Stories With WILLIAM WILLIMON - Episode 357

This episode of Voices in My Head is brought to you by Podbean. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. Visit podbean.com/voices to find out more. That's podbean.com/voices. This is Rick Lee James, and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder. The title track, Thunder, is a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins. There are also 12 other tracks made up of original music, hymns, and readings to guide the listener on a journey. You can buy Thunder today on clear vinyl and CD, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, and almost every other music streaming service. Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to So let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. And by the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSays. Where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you can be here with us today for a wonderful conversation with Dr. William Willimon. Just before we get into our conversation, I do want to let all of the listeners of Voices in my head know that at Kickstarter right now, for the next, I think, 28 days at the time of recording, we are running a campaign to try to raise money to record a video for "Love Our Enemies," one of the songs off of my latest album called "Thunder." And on that page on Kickstarter, if you look up "Love Our Enemies" or "Rick Lee James," you'll be able to find the page, or you can go to rickleejames.com. We'd love to have you be a part of the project and even be in the music video. It's going to be a lot of fun. And we're hoping to do some really wonderful things together and make something beautiful together. Well, now that we have the business out of the way, I want to introduce my guest today. Dr. William Willimon served as Dean of Duke Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University for 2 decades. He returned to Duke after serving as Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church from 2004 to 2012. Dr. Willemund is the author of over 70 books. In early 2018, he released "Who Lynched Willie Earl? Confronting Racism Through Preaching." We had a discussion about that book on this very podcast shortly after it released. Then last year, Dr. Willemund came back on the show to talk about his memoir, "Accidental Preacher," and again, we had a wonderful time talking about his life and his ministry. Well, in 2020, he has yet again released another new book called Stories by Willemijn, a collection of some of his most beloved, memorable, and impactful stories. Dr. Willemijn has graciously stopped by our podcast for another visit again today so we can talk all about it, and I am grateful to him for that. Dr. William Willemijn, welcome back to Voices in My Head.

Ah, Rick, it's great to be back with you.

Well, as we start today, I'd love to just catch up a bit on how you have been and, and what do you have been up to? What's your day-to-day life looking like currently these days?

Well, I'm continuing to enjoy teaching at Duke Divinity School. I'm directing the Doctor of Ministry program here, so I really enjoy the interaction it gives me with fellow clergy and exploring how to strengthen ourselves for our work in the present moment. Many preachers are in the present moment are struggling with lots of issues in their congregations that the culture impacts that, and so I'm enjoying working on clergy leadership with some very talented clergy.

Well, wonderful. I'm glad to hear that. And it sounds like that's, uh, probably keeping you very busy because you're right, there's so much, so many challenging things today for, for ministers, especially for preacher types, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Well, you know what, I want to ask you a question that I kick myself for not asking you the last time you were on when we were talking about Accidental Preacher. Um, and this is one you might not get asked about very often, but it one that intrigued me when I was reading the book. There, of course, is a Netflix series called House of Cards that I used to watch. And before each episode of the show, it says created by Beau Willimon. And I always used to think when I saw that name, I wonder if he is related to Will.

Sure am. That is my cousin Beau.

How about that?

And he I guess Bo is my second cousin. His dad is my cousin Henry Wellerman, who died recently. Bo, though, is— yeah, I urge preachers to watch House of Cards because it is one of the darkest depictions of human evil I know of. I think it's an amazing drama.

Well, that is very interesting because I You know, it's obviously not, um, at least around these parts in Ohio, Willemont is not a common name. So when I saw it on the show, I thought, I wonder, and I was so excited to read in your memoir that you actually are related to him. So I guess great storytelling runs in the family. And, and I, and I want to start, uh, this conversation today with a related quote actually that you include in the book Accidental Preacher because it's about stories. And you say in that book, God loves stories. You don't have to be an English major to be a Christian, but it really helps. Flannery O'Connor said, "People without hope do not write novels, nor do they read them." The burning question that each of us must ask is, "Who gets to narrate my world?" And just a few sentences below that in the book you say, "Big-time novelist friends Reynolds Price, Tom Wolfe, Harper Lee, Allan Garganis, and my cousin, dramatist Beau Willimon, resent how metaphorically challenged clergy stifle rather than encourage invention. And, and I wonder if you could maybe elaborate just a little bit on that, because it's interesting to hear that, that novelists and writers like that are, you know, it rubs them a little bit the wrong way that clergy can be stifled about that. And maybe elaborate a little bit on the idea that so many clergy are metaphorically challenged Well, maybe my novelist friends would say I overstate their resistance to clergy or the reasons for it.

