Andy Rowell

Church Leadership Conversations

  • Will Willimon on intellectual curiosity, theology, preaching and communion

    I thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet Will Willimon today.  Probably everyone who reads my blog has their own pastor/scholar heroes.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lesslie Newbigin, Eugene Peterson, and Will Willimon are some of mine. 

    Today I had the opportunity to hear him interact with some Duke
    Divinity School students in Ken Carder’s Introduction to Christian
    Ministry course (of which I served as the Teaching Assistant last
    year). 

    Here were three of my favorite ideas Willimon shared today:

    1. “As a pastor, it helps to be an intellectual. Amidst the ordinary, getting excited about ideas helps.”
    2. “By
      their 50’s, pastors need theologians. Ministry is too dangerous, too
      peculiarly demanding. At that point, you need more than just liking
      people.”
    3. “Some biblical texts are all gospel or all law. I preach them in their onesidedness and then let communion balance it out.”

    Willimon was Dean of Duke Chapel for 20 years and had now been a United Methodist Church bishop in Alabama for five years. He blogs at http://willimon.blogspot.com/ and has two new books out. 

    Product Details

    The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen Sermons with Commentary by William H. Willimon by Karl Barth and William Willimon (Paperback – Sep 2, 2009)

    Product Details

    Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh by William H. Willimon (Paperback – Oct 2009)

    See also Bishop Willimon’s Podcast — The iTunes link will only work if you have iTunes, which is free program that works on PC’s and Macs, installed on your computer.

  • Tim Keller on Willow Creek, ecclesiology, and preaching

    I highly recommend New York City pastor Tim Keller's first two blog posts:

    The "Kingly" Willow Creek Conference

    He describes Willow Creek as "kingly", Reformed as "prophetic", and emerging as "priestly."  I agreed with him–giving a couple lengthy comments–trying to show that the "kingly" has particular strength with regard to evangelism. 

    I had previously interacted with Keller about large church vs. small church ecclesiology in the comments of David Fitch's blog in December THREE QUESTIONS FOR THE ATTRACTIONAL PRACTICIONERS WHO QUESTION THE FRUIT OF MISSIONAL: A Response to Dan Kimball

    His second post encourages pastors to be involved doing pastoral care and not just preaching. 

    Preacher-Onlys Aren't Good Preachers

    He writes

    I pastor a church with a large staff and so I give 15+ hours
    a week to preparing the sermon. I would not advise younger ministers to spend
    so much time, however. When I was a pastor without a staff I put in 6-8 hours
    on a sermon. If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put
    in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically,
    this will make you a poorer preacher. 

    I also thoroughly enjoyed Keller's thoughts on preaching at

    Gordon Conwell's PulpitTalk – Volume 5.  Spring 2007 – Preaching to the Heart.

    There he talked about how he plans sermons far ahead of time, reads lots of newspapers and books, and believes it takes 3,000 sermons to become a good preacher.  He says he did less preparation in his early years of preaching.  He only decided to make his preparation more tight after he had to preach multiple times the same sermon.  He talked about liking:

    Product Details

    Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon by Bryan Chapell (Hardcover – Mar 1, 2005)

    but likes to put the theological aspect at the end of the sermon after the application. 

    They have also just recently announced that 150 Keller sermons are now available on the Redeemer website for free.  Free Sermon Resource. 

    The June cover story of Christianity Today profiled Keller: How Tim Keller Found Manhattan
    The pastor of Redeemer Church is becoming an international figure
    because he's a local one. By Tim Stafford | posted 6/05/2009 09:47AM

    He has three books:

    Product Details

    The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller (Hardcover – Oct 30, 2008)

    Product Details

    The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (Hardcover – Feb 14, 2008)

    Product Details
    Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy Keller (Hardcover – Oct 20, 2009)

  • Willow Creek’s 6 characteristics of good preaching

    On October 11th in his sermon entitled "All In" on the church's 34th anniversary, Bill Hybels shared Willow Creek Community Church's renewed commitment to six characteristics in their weekend teaching.  He said that he had gotten together over the summer with 20 leaders from Willow to talk about weekend teaching and they came to a consensus around six characteristics.   

    Hybels said

    teaching at weekend services needs to be:
    1. Biblically based–coming right out of the text of the Word of God.
    2. High challenge–not low challenge, not a mild dose of anything.
    3. Intellectually rigorous–we're not going to dumb it down for any reason or anyone.  We want to produce intelligent Christians who think with a Christian worldview who can really interact with the complexity of a really complex world.
    4. Theologically stretching–not just the easy parts of the Word of God but the doctrines that force us to think deeply and to put our roots down deeply. 
    5. Clear application–so that we all know what to do with the Word of God when we have to put it into practice on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  
    6. Accessible–We want it to be accessible to people who walk in the door who don't understand the Bible because they didn't grow up with it.  It should be accessible to rookies and veterans. 

    Hybels went on to note that they have tried to embrace these characteristics in their September-October series The Forgotten Way.

    Notes:

    Willow Creek is the third largest church in the U.S.A., 23,400 weekly attendance for 2009, according to Outreach Magazine.

    Download Willow Creek sermons at iTunes or watch the video at their Media Player. 

    Follow Willow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WillowCreekCC

    Teaching pastor Nancy Beach and Darren Whitehead (http://twitter.com/darrenwh) share the teaching duties with Hybels. 

    Interesting trivia: Beach notes on her blog post Anniversary Celebration at Willow that "On the very same weekend that Willow Creek was launched, the phenomenon known as Saturday Night Live also began."