David Deeks offers some guidelines

Always wear oven gloves when handling hot potatoes. That will prevent you burning your fingers and reduce the risk of dropping the potatoes on the floor. Hot potatoes are a staple of our diet – an excellent source of starch, vitamins and minerals.

Here are Ten Guidelines for Preachers, for handling ‘hot potatoes’ in the pulpit; plus some brief comments from a Methodist perspective.

1.     Don’t shy way from reflection on political and social issues of the day (e.g. for fear of controversy).  The gospel is never detached from the life of the world.  Social justice and personal righteousness are as much part of the Methodist DNA as evangelism and mission.  Preachers must confidently demonstrate from the scriptures the necessary connection between faith and politics, or faith, the quality of justice and community life that are looked for and worked for in every part of the world.  The Bible speaks eloquently and repeatedly of God’s concerns for the well-being of societies, of God’s action to redress wrongs and of God’s requirements on God’s people to act in God’s name for a fairer world.  Whatever else may remind you of these great themes, at least ponder and expound Psalm 146:5-9; Micah 2-3 and especially 6:8; and Matthew 25:31-46.

2.     Draw confidently on the Church’s reliable and wide-ranging tradition of reflection on political, social and economic themes.  They are integral to the gospel message.  You cannot go wrong with robust criticism of issues like these:
•    Miscarriages of justice
•    Blatant discrimination or prejudice (based on gender, age, race or disability)
•    Tyranny or the autocratic exercise of power
•    Oppression and cruelty applied to innocent people, especially children
•    The injustice of obscene disparities of wealth, educational opportunity, health care provision or access to effective participation in civic and political life
•    The harm caused by addiction to alcohol, drugs, nicotine and gambling
•    Indifference to life-style issues or energy consumption that affect climate change or spoil the environment

For the up-to-date application of these and similar themes, use the Methodist Church web-site www.methodist.org.uk

3. Become well-informed about those areas of public life where the Methodist Church has openly acknowledged contradictory convictions flowing from the gospel; and has urged respect and sensitivity towards people with opinions and attitudes which conflict with our own.  I refer to issues like: abortion; gay and lesbian sexuality; and war and peace.  Be sensitive to major mood changes on these difficult themes.  I suspect, for example, that since the Iraq war, Christian leaders will not in the foreseeable future readily mount a defence of a ‘just war’.

4.     Acknowledge the complexity of political, social and economic issues.  Preachers need to be well-informed on issues of contemporary debate, taking seriously a wide range of responsible opinion.  Avoid giving gratuitous offence to minority opinions.  But equally, avoid trying so hard to give a balanced and fair survey of all sides of a controversy that you forget the challenge of seeking as much clarity and committed action as possible, in the light of the gospel.  Preachers are to nurture discipleship!

5.     Avoid turning the pulpit into an extension of the tabloid press.  Naive sloganising (e.g. business is always ‘a bad thing’; or the USA is always in the wrong) is unworthy.  So is demonising of groups of people (young people/binge drinkers; bankers; immigrants; Muslim fundamentalists; the IMF or World Bank; Nestlé).  From the other end of the spectrum, it is equally unworthy of the preacher’s vocation to imply that some organisations are unambiguously good or worthy of unqualified support.  (There is a proper affection for Methodist and Christian charities, for instance; and we must regularly call for generous support for them from congregations.  But not even MRDF, Christian Aid, Action for children, LWPT and MHA can be perfect!)

6.     Avoid using the pulpit for imposing on congregations the preacher’s personal attitudes and prejudices.  However deeply a preacher feels about a particular issue, it is always dangerous to let that issue dominate a sermon.  It is doubly dangerous when a preacher justifies a singular vision and commitment in terms of being a ‘prophet’.  The preacher’s role is to edify a congregation.  Therefore, a preacher’s political, social and economic agenda in the pulpit must reflect the range of concerns, worries, or causes of grief and anger in a local congregation.  The task is to seek the mind of Christ through theologically well-informed reflection on well-researched issues.  Always talk to a range of Christian people (including, wherever possible, people with direct experience of the issue that seizes your attention) before launching from a pulpit, with passionate conviction, a campaign of protest or action.

