Paul Hoffman is a New England pastor and participated in our Rhode Island Summit in 2021. We’re pleased to be able to share with you an interview about Paul’s soon-to-be-published book.

STS: Paul, thanks for allowing us to ask you a few questions about your new book Preaching to a Divided Nation, due to be published by Baker Academic in August 2022. Let’s start with you telling us a bit about where you live and minister.

I live in Middletown, Rhode Island. It is located on Aquidneck Island, which has one small city (Newport) and two towns (Middletown and Portsmouth). The population of the island is around 50,000 people during the school year, but swells by tens of thousands from May through October due to tourism.

Our church is located two miles from the center of Newport, which is world-renowned for its gilded age mansions, restaurants, yachting industry, and the US Naval War College, which trains military personnel from around the globe.

Thus, our island has a dynamic mixture of people: locals, active duty and retired members of the armed forces, those serving in the tourism and boating industries, students from Salve Regina University, and tourists.

I have served as the lead pastor of Evangelical Friends Church of Newport since 2007. Our congregation is unique in at least two ways. First, we minister to many local people but also have a strong reputation among active-duty military. This is ironic, due to our Quaker heritage. Quakers have historically been known for being pacifists. However, our church and denomination hold to the importance of individual conscience and welcomes anyone who wants to learn more about Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures.

Second, our church community is transient. We turn over 1/3 to 1/2 our attendees every one or two years due to the changing assignments of our military attendees.

STS: What’s the core message of your forthcoming book? And why were you burdened to write it?

The book is Preaching to a Divided Nation: A Seven-Step Model for Promoting Reconciliation and Unity (Baker Academic, August 9, 2022). I co-wrote it with my good friend Matt Kim, who was a professor of preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and recently joined the faculty of Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University.

We believe pastors and preachers are called by God to promote the gospel of reconciliation. They can do so by following an actionable, seven-step model that will equip them to proclaim healing and peace to their fractured churches and world. The steps are: the theological, contextual, personal, positional, methodological, practical, and categorical. All preaching starts with Scripture (the theological step). In particular, we present a reconciling metanarrative that can be used to convey the grand story of the Bible. We then move onto examining our local and national history (contextual step), pursuing maturity in Christ through spiritual disciplines (the personal step), embracing the role of the Holy Spring to bring conviction and change (the positional step), focus on what unites us, including shared doctrines, shared identity, shared mission and shared experiences (the methodological step), engage in particular pre-sermon, mid-sermon, and post-sermon practices (the practical step), and regularly proclaim salient texts and themes (the categorical step).

Matt and I felt compelled to write this book because, like so many others, we have been deeply disheartened by the rancorous divisions tearing apart the body of Christ. All too often, God’s people in America have intentionally or inadvertently worshipped the idols of ethnocentrism, sexism, classism, and political partisanship. This is tragic because it discredits our gospel witness and breaks God’s heart. The Scriptures teach we are united as one body in Christ (cf. Jn. 15, Eph. 2, 1 Cor. 12) and that in Heaven, every tribe, tongue, nation and people group are worshipping the Lamb (Rev. 7:9). This book is a prophetic call to repent of our sins, recenter our lives around the gospel, and return to and live into our divinely declared identity in Christ.

STS: Can you reflect a bit on how your message might play out uniquely in small towns and rural areas? Are there particular challenges or opportunities in the small places when it comes to your message of reconciliation through preaching?

I understand what it is like to live and minister in small to medium-sized towns. I grew up in rural, North Yarmouth, Maine, population 4,000. I minister in a suburban town, which has approximately 17,000 inhabitants. Because I have been shaped by those places, I believe this book will be applicable to those serving in small towns and rural areas.

That said, I know small towns are unique in that relationships tend to be deeply personal and long-lasting. This means clashes or conflicts can become more intense and have bigger reverberations and implications. In these communities, everyone knows when two family members or church leaders have a major falling out and there is nowhere to hide to avoid the pain and tension. I believe this is an opportunity for ministers and church leaders to bring the aggrieved parties together and urge them to obey the gospel by moving toward repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Preaching is indispensable to this process as it softens the hardened soil and celebrates God’s victories. Given these dynamics, it seems to me the pastor shepherding and teaching in a small community has the potential to exert more influence as a peacemaker than those serving in larger, more complex and diffused environments. Simply put, the potential for significant impact is greater.

STS: What do you wish you knew at the beginning of your ministry about fostering unity and reconciliation through preaching?

First, how powerful it is. God uses orthodox, clear, passionate, unction-filled preaching to transform individuals, families, churches, and communities. As I reflect on fifteen-plus years of pulpit ministry, I am astonished at how God has used a cracked-clay-pot-pastor like myself to convey his eternal, inerrant truth in ways that bring profound conviction and encouragement. I don’t normally see the fruit every Sunday or even every year. But over a long period of time, I’ve started to discern the imprints of grace-filled transformation upon the lives in my congregation.

Next, I wish I knew how hard it would be. The spiritual warfare the apostle Paul details in Ephesians 6 is real, constant, and bruising. The world, the flesh, and the devil work in concert to divide God’s people and degrade our witness. We must recognize this reality.

Consequently, proclamation and teaching that promotes the gospel of reconciliation and unity calls for our best study, exegesis, self-examination, accountability, prayer, and energy.

Third, along similar lines, I didn’t grasp to what extent orthodoxy and orthopraxy must be intertwined. There’s no doubt: we must demonstrate a commitment to sound doctrine in our preaching and teaching. However, we must also put equal effort into ensuring our lives match the message of our lips, and our actions align with our proclamations. Our neighbors, family, friends, loved ones, and co-workers can readily discern the gaps between our confession and our character. Hypocrisy is a stealthy sin: it is invisible to us but all too apparent to others. With the help of healthy Christian community, including friends, mentors, counselors, and coaches, we must pursue God-honoring integrity and wholeness. Otherwise, we are in danger of distracting from or demeaning the precious and holy name of Jesus Christ. We must never forget our chief end is to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. All impediments must be removed at all cost.

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