Preaching Methodist Theology & Biblical Truth

In a sermon on St. Paul’s conversion, Charles Kingsley Barrett, better known

as C. K. Barrett, shows us how he views preaching. He says:

There is a difference between a sermon, on the one hand, and a lecture

or essay on the other. A sermon is not simply a public address on

a religious subject; it is not simply an exposition of a passage of Scripture.

It is these things, yet if it really is a sermon and not a lecture, it is

something else too. It is a means by which God himself speaks to us.1 This

is not an event the preacher can command or arrange. It is independent

of his learning, his eloquence, his enthusiasm. But it does happen,

and it is the only raison d’etre of preaching.

Preaching, for C. K. Barrett, is not merely the conveying of information

or even an exercise in transformation, but an encounter with the living voice

of God speaking quite directly to the individual listener through the proclaimed

Word. That is, God uses proper preaching to speak to us, sometimes

with the help of the preacher, and sometimes even in spite of the inadequacies

of the preacher.

According to James Dunn’s memoir, C. K. Barrett (1917–2011) will be long

remembered as the “finest English language commentator on the New Testament

in the twentieth century.” Dunn goes on to say, “As the commentator

who mastered the central section of the New Testament—the Gospel

of John, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s letter to Rome and his letters to

Corinth, all of them served with weighty commentaries—Kingsley Barrett

surpassed his contemporaries.” (Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British

Academy, XII, 3–21. © The British Academy 2013.)