Category Archives: Blog Posts

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”

The first session of Duke Divinity’s Virtual Convocation is today from 12-1pm EDT, and I’ll be leading off with a webinar about Preaching and Leadership with an eye towards the strange situation we find ourselves in. It’s not too late to register! Sessions are free, but the Divinity School has asked participants to register atContinue reading “Preaching and Leadership: Today!”

Mark Connolly, an Irish primary teacher, interviewed me for his YouTube channel More Christ to talk about what inheritors of a particularly Wesleyan form of Christianity think is important about it in a secular age, what makes Christianity radical, and why holiness still matters.

Though our chapel services look quite a bit different than they used to, I was pleased to preach for one last week. The sermon was on Matthew 18:15-20, the lectionary gospel text. -Will

Paraclete Press has released a trailer for their upcoming republication of one of my first books, The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything. As part of the book (re)launch, I’ll also be doing a webinar with Paraclete called “Telling the Good News.” We’ll talk about what evangelism looks like today and what I’ve learnedContinue reading “Good News!”

Every year, in partnership with the North Carolina and Western North Carolina Conferences of the United Methodist Church and The Duke Endowment, Duke Divinity School invites clergy (not just Methodists) for a couple days of enriching lectures and worship. This year, it’s been spaced out throughout September and October and moved to Zoom because ofContinue reading “Virtual Convocation and Pastors’ School”

In conjunction with Paraclete Press’ upcoming republication of my early book The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything, I’m hosting a webinar with them called Telling the Good News, talking about why the Gospel is good news, who needs to hear it, and how to get it to them. The webinar will run fromContinue reading “Telling the Good News”