Perspectives on preaching (in building up missional churches)

Abstract

Preaching is considered to be a core ministry in building up local congregations. Within the Reformed tradition this is even truer. The researcher has, over years, tried to discern certain core ‘qualities’ of preachers and principles for preaching that will accomplish building local congregations into missional units. Assuming that preachers are serious about leading congregations towards true missionality, the article attempted to focus on a few of these core criteria for both preacher and preaching. In doing so, the article drew mainly on the wisdom of well-known preachers in the USA, wisdom that will be used to guide the researcher’s future empirical study of preaching in the South African context. Prof. Müller, who is honoured in this Festschrift, wrote his DD thesis on preaching and I hope that this will reconnect his current work to his original research.