About Preaching for God's World

Our History

What is Preaching for God’s World?

Preaching for God’s World is a resource for preachers, offering thoughts and reflections on each Sunday’s Revised Common Lectionary readings viewed through the lens of the Anglican Five Marks of Mission – in particular, caring for people and planet.

The Five Marks of Mission express the Anglican understanding of what it means to live faithfully and holistically in the world. They reflect Jesus’ mission to bring good news to the poor, release for the oppressed and fullness of life to all (Luke 4:18; John 10:10) and humanity’s role to “tend and keep” the earth (Genesis 2:15).

Anglicans therefore take caring for people and planet seriously and also see these as principal ways we share in God’s ongoing story of love in the world.

Reflections come from preachers, practitioners, theologians and activists from across the world, demonstrating both the diversity of our experiences and our unity as one body of Christ.

Five Marks of Mission

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation

To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth

To respond to human need by loving service

Preaching for God’s World helps preachers explore the set lectionary readings for each week from the perspective of creation care.

Why we started

With the increase in global interest and action to counter the interconnecting climate, biodiversity and pollution crises, we noticed that these conversations were often missing from the pulpit.

We know the power a strong sermon has to change hearts and minds and to mobilise action from within our congregations and wider communities. Sermons can help Christians to better understand the climate and ecological crisis and to connect this to their faith. They can give people space to consider their response to these crises, building moral courage and creating the conditions for rapid and prophetic action that is desperately needed to safeguard the integrity of creation. [To explore this further please read Margaret Bullitt-Jonas’ excellent article ‘Preaching when life depends on it: climate crisis and Gospel hope’]

We also know that this task can be daunting, especially because most preachers (lay or ordained) are not trained to talk about these matters. We wanted to collate a resource that would encourage and support people to be more confident in preaching for God’s world.

Although the website follows the lectionary and provides sermon suggestions, others might simply choose to receive the reflections for personal use. For example, to see how the Bible speaks holistically to us as caring disciples, or to inform our prayer as we understand more about the realities of our siblings across the world.

As a global Anglican Communion, it was important to us that the authorship represented the breadth and diversity of our worldwide Christian family. So far, our coalition of authors span 26 countries. We wanted the resource to highlight experiences and reflections of those in the majority world who are facing the most acute impacts of the climate and ecological crisis but who still find their voices marginalised. We are grateful for our cooperation with the Anglican Indigenous Network and the Anglican Communion Lusophone Network in doing this.

We note our thanks to Sustainable Preaching who have in part inspired this resource and who have hosted this project between 2018 and 2022.

The Team

The Preaching for God’s World team is made up of extraordinary individuals who have a passion to see the whole of God’s Creation thrive. To eradicate the oppression of people who are affected by climate change and to build a culture of sustaining the environment.

Members of the team come from all over the Anglican communion and minister in various vocations within their contexts.