Preaching to Every Pew - Book Review

Currents in Theology and Mission, Oct, 2002 by David J. Lose

Preaching to Every Pew. By James R. Nieman and Thomas G. Rogers. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ix and 159 pages. Paper. $16.00.

Given the increasing diversity of congregations in North America, and the consequent challenge of addressing hearers from a variety of backgrounds on any given Sunday, preachers will welcome the arrival of James Nieman and Thomas Rogers' Preaching to Every Pew. Based on extensive research and interviews with pastors working in multicultural settings, their work offers a systematic and comprehensive approach to preaching into the varied landscape of today's pluralistic world.

After an introductory chapter offering "hospitality" as a biblical and theological warrant for the attention they suggest preachers give to the diversity of their congregants, in chapters 2 to 5 the authors explore four cultural "frames" or perspectives by which to consider that diversity. Those frames are ethnicity, economic class, geographical displacement, and religious belief, and taking these frames into consideration makes it difficult to imagine a congregation that is not, in some sense, multicultural.

Each chapter is organized into three parallel parts. The first describes more fully the cultural frame the authors intend to discuss, carefully distinguishing their construction of the topic from common perceptions. For instance, while ethnicity is linked to issues of race, it is nevertheless a more comprehensive and adequate term because it considers persons in relation to their communal identities and shared histories rather than on the basis of supposed natural or biological differences related to skin color or physical features. In the second section of each of the four main chapters, the authors portray characteristics of the frame that preachers should attend to, and in the final part they suggest preaching strategies that take this cultural frame most fully into consideration.

In an important sixth and final chapter, Nieman and Rogers provide a stimulating and practical discussion of the nature of preachers and preaching in today's world, outlining means by which preachers can continue to work at the challenging task at hand and describing the goals and possibilities of preaching with an ear to the multicultural nature of our congregations.

While there is, perhaps, less attention to issues of social justice than one might expect from such a discussion, on the whole this very readable book is alive with insight into both the task of those called to proclaim God's Word and the blessedly, though at times confusingly, diverse world (also God's!) to which they are to preach that Word. I heartily commend it to all preachers.