Abstract
Patrick Johnson has taken a formidable step forward placing the field of homiletics in dialog with the missional church movement, and more generally, mission theology. A homiletician by practice and training, Johnson enters into conversation with the missional church literature beginning with some giants in the Reformed tradition: Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, David Bosch and Darrell Guder, among others. The author’s motivation to enter into dialog with missional church literature comes from a criticism of mission theologians who he claims “need to engage more deeply with the practices of ministry…” (229). Johnson also represents his own discipline particularly through the lens of three authors: Thomas Long, Anna Carter Florence and David Lose (who incidentally writes the preface). Johnson reviews Long’s understanding of preaching as witness, Florence’s work as testimony from a feminist theology perspective and Lose’s approach as confessing from a postmodern angle. Johnson finds value in all three approaches, but agrees most closely with Lose’s view of preaching as confessing. He goes beyond the postmodern position in that proclamation does not depend merely on the preacher’s capacity to believe, rather the preacher is shaped and nourished by the larger narrative formed through Christian tradition and the biblical text. Johnson also argues that the preacher comes from and speaks on behalf of the congregation. This exemplifies one of Johnson’s main points that the preacher equips and sends the congregation as a missional community.
Johnson also challenges a major tenet of the missional church movement, namely its emphasis on the Missio Dei and the in-breaking of the reign of God. In its place, Johnson argues that preaching should instead focus on a confession of Jesus Christ. The issue that I take with Johnson’s work is he places more emphasis on the death and the cross of Jesus than how he lived and taught. Where Johnson calls on the church to look back at how Jesus died, the missional church movement points more to how Jesus lived as a model for Christian discipleship.
Overall, Johnson’s call to mission theologians to engage more in the practices of ministry is fair—especially since the missional church movement is relatively new compared to the long-established disciplines of homiletics, worship, and pastoral care, among others. The majority of the literature in these fields has been written in the context of Western Christianity under the perspective of Christendom, and only more recently have these fields been forced to reflect on ministry in a post-Christendom context. While I agree with Johnson’s challenge, I have trouble placing homiletics (or any church ministry field) on the same plane with missiology. I see all the practices of ministry as subsets or tools that contribute to the overarching vision of the missional church. God calls the church to participate in God’s mission and preaching is one practice among many used to point to the reign of God. Johnson’s book is a helpful resource for those interested in the practical application of missiology and for seminary students and homileticians attempting to incorporate mission theology into their sermons.