Confessional Preaching

Confessional preaching arises out of the situation of the preacher. It builds on a personal experience, a matter of struggle, a triumph. It thereby connects with the lives of the hearers and draws them into the Word of God for their own situations. Background Confessional preaching is defined by its most famous contemporary practitioner, John R. Claypool, as a willingness "to share out of my own light and my own darkness-to share the truths that are saving me and the places where I find the struggle still to be most acute" (The Preaching Event [New York: Harper and Row, 1990], 89). Confessional preaching seeks to give the listener entree into the preacher's innermost struggles, conflicts, and joys as a means of finding the full range of salvation offered in Christ. Claypool's first efforts in confessional preaching came out of one of his life's darkest moments-the loss of his eight-year-old daughter, Laura Lue, to acute leukemia. Through a series of confessional sermons, compiled …