Preaching in Place

Why is preaching so often bad? Why is worship so often dull? Why do Sunday mornings so often fail to help the folks in the pews live a faithful life from week to week? And what can be done about it?

Many will tell us that there are easy and purchasable fixes. More technology. Less tradition. Virtual worship. Thinking big.

The land and the farm model for us a different path. As Mark Rigg shows in this concise introduction to Wendell Berry, the themes that have illuminated the Kentucky farmer’s essays, fiction, and poetry for fifty years have a great deal to say to the church. They offer an agrarian model of church where the focus is on the local, the tangible, and the communal. Out of such a model emerges a new approach to preaching. Both congregation members and preachers themselves will find themselves called to turn away from sermons that echo the promises of an individualistic consumer culture and to proclaim instead Jesus Christ in the midst of the local community.

Mark Rigg has had a diverse career, serving as a pastor, an educator, and a college administrator. He is currently a member of the English Department at the Storm King School.