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The lively, inspiring memoir of an eminent Christian preacher and leader In this book one of today’s best-known Christian leaders recounts—with his signature wit and humor—memorable moments from his rich and full preaching life. A personal and vocational memoir, Will Willimon’s Accidental Preacher portrays the adventure of a life caught up in the purposes of a God who calls unlikely people to engage in work greater than themselves. Beginning with his childhood in a segregated South and moving through his student years, Willimon gives candid, inspiring, and humorous testimony to his experiences as a seminary professor, rural pastor, globe-trotting preacher, bishop, and popular theologian and writer. Above all, he shows how God has constantly had a call on his life. By turns poignant, hilarious, and thought-provoking—but always irresistibly engaging—Accidental Preacher is sure to join the well-remembered, classic memoir of our time.
"In this book, editors Michael A. Turner and William F. Malambri III make Willimon's role as a mentor to preachers more available than ever. Both former students, they provide detailed and practical tools for learning from this "peculiar prophet." They offer samples of Willimon's sermons and commentary on them by other leading preachers and homileticians such as Tom Long. Marva Dawn, Peter Gomes, and Fleming Rutledge. The point of this examination of Willimon's work is not to simply praise it, but to assess both its strengths and its weaknesses, and to help the reader learn in the process how Willimon can be a model of what to do and, at times, what not to do in the pulpit."--BOOK JACKET.
What does it mean to say that salvation is God's business, and God's alone? "Who will be saved?" is almost always a question about them, and rarely about us. Thinking itself wrapped securely in the everlasting arms, the church has spent much of its history speculating on whether God will allow anyone else to join the party. But if we truly believe that salvation is God's business, and God's alone, then perhaps we should stop asking, "Who will be saved?" and ask instead, "How is God calling me to participate in the redemption of the world?" Rejecting the idea that God chooses some and not others, drawing on his Wesleyan heritage, and deepening his longstanding theological conversation with Karl Barth, Willimon reflects as a pastor and a theologian on God's intention that all would someday return from the far country into the loving embrace of the One who created them.
William H. Willimon, one of the most respected voices in the pulpit today, has been inspiring congregations and their leaders for decades. This marvelous collection of sermons-mined from Willimon's earliest pastorates, through his time as Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, to his current calling as a Presiding Bishop of the United Methodist Church-provides a fascinating and inspiring look at this master preacher. Ordered chronologically and with an index of scriptural references, this collection will be a source of inspiration and education for decades to come.
Ordained ministry, says Willimon, is a gift of God to the church--but that doesn't mean that it is easy. Always a difficult vocation, changes in society and the church in recent years have made the ordained life all the more complex and challenging. Is the pastor primarily a preacher, a professional caregiver, an administrator? Given the call of all Christians to be ministers to the world, what is the distinctive ministry of the ordained? When does one's ministry take on the character of prophet, and when does it become that of priest? What are the special ethical obligations and disciplines of the ordained? In this book, Willimon explores these and other central questions about the vocation...
Christ's seven last words from the cross have long been a source of reflection, challenge, and soul-searching. These simple statements contain the full range of human emotions and divine self-revelation: grief, compassion, despair, forgiveness, physical need, the promise of redemption. In many ways they embody the core of the gospel. In this brief book one of today's most noted churchpersons and preachers confronts the reader with the seven last words's claim on her or his life. Written with the clarity, depth, and insight that are Will Willimon's trademark, this book offers afresh the challenge and grace of the message of the Crucified One.
As a church leader, it’s easy to make the wrong move and find yourself in a bad position. “What to teach; How to teach; What to do,” were the three questions Wesley employed at his first conferences. In sixty previous books Will Willimon has worked the first two. This book is of the “What to do?” genre. Many believe the long decline of The United Methodist Church is a crisis of effective leadership. Willimon takes this problem on. As an improbable bishop, for the last eight years he has laid hands on heads, made ordinands promise to go where he sends them, overseen their ministries, and acted as if this were normal. Here is his account of what he has learned and – more important – what The United Methodist Church must do to have a future as a viable movement of the Holy Spirit.
This brief introduction spells out the major beliefs of the United Methodist Church in a clear, nontechnical style. William Willimon, the beloved United Methodist author, preacher, teacher, and bishop, discusses the great theological themes that United Methodists share in common with all Christians as well as the particular accents and emphases that characterize United Methodist understandings of Christian doctrines. In his engaging style, Willimon opens the door for further study, challenging the reader to move toward a continuing reflection on their faith. This guide will be of great value to those who are beginning their study of United Methodist beliefs as well as those who have long been in the church and want a helpful way to refresh their understandings of the distinctiveness of United Methodist doctrine.
Jesus defies simplistic, effortless, undemanding explications. To be sure, Jesus often communicated his truth in simple, homely, direct ways, but his truth was anything but apparent and undemanding in the living. Common people heard Jesus gladly, not all, but enough to keep the government nervous, only to find that the simple truth Jesus taught, the life he lived, and the death he died complicated their settled and secure ideas about reality. The gospels are full of folk who confidently knew what was what--until they met Jesus. Jesus provoked an intellectual crisis in just about everybody. Their response was not, "Wow, I've just seen the Son of God," but rather, "Who is this?"--from the Introduction The church uses the concept of “Incarnation,” (from the Latin word for “in the flesh”) to help us understand that Jesus Christ is both divine and human. The Incarnation is the grand crescendo of our reflection upon the mystery that Christ is the full revelation of God; not only one who talks about God but the one who speaks for and acts as God, one who is God.
These twelve sermons by renowned author and pastor William Willimon, with responses by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, demonstrate the fruitfulness and difficulty of the interaction between theologians and practicing pastors. In this book, the authors suggest an intriguing way to think about theological work within the church. In this intriguing book, the authors suggest a new way to think about theological work within the church.