Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
It’s been a funny journey for me. I’m quiet and reflective by nature, not the sort of person who stands up in public and speaks eloquently with minimal preparation. But somewhere along the way, I discovered that being quiet doesn’t mean having nothing to say. It just means I need time and space for the words to take shape.
When I first went to theological college, I wasn’t thinking about ministry. I went because I wanted to study the Bible. That was it. But soon enough, I realised that I had things to say—things that were important—and, with the right preparation, I could communicate them. After my first sermon, someone said to me, “You’ll be a minister.” And that is exactly what happened.
For twenty years in parish ministry I stood in front of large groups, three or four times every Sunday. Though it always took preparation, the person who walked up to the lectern was the real me. Someone once commented that it’s like a switch flicks when I stand to speak. I’ve always found that interesting. It’s not that I become someone different; rather, something truer emerges—clarity, purpose, a steadiness that isn’t loud but is deeply present. I’m not the sort of person who speaks their way to clarity; I write my way to clarity. By the time I stand up, the words have already been shaped in the quiet.
After those twenty years, I moved into academia, teaching the next generation to preach. It was an enormous honour, and one of the great privileges of my life has been seeing where those students have gone and the lives that they have touched. Teaching preaching taught me that the the Bible has a voice of its own. It speaks powerfully when you hold the space long enough for people to experience it for themselves.
But I also learned that every preacher has a distinctive voice—an unmistakable way of speaking that reflects who they are. My role, more often than not, was helping people learn to hold those two voices together: the voice of Scripture and the voice of the speaker, each complementing the other.
Looking back, I never set out to be on a stage. But the strange gift of my life is that the stage quietly found me—and, in some way, revealed me. The quiet person and the person who speaks are not opposites. They are simply two sides of the same calling: to listen deeply, to write my way into clarity, and then, when the moment comes, to stand and speak with the voice that has been waiting there all along.
The Afterword 
Leave a comment