for example, will benefit from congregational feedback regarding the sermons they’ve preached. One of the most notable features of the Preaching Institute is our facilitation of Lay Listener Groups as a means of gathering congregational feedback for preachers. While preachers tend to engage in this activity with some trepidation, they commonly cite it as one of their best learning experiences. It represents a lived form of the conversation between pulpit, pew, and Bible this book envisions. The Advisory Council of the Preaching Institute engages in vigorous conversation about preaching. In one of our more animated discussions, we agreed that good preaching has the following characteristics. It is—
We hope Anabaptist Preaching can help both preachers and listeners to achieve this kind of preaching in the church today. —Ervin Stutzman, Harrisonburg,
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