When it comes to politics in the pulpit, pastors often wonder how to preach on current events and hot button topics. But given the constant blitz of the news cycle, it can feel impossible to keep up, especially when so much news breaks on a Saturday night or Sunday morning, well after most sermons have already been prepared.

The truth of the matter is that no pastor can keep up, nor can any one person. Indeed, the dominating nature of the news cycle is designed to make everyday people feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and on the edge of despair. Doomscrolling is among the despot’s best friends; it can make folks feel so tired, confused, and helpless that they don’t know how to resist, even as they desperately want to resist.

While there is certainly a valued place for prophetic preaching on hot button issues, pastors are invited to go a step further by helping shape communal sites of embodied resistance that transcend the headlines, wherein preaching is not merely about describing the world, but changing the world. This approach helps congregants reimagine and experience their lives freed from the authoritarian narratives which the dominant principalities and powers wish to impose upon them. And it aims to help those benefitting from—and (perhaps unwittingly) colluding with—those powers to imagine ways to disentangle their lives from them. In this sense, preaching is a communal act of liberation, rooted in deep solidarity and freedom.

Some of the best prophetic preaching practices shift the conversation from being focused on a single sermon on a single Sunday on a single hot topic (the ill-advised “one and done” method), toward the way that preaching shapes and forms community as a whole, over a significant period of time and a significant number of sermons.

Elizabeth Grasham (a Disciples pastor and friend of the Proclamation Project) recently pointed out how the whole idea of “crisis preaching” is a misnomer. In times like these, she said, we reel from one crisis to the next, which makes it impossible to fire off one sermon after another on topic after topic. Deeper foundations must be built in order to withstand the deluge of information that floods us on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

From this vantage point, preaching must be committed to the pastoral work of community formation every bit as much as it’s committed to the pastoral work of theological formation (the two are mutually dependent; they go hand in hand). As Disciples scholar Sandhya Jha observes:

“We can’t name everything. But we can shape a community ready to resist fascism. We can shape a community ready to shelter immigrants as the government comes after them more and more fiercely. We can shape a community creating strategies to show up alongside our non-Christian faith communities as they come under attack. We can shape a community that creates space for the wisdom and leadership of people with disabilities and gender diversity and diversity of orientation even in the face of national leadership trying to erase and dehumanize all of those groups and people. We can shape a community that claims a role in building systems of justice that align with God’s will for reconciliation, not just retribution… In the face of an increasingly repressive and economically violent system of government, when we cannot name every current event in every sermon, let us be about the work of building a church that can resist exploitation and embrace community building alongside of and for the sake of vulnerable people. And if our congregations are not able to hear that word, let us build community in the places that can.”

The call to preach isn’t for the faint of heart, in this time or any other. The prophets and sages from years past remind us that we don’t preach because we’re guaranteed a certain outcome; we preach out of faithfulness to the claim the kin-dom of God makes on our lives. And as we do this within community, we find the courage and strength to go on, trusting that Christ’s love is stronger than any force that tries to contain it. Indeed, when demagogues are on the throne (or in the White House), the weakness of Christ may be the only thing strong enough to save us.

This article was adapted from Preaching as Resistance, edited by Phil Snider and published by Chalice Press.

The Rev. Dr. Phil Snider is the lead pastor at Brentwood Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Springfield, MO. His books include Preaching After God and Preaching as Resistance.

You might also find helpful:

• Worship as Prophetic Response — Rev. Liza L. Miranda on how prophetic worship transforms congregational fear into bold, Spirit-empowered action
• Preaching and Social Issues — practical tools and tactics for preachers addressing justice and social concerns from the pulpit
• What Do We Preach? — a reflection on the content and purpose at the heart of faithful proclamation