William H. Willimon

Time Made Strange: Preaching In Ordinary Time

The Sundays in Ordinary Time represent a challenge for the biblical preacher. Powerful forces at work delude God’s people into thinking that we ought to be at home in the world’s time. Yet, by the grace of God, we are given the time to enjoy proclaiming the truth of God with us in our time. Faithful preaching in Ordinary Time maintains the eschatological sense that our time has been permanently disrupted and commandeered by the risen Christ. In the Sundays of Ordinary Time, biblical preachers are privileged to proclaim that surprising, wondrous intrusions by a living God have become the new “ordinary.”

Eyewitnesses and Ministers of the Word . Preaching in Acts

While history is important to Luke as he writes his “orderly account,” history here is the vehicle of kerygmatic art, not art in its modern expression—the chic pastime of a jaded bourgeoisie—but art in service of the conversion and sanctification of the church.

Abandoned its Students

A chaplain at Duke University, assigned the task of looking into the relationship between students’ academic and social lives, says yes, we have abandoned students. In an effort to give students their freedom, he explains, we have neglected to give them their roots.