Editorial

More than preaching

A pastor's work is essentially telling the story of salvation, the proclamation of something that has happened in and to human history, the showing forth of a new relationship to God in Jesus Christ

Rex D. Edwards, D.Min. is an associate vice president and director of religious studies, Griggs University, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Christian ministry is a gift. It is the gracious provision God has made in Jesus Christ for doing His work in the world. That work is essentially telling the story of salvation, the proclamation of something that has happened in and to human history, the showing forth of a new relationship to God in Jesus Christ.

So ministry is subordinate to its mes sage and is rooted in Christian proclamation. What are the characteristics of that proclamation?

To begin with, Christian proclamation is not adding something to the story of God's saving acts as if we could stand off at a distance from them and decide dispassionately (not to say gratuitously!) that there is something in them worth talking about. On the contrary, Christian proclamation is given in, and is integral to, those saving acts.

This is seen in the Pentecostal experience, which led to the founding of the apostolic church: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4). What did the apostles speak? God's saving acts. Make of this proclamation an after thought, and the event itself becomes abstract and unrelated, which is to say that it loses its saving character. Indeed, the proclamation is the evidence of, as it is the witness to, the power of what God works in us.

This inseparable relation of God's act and man's proclamation as a single event is illustrated most conclusively in the designation of Jesus Christ as the "Word" (cf. Luke 4:18, 19, where the relation of the divine Word and the human word is emphasized).

Second, Christian proclamation is not something that is given in a formless encounter and practiced in a formless setting as if God addresses us in isolation from our human context and entrusts us with proclamation without its situation. On the contrary, Christian proclamation is given to individuals to be sure, individuals in the church, through the church, for the renewal of the church.

To say this is not to set human and arbitrary limits to God's freedom of action, but to make a simple statement that every Christian must acknowledge: we have been brought to a saving relation ship to God, not outside the church, not in spite of the church, but precisely in and through the church. If this is so, then certain conclusions follow:

1. Because proclamation of God's saving grace is given in, through, and for the church, it follows that the church is the preacher rather than any single individual within the church. The task of proclamation is given to the whole body of Christ's faithful, who are called into the body of Christ by God's saving action and the proclamation given in it.

2. The church, in response to God's action and in fulfillment of its proclamatory task, bestows this gift of ministry to the individual who is called to minister and to preach. That minister, then, stands within the church and speaks to the church in behalf of the church. This is not to say that the preacher may not speak as preacher to those who stand outside the church, but that his first and absorbing responsibility is to address the church with the word of salvation.

3. Other members of Christ's body, not set apart for the special ministry also exercise their task of proclamation. They have their own "apostolate" by virtue of their personal relationship in and to Christ and the church. This ministry of the laity includes both a priestly concern and a pastoral regard for each other and for their minister! within the church. But it does more. If Christian proclamation is given to and for the church, it is also given to and for the world. The chief means whereby proclamation to the world is achieved is not the special ministry but the lay apostolate. It is the ministry of the laity to "go into all the world" the world of business, education, and the home and "preach the gospel" throughout all the orders of society.

4. Christian proclamation is never done adequately only through preaching, that is, through verbal communication. What was revealed in a life preeminently in the life of Christ and then in the life of the church can be communicated only in life. Proclamation requires more than verbal expression; it requires a moral earnestness, a live model. The living out of God's message of salvation in the life of the Christian community is the most effective means of its proclamation. In deed, verbal communication from the pulpit or in the marketplace, however faithful to the Scripture, is often devastated by inconsistencies between the message and the life. Therefore, the community of believers within which, or on behalf of which, proclamation takes place, cannot afford to have a life governed by any norm other than that of reconciliation in Jesus Christ.

What this means is that the life of men and women within the church ought to be that life which is appropriate to those who are reconciled to God in Christ, and thus reconciled to themselves and to each other. In a world marked (perhaps scarred) by division, loneliness, and alienation, the word of God's saving reconciliation can be spoken effectively only from within that community whose life bears witness to the power of forgiveness and reunion. Thus the life of the church is both the means and the test whereby the proclamation of the Christian message is effected and judged, and our faithfulness as witnesses is either attested or condemned.


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Rex D. Edwards, D.Min. is an associate vice president and director of religious studies, Griggs University, Silver Spring, Maryland.

March 1992

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