I searched for an image of a pulpit, and found this photo of a cliff in Norway called The Pulpit. I like it.

“It’s a writer’s job to tell the truth,” John Updike once said in an interview.

I think one might say the same thing about preaching.  I have been spending a good deal of time and energy recently learning how to preach.  My experiences in the pulpit, as well as in a homiletics class I recently completed at the Aquinas Institute, have encouraged me to see preaching as more than something I do.  Instead, I am learning to see it as part of who I am.  I suppose it’s similar to the distinction between a career and a vocation.  And in the process I’m coming to believe that the most important part of preaching is witness–that is, telling the truth as I have experienced it.

There is an interesting tension in…

Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Last Wednesday, Concordia Seminary hosted the visit of renowned writer and preacher Walter Wangerin, Jr. as part of the Seminary’s annual “Day of Homiletical Reflection.” Among his dozens of books are the National Book Award winner The Book of the Dun Cow, and his bestseller The Book of God. His visit held special meaning for me since I was his writing student as an undergrad at Valparaiso University.

But it was significant for another reason. It was the first viewing of the short film based on Wangerin’s short story/parable, “Ragman,” directed by one of St. Louis’ best indie film-makers, Dale Ward. Since it first gained popularity in the mid-80s, the powerful story of the Ragman has had a “viral” history, even before the Web gave us the term. One can track its circulation in church newsletters, sermons, dramas, discussion groups, and online. But aside from Wangerin’s own book, Ragman and Other…