Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), 216 pp., paper.

Princeton Theological Seminary has long been a center for homiletics and the teaching of preaching. Princetonians have made significant contributions to the preaching task, and have been among the most vocal advocates of preaching and proclamation.

Thomas G. Long, Francis Landey Patton associate professor of preaching and worship at Princeton, continues that line of succession and The Witness of Preaching will take its place among the worthy tomes penned by Princeton homileticians.

The Witness of Preaching begins with a sensitive discussion of the preacher's entry into the place of worship and proclamation. Preachers, reminds Long, come from somewhere, and to forget this fact is to forget something of who we are. "When we who preach open the sanctuary door on Sunday morning and find a congregation there waiting for us, it is easy to forget that we come from these people, and not to them from the outside. We are not visitors from clergyland, strangers from an unknown land, ambassadors from seminary-land, or even, as much as we may cherish the thought, prophets from a wilderness land. We are," he says, members of the body of Christ, "commissioned to preach by the very people to whom we are about to speak."

Long has accomplished in this brief section what many homileticians fail to do; he has overcome the sense that preaching is something done on behalf of the people of God, and has reminded us that genuine preaching is an act of the congregation, accomplished through the preacher.

Preachers, he suggests, represent a spectrum of feelings toward preaching, from those who find the preaching event exhilarating and joyful to those who find preaching a burden. He indicates that he has a dual aim, to remind the eager that preaching requires "modesty and caution," and to encourage the reluctant by indicating that preaching is "a ministry of exceptional joy." He acknowledges the gifted and charismatic preachers, but indicates that the church is nourished, in the main, "by the kind of careful, responsible, and faithful preaching that falls within the range of most of us."

Long is no stranger to contemporary schools of preaching, and he identifies three "master metaphors" of current homiletics: the herald, the pastor, and the storyteller.

The herald, he suggests, was the main metaphor of the last century, when Victorian divines and master orators ruled from pulpits and others tried to imitate their authoritative style. He also indicates the contribution of the neo-orthodox theologians, and especially Karl Barth, who spoke of God speaking through the mouth of His herald.

The herald image "contains a very high theological view of preaching" since it points behind the human preacher to the voice of God. The herald model points to the importance of the message and deemphasizes the importance of the preacher. As Long states clearly: "The task of the herald is not to be somebody, but to do something on another's behalf and under another's authority." It points to the transcendent dimension of the preaching event.