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Preaching in Place: Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Sermon
Why is preaching so often bad? Why is worship so often dull? Why do Sunday mornings so often fail to help the folks in the pews live a faithful life from week to week? And what can be done about it?
Many will tell us that there are easy and purchasable fixes. More technology. Less tradition. Virtual worship. Thinking big.
The land and the farm model for us a different path. As Mark Rigg shows in this concise introduction to Wendell Berry, the themes that have illuminated the Kentucky farmer’s essays, fiction, and poetry for fifty years have a great deal to say to the church. They offer an agrarian model of church where the focus is on the local, the tangible, and the communal. Out of such a model emerges a new approach to preaching. Both congregation members and preachers themselves will find themselves called to turn away from sermons that echo the promises of an individualistic consumer culture and to proclaim instead Jesus Christ in the midst of the local community.
Many will tell us that there are easy and purchasable fixes. More technology. Less tradition. Virtual worship. Thinking big.
The land and the farm model for us a different path. As Mark Rigg shows in this concise introduction to Wendell Berry, the themes that have illuminated the Kentucky farmer’s essays, fiction, and poetry for fifty years have a great deal to say to the church. They offer an agrarian model of church where the focus is on the local, the tangible, and the communal. Out of such a model emerges a new approach to preaching. Both congregation members and preachers themselves will find themselves called to turn away from sermons that echo the promises of an individualistic consumer culture and to proclaim instead Jesus Christ in the midst of the local community.
133 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 21, 2022
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March 14, 2025
It’s a hard book to rate. I love the vision, and I like the connection between Berry and an agrarian vision for local congregations. But this is 3.5 stars kind of book. The execution just bogs it down a bit. I think it would have been better entitled something along the lines of agrarian ecclesiology. As it is, it felt like that book with a final chapter on homiletics.
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