The return of oratory

Let’s begin with politics.

You may remember this scene from 24th July last year. The junior Senator from Illinois addressing a crowd in the German capital. Though figures differ, there were up to 200,000 in Berin that day.

They didn’t come to hear a great President (though he may become that in time).
Nor were they tempted by a fabulous, all-singing, all-dancing technical extravaganza. They didn’t come for the powerpoint presentation!

They came to hear an orator … an orator some commentators liken to a preacher.

"I don't think … it is a coincidence that two of the leading candidates, Obama and Huckabee, are the preachers in the race in many ways," says George W Bush’s speech-writer, Michael Gerson. "They know how to have a cadence. They know how to exhort with more language."

Philip Collins put it this way: “His style of delivery is basically churchy, it's religious: the way he slides down some words and hits others.’

The election of Barack Obama has re-awakened interest in, and a thirst for, the power of rhetoric. And if those commentators are right, it is a form of communication that draws on the ministry of the church.

But what has Obama to do with Methodism?

We’ve had a picture painted for us of what many perceive as a looming crisis – fewer ordained ministers serving a more scattered set of declining church communities. It may be a mixed picture, with some areas of growth, of real life and joy. But, unless I’m very much mistaken, there is a real smell of despondency in the air too. Donald Soper may have been a little hasty in the ‘60s to talk of Methodism as a ‘dying church’, but there is definitely a lot of decline and a tanglible experience of loss:
We are not what we were.

The question is, where do we go from here? I want to suggest that the answer might lie, in part, with Barack Obama.

Firstly, it’s always good, when you get stuck in a rut, to look outside your situation, so why not look at politics. But there’s more too it than that. The Obama campaign had three basic elements to it:

- it had a powerful narrative
- but it also had a large network
- and it had a preacher



A powerful, realistic, message of hope. After all our talk in the past twenty or thrity years of post-modernism, still there is a hunger for the big story, an overarching narrative that will explain the world and help to heal it. Evolutionary theory, climate church, hope – an orthodoxy around which we can marshall our energies and find meaning.

So what’s Methodism going to bring to the table? What’s our bid for the grand narrative?
Well, why don’t we go back to the beginning and try ‘Scriptural Holiness’, that the power of love is enough reform nations and the Church as well as individuals?

I had a few friends who travelled to the United States in the months before last November to help the Obama campaign. All of them were struck by the care and concern taken to recruit and nurture volunteers. All were empowered and equipped and then thanked for their contribution – however big or small that contribution was. There has also been a lot of talk about the use of social networking and the internet to keep people in touch and build a strong sense of ownership.

In short, the campaign worked because it was personal.

Is this a challenge too to British Methodism to return to its proverbial tents? The idea of connexion was an attempt, it seems to me, to provide an extraordinarily flexible ecclesiology. Because the ecclesiastical niceties were being taken care of by others, the early Methodists were free to experiment with worship and common life. Why does it seem to have become a blueprint, where a very similar pattern is replicated in every place? Can Circuits become again the basic unit of mission, where a diverse ecology of Christian discipleship is allowed to flourish?

Obama is obviously exceptional as an orator – but he also works hard at it. His speeches show how he studies the art, draws on the work of others, takes the whole thing seriously. Obama knows that speechifying is a central part of his task.

It’s been said that Methodism was born in song, but wasn’t preaching Methodism’s real charism? We may call ourselves presbyters of the universal church (and we are right to do so), but we remain Mr Wesley’s Travelling Preachers. Yet, I have to ask, where has our belief in preaching gone? How much time and energy do we dedicate to it – in training, in ongoing development, in the week-by-week slog of Circuit life?

I strongly believe in preaching involving more than words, and in it being a congregational activity. Preachers need receptive, engaged, and informed congregations.


In summary, Methodism needs to do the basics well, and the most basic, basic is preaching. Given the news we are hearing from within the Connexion, but also listening to the messages coming from the United States and elsewhere, I want to leave you with a question:

What if …?

What if Methodism put preaching back at the heart of all we do?