Here is another column I wrote for Zondervan’s Engaging Church Blog. This one’s for preachers, an encouragement that you are necessary:
“…the task of preaching assumes that the preacher is necessary to the task. The preacher provides a living voice for the living Word. When we preach, we inflect the Word of God for those who hear.” —John Koessler, “Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching,” 18.
From one preacher to another I bring a message of encouragement for you this Monday: brother, sister, you are necessary!
This is John Koessler’s own message in his delightful, encouraging, exhorting book Folly, Grace, and Power—a powerful read for any preacher concerned with the theology behind the thing they do each week. It is a message for people who have heard and answered the call to act as a living vessel for the Living Word through the mysterious act of preaching.
Again, you are necessary because you provide a living voice for the Living Word.
Preacher, have you ever thought of yourself in this way before? That you are necessary? That the God who spoke the world into being uses your words “to bend the world to His will,” (31) as Koessler writes? That you are God’s voice?
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