Philip Wogaman, Pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC attempts to answer these concerns in Speaking the Truth in Love: Prophetic Preaching in a Broken World. Foundry is the church attended by President and Mrs. Clinton and was attended by Senator and Mrs. Dole for a time. Given its setting in Washington, and its powerful and influential constituency, Foundry would provide a workshop for "speaking truth to power." Foundry would identify itself with the "religious left." Wogaman served many years as a professor of Christian ethics before assuming the pastorate of Foundry.

Wogaman maintains simply, "A prophet is one who speaks for God." Thus he defuses the conception that a prophet is one who merely foretells future events or "vents his spleen" regarding the social issues of the day. It may involve confrontation, as in Jesus' scathing denunciation of the sin and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day. But it also includes the instruction of God as when Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." Wogaman asserts correctly that every pastor is called to be pastor and evangelist as well as prophet.

In the first half of the book, Wogaman establishes a rationale as well as principles to remember in preaching prophetically. In the second half, he provides model sermons preached in the pulpit of Foundry Church. He states much of what one would expect about the balance between the pastoral and the prophetic, the context of worship and the importance of theological rootedness in preaching prophetically. There is debate in homiletical circles about how specific one may be in making application. Application should be specific enough to show how the gospel applies to the issues of the day without proposing a particular course of action as "the" Christian response. Wogaman's suggestions for preaching more prophetically are helpful even to one who does not share his particular theological or political stance.

The sermons presented were actually preached by Wogaman to his congregation at Foundry. Many resources seem to offer "sugar stick" sermons that a preacher preaches "on the road." They do not help a pastor preach to his or her own congregation as well as contextualized sermons. In the sermons he preaches truth to power over a broad array of topics. Some may argue that the sermons he chooses should be classified as more pastoral than prophetic. For instance, he includes a sermon preached after his predecessor, a man who had served the church for over 20 years, disclosed that he had been involved in inappropriate relationships with members of the congregation. Other sermons include sermons addressed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Sunday after the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the sermon preached on the Sunday after the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke.

In the sermons, he illustrates that preaching prophetically does not mean preaching a prophetic sermon this Sunday, a pastoral sermon the next Sunday and an evangelistic sermon on the Sunday after that. All of these elements are a part of the same cloth of truly pastoral preaching. Although I would not identify with Wogaman, either politically or theologically, I gleaned many insights from him on how to preach more prophetically.