Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching

Editors: William H. Willimon & Richard Lischer

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press, hardcover, 518 pages, including Preface, Contributors, and Acknowledgments

Reviewed by Rev. Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

The Editors 

At the time this volume was published, William H. Willimon was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School. He was an editor-at-large for The Christian Century and served on the editorial boards of The Christian Ministry, Pulpit Digest, and Leadership. His books have sold nearly one million copies and include the Westminster John Knox Press books Acts (Interpretation series), Preaching About Conflict in the Local Church, andPreaching and Leading Worship. He is regarded as one of the most highly respected preachers in the English language. He also served as a United Methodist bishop, and has become a prolific author of over sixty-five published books and thousands of periodical essays.

Richard Lischer was Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School. He served on the Executive Board of Societas Homiletica, an international organization of homileticians. He was also on the advisory councils of the journalsInterpretation and Word and World. He is the author of A Theology of Preaching: The Dynamics of the Gospel, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Word That Moved America, Theories of Preaching: Selected Readings in the Homiletical Tradition, Marx and Teilhard: Two Ways to the New Humanity, and Speaking of Jesus: Finding the Words for Witness. Altogether, he is the author or editor of fifteen books and has contributed chapters in many others. His reviews and essays appear regularly in The Christian Century. Prior to teaching at Duke, he served as pastor of Lutheran churches in Illinois and Virginia. 

Brief Observations

Professor Willimon and Professor Lischer are to be highly commended for this comprehensive, ecumenical volume. There are almost 200 contributors, from a wide range of denominations—both Protestant and Roman Catholic, female and male, homileticians, theologians, pastors, biblical scholars, and historians, and more. Moreover, the volume includes a wide array of topics, as well as brief biographies of many of the most influential preachers over the centuries. For example, there are entries on everything from Anti-Jewish Preaching (written by Willimon), to Baccalaureate Sermon, to Children’s Sermons, to Delivery of Sermons, to Experimental Preaching, to Form, to Funeral Sermons, to Gospels, to History of Preaching, Theology of Preaching, and so on. Additional articles worth checking out are a series on: Homiletics and Preaching in Africa, Homiletics and Preaching in Asia, Homiletics and Preaching in Germany and German-Speaking Europe, Homiletics and Preaching in India, Homiletics and Preaching in Latin America, Homiletics and Preaching in North America (with scant reference to Canadian preachers and preaching), Homiletics and Preaching in Scandinavia. 

One of my favourite topic articles was Form, written by Thomas G. Long. In this article, Long suggests interesting affinities involving the narrative sermon form, the “problem-resolution” sermon, and the “law-gospel” sermon especially favored in the Lutheran tradition (p. 150). 

The brief biographies of preachers, from ancient to contemporary, are also wide-ranging. For example, everyone from Huldrych (Ulrich) Zwingli, to Ellen G. White, to Paul Tillich, to Sojourner Truth, to Phoebe Worrall Palmer, to Origen, and so on. Not only are editors Willimon and Lischer to be commended for the number of women contributors who wrote articles for this volume; they have also included a few—unfortunately not enough—women preachers’ biographies. Moreover, many of the preacher biographies also have brief excerpts from the preachers’ sermons, which hopefully inspire readers to pursue further research. At the end of each article, other resources are also cited in order that readers, if so inclined, may consult them.

That said, I do wonder why—even though they were contributors—there were no biographies on such contemporary women preachers as, for example, Elizabeth Achtemeier and Barbara Brown Taylor.

Also, two influential male preachers missing in this work are Frederick Buechner and Walter Wangerin, Jr. 

I don’t know how much time the editors of this volume had to check out the details of the preacher biography articles. In one case, Leslie Dixon Weatherhead, the contributor, Stephen Odom, neglected to mention that Weatherhead was somewhat of a controversial preacher, since he regularly attended spiritist séances, allegedly incorporated other elements from other religions and spiritualism into Christianity, and regarded “creeds and confessions of faith” as “museum specimens.”

In conclusion, Professor Willimon and Professor Lischer have edited a most worthy reference work that will benefit, inspire and instruct seminary students, pastors and homileticians. However, another similar, contemporary volume is required to include more women preachers from the early centuries, right up to the present day, and the editors probably should be women.