One of the highlights of the recent SST Conference was Hans Ulrich‘s paper on preaching. Here’s how he started:

Preaching is one of the significant and constitutive practices of the Christian Church. Where there is preaching, there is the church, and vice versa. Otherwise there would be no church at all. This is the key to ecclesiology as we find it in the theologies of the Reformation, at least in its Lutheran shape. It is an ecclesiology which is related to the political character of God’s economy, to God’s cosmic, global and particular regimen as it is always related to His word. To think about preaching is therefore finally not to think about the church or (in a different perspective) about Christianity and its place or conditions in this world, rather it is to think about God’s very own way of being and becoming present for us human beings. The church and Christian practices are not what we have to reflect upon; rather, we have to reflect upon what happens with the Church, why these practices are given – and this is a theo-logical question, a question about God. To talk about God means to talk about a God who has decided to communicate with somebody, with his Son, the Spirit and – included in this communication – with us human beings, his creatures. He is the God who therefore has to be encountered, not imagined; he is the God who has to be heard and listened to.’