7. Avoid party politics and the contemporary culture of political debate. It is not sufficient for a preacher to read newspapers or watch Newsnight or Question Time.  These may provide desirable ideas for preachers about how to think through matters of the moment.  But they may lock us into ways of coming at issues which are dominated by the propaganda machines of the main political parties. They do not give us the space we need to look at things from a theological perspective.  Certainly it is never appropriate in the pulpit to advocate one political party over another (though it is entirely acceptable for a preacher to be known to be a member of a particular party).  It is similarly inappropriate to confuse preaching a sermon with the everyday murky mud-slinging and personal attacks necessitated by political point-scoring.

NOTE The Methodist Conference, while studiously refusing to be aligned to a particular political party, has however declared that a political party which bases its policies on racism (e.g. the BNP) deserves no support from Christian people.  It is consonant with the gospel to denounce such a party explicitly and forthrightly in a sermon.

8. Be very careful not to try to ‘solve’ local church disputes from the pulpit.  It is part of the mature life of any congregation to struggle with fierce arguments and conflicts on a range of issues - from worship-styles, through proposals to adapt church premises or the way the local minister is allegedly being treated by the circuit or Connexion, to the congregation’s supposed complacency or imprudent enthusiasm for evangelism.  Sometimes feelings run very deep in a divided congregation, entrenched positions are adopted and attitudes are struck which some will later regret.  The Church has contexts and procedures for sorting out such conflicts as creatively as possible.  The pulpit must not be used to tackle the particulars of current congregational conflicts.  It should be used to place the congregation’s fractious life within the mysterious but ever-loving purposes of God, who calls us all to walk the way of the cross in the light of the coming kingdom.  This means that the Church is called by God to be a certain sort of community - a disciplined body renowned for the quality of respectful and just relationships between members; a commitment to pastoral care of the sick and the sad, the confused and the hurting ones; the cultivation of a spirit of profligate generosity in giving and in service; and a culture where there is a ready confession of wrongs which is answered by a speedy and unqualified forgiveness.  Such a community provides for those in conflict with one another a Spirit-inspired healing environment.  This vision of what the Church is intended to be is the preacher’s authentic gift to a fractious congregation.

9. Do not use the pulpit to criticize or ‘improve’ what the Conference can achieve in the area of biblical or doctrinal issues.  Baptismal policy, for example, is always controversial; but the Conference’s position is clear.  Preachers must not subvert it.  Contrariwise, the Conference has found it impossible to state unambiguously a position on the authority of scripture in the Christian life: it is unlikely that a preacher (though personally convinced of how scripture clarifies God’s Word for him or her) can do better.  (The implication of this is, of course, that through Preachers’ Meetings, Synod briefings and use of the Methodist Church’s web-site, preachers need to keep abreast of Conference policy on doctrinal, pastoral and public issues; and take opportunities to study and reflect on Conference documents and resolutions on these themes).  There is surely sufficient consistency in the Conference’s stance on a wide range of issues to merit warm and generous advocacy from preachers. Chief among them must be the Conference’s encouragement to Christians everywhere to look at things from the perspective of the poor and vulnerable; to be a voice for the disempowered, the exploited and the oppressed; to stand up courageously for children and for vulnerable older people; to celebrate the diversity of insights and cultures in the global human family which constantly challenges our narrow parochialism; and to express God’s loving outreach to all people everywhere through a generous hospitality to the stranger, the visitor, the refugee and the immigrant.

10. Controversial issues of all kinds must be thoroughly explored by Christian people – without anxiety.  A sermon is rarely the right context for this – not least because a sermon communicates one person’s perspective only (however ‘balanced’ and fair it tries to be).  A much better context is a house group or ad hoc meeting for church members or for a local community.  Preachers have a number of responsibilities in forging links between a sermon in a worship-setting and an open discussion or debate on another occasion and in a different context.  From the pulpit, preachers should consistently advocate the setting up of groups for vigorous discussion and exploration of contemporary issues.  Preachers should also use the pulpit to remind people what is at stake - to discern, as well as may be, the mind of Christ in the modern world; to encourage committed discipleship for peace and justice through participation in campaigns and through political involvement; and to provide the scriptural resources and the prayers of the Church which can help Christian people to discover for themselves political and ethical perspectives which link directly to their faith in Jesus Christ.  I take it for granted that a preacher will be as good as his or her word.  Every preacher is a disciple, who is to be judged on what they do as much as or more than on what they say.  ‘Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times’ (Psalm 106: 3).

Rev David Deeks is a supernumerary minister who retired in 2008 from his dual post as Secretary of Conference and the first General Secretary of the Methodist Church.