Conclusion Keep on Troubling the Waves

Towards a New Homiletic

“…Although within the Academy there exists research into women’s experiences of faith (e.g. Llewellyn, 2015; Saiving Goldstein, 1960; Slee, 2004), the findings rarely find a home in homiletics classrooms. We might know something of how women find God, experience sin and seek salvation, but in the practice of preaching, we do nothing about it.…”

“…A female preacher should consciously be a ‘detective of divinity’ so that her own daily life is a source of theological reflection, living a ‘preaching life’ (Brown Taylor, 2013). By learning to tell her own story, the woman preacher can make ‘explicit and visible’ the story of at least one woman’s life ‘to validate their experience’ (Llewellyn, 2015: 51). This is not to essentialise one woman’s experiences, but to build community with her hearers beginning with her own narrative.…”

“…Relevance encourages individualism, in the sermon by seeking application to the practices of individual Christians and in the congregation by segregating those who perceive its pertinence and those who do not. In homiletics, as elsewhere, communality will be built by avoiding individualism and essentialism and creating ‘community [that] does not bond through the unification of individuals based on similarity, but through the differences between the individual and other, and the ethical commitment required to allow and welcome one another into community’ (Llewellyn, 2015: 61). In preaching, whether in development or practice, new possibilities can be explored through a commitment to community.…”