Preaching To Move A Church: An Interview With H. Beecher Hicks
Dr. H. Beecher Hicks, Jr., has served since 1977 as Senior Pastor of the
6,000-member historic Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Just the
fifth senior minister in the congregation’s 141-year history, Hicks has
led the church through an era of growth which includes a school and more than
60 ministries. He is author of several books, and Ebony magazine has
identified him as one of the nation’s “Fifteen Greatest African-American
Preachers.” He is also a member of the Board of Contributing Editors of
Preaching magazine. Since 2000 he has guided the church through a process
of preparation and planning which will result in the congregation’s move
to a new 34-acre site in Largo, Maryland. In a recent visit with editor Michael
Duduit, Dr. Hicks talked about the role preaching has played in preparing the
historic congregation to make this significant move.
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Preaching:
What do you see as the role of vision in your work as a pastor and specifically
as a preacher?
Beecher:
I think that for both pastor and preacher vision is not only critical —
it is vital to the integrity of the ministry. I think that if there is a purpose-driven
life then there is also the purpose-driven pastorate and purpose-driven preaching.
Every pastor/preacher, beyond the generic understanding of the “call,”
must ask the question: what is it that God is leading me to, and how then shall
I lead God’s people?
If
the pastor is the visionary within the local church — within the body of
Christ — and has no vision, then the church itself is leaderless and in
a very real sense the pastor has nothing to preach about. He is preaching generically,
wandering aimlessly from text to text without any real sense of divine urgency
on himself or upon his or her charge.
Preaching:
In your most recent book — On Jordan’s Stormy Banks — you talk
about using vision to lead a church through a process of change. Tell me about
the experience that contributed towards your thinking on that issue.
Beecher:
All ministry is contextual — we are constantly obliged to ask the questions:
where are we, what is happening around us and how do we respond to the events
and circumstances which impact our ministry? If we don’t ask those questions,
we are pawns in a capricious chess game. If we don’t ask those kinds of
questions, we become victims of our own failure to be introspective and thoughtful
regarding the real purpose and focus of our ministry.
In
my setting, the Washington, DC to which I came in 1977 was radically different
from the Washington, DC that I experience now. The population has shifted, the
demographics are no longer the same, and the political landscape is dramatically
altered.