Speaking The Truth: Preaching in a Pluralistic Culture

by Samuel Wells

"Truth” is a difficult subject in this pluralistic culture, and “the truth” is even more troublesome. Speaking the truth from the pulpit can result in an invitation to speak it at your next church. Speaking it in the community can earn you the label of narrow, intolerant, or irrelevant. Yet the preacher’s call is to be a speaker of truth–the truth of God in Jesus Christ.

What does it take to speak the truth faithfully as a preacher of the gospel, and for that truth to be heard? You can assume the role of the angry prophet, starting every sentence with “Thus says the Lord” . . . and insure that your hearers push the “off” button in their heads within two minutes. Or you can become the pronouncer of soothing religious platitudes, and insure that nothing you say will ever have any impact on anyone’s life.

Or you can learn, as Samuel Wells has learned, that speaking the truth to a reluctant culture means telling the Christian story alongside the contemporary American story. It means helping your hearers perceive both the harmonies and the dissonance between the two. Finally it means inviting them, with both conviction and humility, to decide how their own story is going to be shaped by this truth. Wells shows all preachers how to remain true to their calling as speakers of truth, while being actually heard at the same time.

196 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Samuel Wells (PhD, University of Durham) is vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Anglican Church at Trafalgar Square in London. He previously served as dean of the chapel and research professor of Christian ethics at Duke University. Wells is the author of several books, including Be Not Afraid, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, and Transforming Fate into Destiny: The Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas. He also coedited, with Stanley Hauerwas, The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics.

Reviews

[Heather Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book. In it Sam Wells has organized many of his sermons into topics that most Christians are interested in understanding better, from homosexuality, to the economy, to salvation and heaven and hell. For anyone who has felt that Christianity offers too narrow of a view, this book will open up the riches of Scripture in a way that inspires a closer and truer walk with God.