Willimon's Challenges of Biblical Preaching

I had the pleasure of listening to Will Willimon last Monday share about the challenges of biblical preaching. Of course, if you hear Willimon preach, you'll think there are none. Here are the top five take-aways from the conference.

1. The Bible is old. It is different from the world we live in. We try to make it recent and relevant. This is typical of modernity. God forbid we have a conflict with the Bible because modernity wants to harmonize everything. This is why reason became the great equalizer. But you can't harmonize everything. Modernity is afraid of conflict and has given us the most violent century to help bring this unity. Willimon: "You no way to unify without the army."

2. Scripture always talks about God. It rarely talks about us, even though we want it to be about us. We make it good ideas and principles for living so that it's about us. The challenge of the Bible is that it's about God.

3. Scripture is about conversion, not agreement. It's supposed to sound odd and impossible.

4. Is our Christianity best suited for people who are 30? Willimon: "Most of my best ideas were before I was 35." I get the feeling we preserve the faith until people will settle down and have kids and then come back to it.

5. If anyone hears anything at all during a sermon, it's a miracle. It's not grace if it's predictable.