homiletics

If I am having so hard a time formulating even a first sentence about Charlottesville, I can only guess the feat at hand for the sermon writer scrambling to pen something necessary and coherent and urgent and and and. And I hope it is every sermon writer - especially every white sermon writer. I hope

"But to preach is the most difficult of all arts and is essentially the art that Socrates praised, the art of being able to converse. It goes without saying that the need is not for someone in the congregation to provide an answer or that it would be of help continually to introduce a respondent.

If you really want to learn how to write a convincing story for more people than you could ever convince is true or meaningful, learn to write a sermon. You'll neither forge a more silvery tongue, nor craft a more deft set of instruments. Sermons are of the most dangerous rhetorics.