Willimon is living testimony that there is plenty of humor as well as pathos in being a pastor. This rambunctious Methodist preacher adds ample spice to the homiletical stew he doles out.
A Review, by John T. Pless, of:
Will Willimon. Accidental Preacher: A Memoir. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019.
Let me get this out of the way from the outset, Will Willimon is a United Methodist. He is snide and dismissive of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America for their failure to ordain women. At best, he is ambivalent on the question of homosexuality. For some, those reasons alone would suggest Willimon is not worth reading, but that would be a big mistake. Recognizing these weak spots ought not dimmish the whit and wisdom which shines throughout Willimon’s recollection of his youth in Greenville, South Carolina, graduate work at Yale and Emory, his service as a pastor, and his three tenures at Duke, interrupted by a stint as a bishop in Alabama.
There is a thread which connects these changing venues of Willimon’s, and it is the unflinching conviction that God has elected him for the work of Gospel proclamation. It is the underlying assumption of Willimon that God sought and found him:
“In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis’s account of how God ‘closed in on me,’ Lewis mocks ‘amiable Agnostics’ who prattle about humanity’s ‘search for God.’ That makes as much sense as speaking of ‘the mouse’s search for the cat.’ God looks for us before we search for God. ‘You would not have found Me if I had not first found you,’ said God to Pascal” (2).
Willimon’s autobiography is not a narrative of his discovery of God but of how God’s call highjacked his life and pressed him “accidentally” into the Gospel ministry.
Willimon paints a picture of the Holy Spirit more like a hawk with claws than a gentle dove, who is on prowl for the most unlikely candidates for holiness much less ministry.
“Luther told clergy that ordination is not based on merit but on election by a God who is a sucker for ‘sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings,’ that is the God of the Church” (76).
I have appreciated Willimon’s writings since reading his early book, Worship as Pastoral Care (1979), just before graduating from seminary. In reading Accidental Preacher, I resonated with Willimon’s background. He grew up in South Carolina and I was in North Carolina. We share similar memories of racial segregation and racism in our youth. We both grew up hearing stories about our ancestors who served with the Confederate army in the Civil War. Willimon was deeply formed by his involvement in the Boy Scouts. Both of us attained the rank of Eagle and were part of “The Brotherhood” of the Order of the Arrow. Like myself, Willimon served in campus ministry and as a teacher of preachers. These parallels evoked an empathy for Willimon’s story for me. I might add that Willimon is a master storyteller, and there is no doubt this gift has contributed to his recognition as one of the best preachers in the English-speaking world.
Combing wit and wisdom, Willimon pictures for his readers a Methodist pastor of his youth who was “over-fed and under-paid.” He recalls his time in the episcopacy of the United Methodist church in Alabama where he discovered that meetings of the Council of Bishops were an exercise in “the bland leading the bland.” It is no wonder Richard Lischer quipped that, “If Mark Twain had been a Methodist, his name would have been Will Willimon” (back cover blurb).
Willimon’s humor is sharp but refreshing. He pokes fun at the restrictive worldview of Bishop John Shelby Spong which prevented the maverick Episcopalian from confessing the bodily resurrection of Jesus. After listening to a sermon at Duke University Chapel, Willimon opines:
“The guest preacher in Duke’s Chapel last Sunday demonstrated that anybody can give a lecture; it takes a called preacher to perform the death-defying high-wire act called preaching” (208).
Willimon sees relevancy as an over-inflated idol:
“After a service, an attendee says, ‘You preachers never talk about anything that’s related to my world.’ I tried to find a nice way to say, ‘Idiot! Scripture doesn’t want to relate to your world.’ Scripture rocks your world.’” (96).
Willimon also complains How:
“Buttoned-down mainline Christianity offers aspirin for those in need of massive chemotherapy” (101).
Willimon admits his indebtedness to Karl Barth, having written earlier: The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen Sermons with Commentary by William H. Willimon. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009). He credits Barth as his “best preacher friend” who “gave me guts” (182). To that end and in a rather gutsy way, Willimon cites the Swiss theologian:
“As Karl Barth put it ‘Preachers, the Bible is more interesting than you” (164).
The moral distilled by Willimon is preachers ought not talk about themselves but Christ.
“As Karl Barth said, only God can speak for God” (122).
From Barth, Willimon also learned:
“For preachers, Scripture is a continually renewable resource” (145).
Scripture leaves no room for psychological assertions or vague and bloodless generalities. Willimon offers a pointed critique:
“Paul Tillich’s sentimental sermon ‘accept your acceptance’ (who doesn’t love that advice when you are raising hell in college?) is an injustice to the discombobulating, topsy-turvy bloody love of Jesus that gives lives worth leading and deaths worth dying by offering us more than if left to our own devices. Jesus has grander designs than blasé ‘unconditional love.’” (106).
Preachers learn from Willimon that words do matter. The Gospel is not wordless acts or spiritual impulses but the Word of the cross:
“The Christian faith is inherently acoustical. You can’t self-inoculate the Gospel; somebody’s got to tell it to you. It’s auditory” (122).
As we have already noted, Willimon is a storyteller par excellence. In these pages, you will encounter stories of Willimon’s fatherless childhood, his hob-knobbing with Billy Graham, his preaching at Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, tangling with politicians (including Donald Trump and Rex Sessions), his academic naughtiness at Duke, and an episode regarding vocational guidance given to Vanna White when her family were members of his congregation in Mrytle Beach. Willimon is living testimony that there is plenty of humor as well as pathos in being a pastor. This rambunctious Methodist preacher adds ample spice to the homiletical stew he doles out.
Willimon is the author of over eighty books and hundreds of articles. His sermons can easily be accessed from the Duke University Chapel website. Accidental Preacher is entertaining, but also a comprehensive introduction to Willimon’s life and career. I highly recommend it.
Better yet, I invite you to join me on June 10-12, 2025, at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Anaheim, CA, for a Continuing Education course on “Master Pastors,” as we examine the work of Willimon along with Eugene Peterson, Jim Nestingen, Helmut Thielicke, and Bo Giertz. Accidental Preacher will be a required text. Registration material may be accessed on the website of Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.
