{"id":1274,"date":"2026-06-10T14:04:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sensingt\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:10:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T23:10:37","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-preach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sensingt\/2026\/06\/what-does-it-mean-to-preach\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does It Mean to Preach?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Word Changes Everything<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a word that sits at the heart of what preaching is, and most preachers have never heard it.<\/p>\n

The word is attestation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It sounds technical. It is. But what it names is something every preacher has felt in the pulpit \u2014 and something every congregation has experienced in the pew, even if they could not name it. So let me define it carefully, and then let it go, and see if the reality it describes does not feel immediately familiar.<\/p>\n

\n

The Definition<\/strong><\/p>\n

To attest is to bear witness. Not to report, not to explain, not to argue \u2014 to witness<\/em>. The difference matters enormously.<\/p>\n

When a reporter describes an event, she was not necessarily there. When a lawyer argues a case, he is constructing a position. When a teacher explains a concept, she is transmitting information. But when a witness testifies, she is saying something irreducibly personal: I was there. I saw it. I am staking my credibility \u2014 and in some cases my life \u2014 on what I tell you.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is attestation. And that, I want to suggest, is preaching.<\/p>\n

In my forthcoming book Preaching in the Present Tense: Scripting Transformative Sermons<\/em>, I define preaching as attestation \u2014 the embodied witness of a formed person to a living Word addressed to a particular community in the present tense. The preacher is not a reporter delivering news from a distant country. The preacher is a witness who has been in the text, been read by the text, and now stands before the congregation to say: I have seen it. And I am staking my life on what I found there.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Three Biblical Examples<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept is not mine. It runs through the New Testament like a thread.<\/p>\n

At Pentecost, Peter stands before the crowd in Jerusalem and does not simply describe what happened to Jesus. He confirms it, vouches for it, declares it from his own experience and from the testimony of the prophets: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses”<\/em> (Acts 2:32). The crowd is cut to the heart. They cry out: “What should we do?”<\/em> Something has happened that a lecture could not produce. A witness has spoken, and the Word has become present address.<\/p>\n

At the well in Samaria, the woman leaves her water jar \u2014 that small, telling detail \u2014 and runs back to the village. She does not deliver a theological treatise. She says: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done”<\/em> (John 4:29). That is attestation in its most elemental form. She saw something. She is telling you. Her life is the evidence.<\/p>\n

At Horeb, Elijah stands in the cave, exhausted and afraid, and delivers a careful account of his own faithfulness and the people’s failure. The angel does not dispute his facts. But the question that comes back is not about the facts: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”<\/em> (1 Kings 19:9). The question reads him more truthfully than his answer reads himself. Attestation is not only what the preacher says to the congregation. It is what the text says to the preacher, before the preacher says anything to anyone.<\/p>\n

\n

What Attestation Sounds Like<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here is a simple list of what attestation feels like when it becomes speech. These are not synonyms for a technical term. They are the human voices behind it:<\/p>\n

I attest.<\/em> I confirm.<\/em> I bear witness.<\/em> I vouch for this.<\/em> I was there.<\/em> I have seen it.<\/em> I stake my life on it.<\/em> I say this with my whole self.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every time a preacher steps into the pulpit, one of these sentences \u2014 spoken or unspoken \u2014 is the ground on which everything else stands. The sermon that lacks this ground is information. The sermon that stands on this ground is proclamation.<\/p>\n

\n

Why the Word Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul Ricoeur, the French philosopher whose work on testimony and witness runs beneath much of what I am saying here, describes attestation as a mode of assurance that joins belief and moral integrity \u2014 a confidence in the self that is capable of acting and being held responsible. It is not certainty. It is commitment. The witness does not say I can prove this beyond all doubt<\/em>. The witness says I have seen it, and I will not unsay it, whatever the cost<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is the difference between a preacher who explains the resurrection and a preacher who attests it. Both may use the same words. But only one of them is standing on the ground of personal witness. And the congregation can tell the difference.<\/p>\n

The technical word for all of this is attestation. The everyday words are: testify, confirm, declare, vouch for, bear witness, stand behind, stake your life on<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Use any of them. They all point to the same thing.<\/p>\n

The preacher who has been in the text, been claimed by the text, and now speaks from within that encounter \u2014 that preacher is attesting. And when that happens, something occurs in the room that could not have been planned.<\/p>\n

\n

A Final Word<\/strong><\/p>\n

Near the end of my book’s theology of preaching, after surveying what the traditions have said about preaching across two millennia, I arrive at this:<\/p>\n

Preaching is neither pure divine address nor merely human construction or correlation. It is partnership \u2014 a genuinely participatory event in which God’s living initiative and human response together become more than either alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Attestation is the human side of that partnership. Not the human side replacing the divine side. Not the human side explaining the divine side. The human side bearing<\/em> witness to the divine side \u2014 in words, in presence, in the life behind the words \u2014 so that the congregation hears not only what the text once said but what it is saying now, to them, in this moment.<\/p>\n

That is what preaching is. That is attestation.<\/p>\n

And when I get into the pulpit, I stake my life on it.<\/p>\n

\n

Tim Sensing is Scholar in Residence at the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. This post draws on his forthcoming book<\/em> Preaching in the Present Tense: Scripting Transformative Sermons (Cascade Books, 2027). More sermons, articles, and resources are available at<\/em> HomileticalSensings<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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