Author Archives: willwillimon

Next month, on election day, Paraclete Press will republish my first “church book” The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything. I put this book together upon arriving at Duke (the first time), having served a couple years in my first South Carolina appointment. You can preorder it from Amazon here. Here’s the preface IContinue reading “Evangelism: The Old-Fashioned, Wesleyan Way (In Contemporary Idiom)”

I appeared yesterday on a panel hosted by my fellow Wofford Terrier Rev. Lisa Yebuah with Rev. Dr. Jevon Caldwell-Gross of St. Luke’s UMC in Indianapolis, Indiana and Bishop Gregory Palmer of the West Ohio Conference. Entitled “Courage and Compassion: Preaching a Prophetic Message,” we hoped to provide preachers with the encouragement they need to continueContinue reading “Courage and Compassion: Preaching a Prophetic Message”

The Lewis Center for Christian Leadership invited me on their Leading Ideas podcast where I spoke with Douglas Powe about my recent book Leading with the Sermon. We talked about how important truth telling is to preaching and why preachers must be leaders and managers among other things. You can listen here or wherever youContinue reading “Pulpit Leadership”

A reminder: tonight at 7pm on Zoom Dr. David Goatley and I will be hosting the second of our three free webinars we’re calling Confronting Racism Through Preaching: A Conversation. For this one, we’ll be joined Rev. Michael A. Walrond, Jr. who is the senior pastor of First Corinthian Baptist Church, a large congregation in Harlem, NY, andContinue reading “Confronting Racism”

Here’s a sermon some friends and I put together.

A reminder: tonight at 7pm on Zoom Dr. David Goatley and I will be hosting a free webinar we’re calling Confronting Racism Through Preaching: A Conversation. We’ll be talking about what preachers, especially those preaching to white congregations, can do to help their congregations to recognize and heal from the sin of white supremacy.

A nice complement to the Confronting Racism Through Preaching series I’m doing with David Goatley (starting Tuesday September 29 at 7pm, more details at the link) would be Lisa Cressman’s Preaching Challenging Messages So They’re Heard webinar. Coming out of her new book The Gospel People Don’t Want to Hear: Preaching Challenging Messages in theContinue reading “Preaching Challenging Messages So They’re Heard”

Racism is an ever-present problem around the world, in North America, and in the United States. Addressing its historical, contemporary, and future injury requires a credible and compelling witness of the Church. Essential to this work is preaching that confronts racism. My friend David Emmanuel Goatley director of the Office of Black Church Studies and IContinue reading “Confronting Racism Through Preaching: A Conversation”

My dear friend, across-the-hall office neighbor, and favorite Canadian, Kate Bowler, invited me to join her for an episode of her Everything Happens podcast. We talked about how God is still in the habit of calling folks to do what God needs done and how that changes and remains the same as we age. YouContinue reading “Called to Work”

Baptist Standard has published a favorable review by Karl Fickling of my recent book Aging: Growing Old in Church. It begins: Will Willimon quotes John Wesley as saying, “Christianity is a social religion; to turn it into a solitary affair is to destroy it.” These timely words, however, are not about quarantines or shutting downContinue reading “Aging Well”