On Jordan’s Stormy Banks walks you through what my encounter has been with our current situation, our current context, our current community and holds that experience in tension and juxtaposition with the truths of scripture — with how the Word of God speaks to these issues and how we were able to seize the Bible as a living tool for the transmission of vision from one generation to the next.

Preaching: How has your preaching changed over your 28 years as pastor of Metropolitan?

Hicks: I think that my preaching has become more direct, more purposeful. I think that my preaching tends to address problems or speak to issues or concerns within the community as I’ve come to understand them. I think my preaching has become far more instructive for the purpose of shaping the mind of the congregation.

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Bear in mind that preaching in the District of Columbia is far different from most other cities. Washington is the Capitol of the World. Our worship is always joined by persons of different cultures from across the globe. Washington is the center of our government. On any given Sunday our pews will be visited by persons who work in City Hall, in congress and the White House. It truly is a “bully pulpit.” That is why preaching in this context bears such urgency. I am required, in the words of the Apostle Paul, to give the sound of a “certain trumpet.” In this pulpit, a flute will not suffice.

One of the things that has happened most recently is that in our effort to communicate this vision to the congregation, we began to deal with the concept of the Kingdom. The Kingdom as we find it in scripture is pivotal to an understanding of what Jesus was about and what I believe the church was intended to be. So our dialogue has not been about building the Kingdom — because whatever we build is subject to decay and corruption. We talk, rather, about becoming the Kingdom.

We are trying to get the congregation to accept the concept that we are not here to build something, we’re not here to buy something or pay for something; we are here to become something that is central to our growth and development, something that is larger than ourselves. It is something that moves us toward what God intended for us to be and what God intended for us to do. The building becomes secondary, an aid toward the fulfillment of ministry and not an end in itself.

So that’s what we’ve been teaching and preaching, and singing. The whole congregation has been caught up — even in our Sunday school classes — with the notion of what it means to become the Kingdom. We are not only moving physically, we are moving spiritually in order that we can become something greater than we are.

The concepts related to becoming the Kingdom have also shaped my preaching as I have been led to explore what it means to become disciples, to become a community of faith. These are matters that may not put any money into the building fund but they make a deposit into the minds, the hearts and the spirit of the congregation in ways that sometimes are imperceptible. In the long run I believe this kind of teaching and growing has great value.