WHEN Lucy Berry first started out preaching in the United Reformed Church tradition, she looked for a book to guide her and couldn’t find it. Years later, as a seasoned preacher, she still couldn’t find one. So she wrote this. Aimed at both those testing a call to preaching as well as to hoary old sermonisers (such as myself), it is not so much a “how to” as a “why to” book. In the introduction, she poses two questions: “How do you speak considered truths and ideas in ways that listeners may clearly hear?” and “How do you make sure that you damage no-one in the process?”
There are six sections made up of some 64 “bite-size” (generally two-page) reflections: it’s how she thinks, she says, and is her way of doing “theology on the hoof”. Most reflections have a follow-up set of questions to ask yourself, always ending with “What prayer are you prompted to pray about all this?”
She covers a wide range of issues, from “Can you make people listen?” and “Will you be liked?” to “Conflicting texts” and “Mystery”. It is easily readable, and you have a real sense of her voice: joyous and encouraging. But underpinning all is the awareness of the responsibility that a pastor/preacher has to those “listening with their defences down, aching for a glimpse of the Kingdom, vulnerable to rash words”. A repeated theme is the pastoral damage that unconsciously held or ill-thought-out theological views can inflict. Safeguarding is key.
Poet in Residence on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show for four years, she has some memorable turns of phrase. I love, for example, her idea that “Theology is the knife and fork we use to cut up and digest what God-and-the-World place before us” — a thought now coming soon from my own pulpit.
Over the past three decades, I have preached at least ten times on each set of texts in the three-year lectionary cycle, and this book has challenged me to look anew at them, especially at the uncomfortable passages that I have got used to shying away from. I am grateful.
The Revd John Wall is Rector of the Uckfield Plurality in East Sussex.
Being a Preacher: Reflections and practical advice on speaking to be heard
Lucy Berry
DLT £12.99
(978-1-915412-34-8)
Church Times Bookshop £11.69