But I think to me, it's— I never cease being amazed at how Israel and the church have said, let me tell you about God. Let me present God to you, relate you to God. How do they do it? Primarily through narrative. And my colleague Dan Via, New Testament, used to say, Scripture tends to be propositionless. That is, you don't normally in Scripture Almost never do you hear Scripture saying, "Let me make 3 points here about who Jesus is and what he does." More typically, it is, "He walked along the road one day, and he saw somebody at the side of the road." Jesus is— his teaching is notable for the lack of abstractions, the lack of principles, the lack of points. Rather, we ask Jesus a question, "What's God like?" And Jesus responds not with, "Well, let me define God for you. God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc." No. Jesus says, "Well, let's see, there was a man who had two sons, and one of the sons said, 'Dad, drop dead. Put the will into effect. I'm off to the big city.'" And the father does just that. And et cetera, et cetera. I think that means it's sort of odd that we preachers often preach using big words, or abstractions, or propositions, and when Scripture so rarely talks in that way. More typical is with— typically is with a story. And oftentimes, they don't Scripture doesn't explain the stories. Um, you know, nobody tells you the story of the calling of little Samuel when he was in service to Eli and says, now here's, here's the, the meaning you're supposed to get from this story. And, and I must say that it bothers me that I'm saying, oh well, that's what I'm hired to do, that's where I come in. And, and I've actually remember hearing a preacher say Hey, here was what Jesus was trying to say in his parable of the Good Samaritan. Well, that's almost a blasphemous statement.

As if he didn't know how to say it.

Yeah, Jesus used the story because whatever it was he was trying to say couldn't be said any better than through a story. And so I think that fascinates me, and I think it's a mistake when we preachers take the basic narrative quality of Scripture and we boil this thick, interesting, beguiling story into an abstract proposition. That seems unfair to the purposes of Scripture. Isn't it interesting that somebody named Mark, sometime during the first century, somewhere in Asia Minor, invented a new literary form unknown in the history of the world before Mark, called a Gospel. It's sort of biographical, sort of. It's sort of history, sort of. It's a kind of a hero narrative, sort of, but it's different. And there was something about the truth of Jesus Christ that required a gospel. And the gospel is that if, for instance, yesterday in church, we were made to sing a song about standing in the Lord and standing with the Lord. The Lord standing beside me and I can resist everything standing here in the Lord. And I thought, that's curious. When Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, when they present Jesus, he doesn't stand anywhere. He's always on the move. He's always on the road. He's always going from one place to the next. He's always teaching on the run. And so, the form of it, the story, actually is part of the meaning that cannot be abstracted from the story.

Hmm. And Mark is such a quick-paced Gospel, too.

Mm-hmm.

And it's interesting.

Which I think— isn't that interesting? It's like, you know, when Mark gets with Jesus, it's like, "Hey, let's pick up the tempo here a little bit." One of Mark's favorite words, as you know, is "immediately." He said this and this and this, and then And immediately he left there and he went there, and immediately. And I think church— I bet Mark would think, "My church is just far too sedate, slow, old people trying to walk in molasses." Mark, I love that he picks up the tempo. There's a sense of urgency in the way he tells it. I used to think Mark was kind of a— rough, crude sort of gospel. You know, in comparison with Luke, Luke seems so much more polished, literary. But my friend Reynolds Price, the novelist, kind of helped me see Mark may be one of the most artistic of all the gospels, in that Mark says you can't talk about Jesus unless you talk fast.

Hmm. Wow, that's interesting. And you know what, are you still there?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay, sorry, I thought it cut out for a moment. Um, it's interesting too, speaking of like the fast— how fast the book moves, but also I think kind of the unique way that the Gospel of Mark ends, or at least the way that, that it originally ended. And it ends on not like this triumphant note of Well, he's risen. It ends actually in kind of a fearful place, you know, and they kind of leave running from the tomb. And I had a friend of mine who was in seminary, and he said one of his seminary professors was working on a theory about the way that the Gospel of Mark is written, that he thinks it actually maybe is intended to be read as though the story ends, but you could start reading it all over again, almost like it's in this circle. So, um, yeah, and I've, I've never taken a lot of time to, to dig into it deeply, but, you know, the way that the, the gospel ends with them leaving in fear, uh, from the tomb, and then if you start it all over again, it says the beginning of the good news about the Jesus the Messiah, uh, and it's, it's almost like an interesting way to, to kind of look at it. Yeah, what if it is in a, in a circular way that it's It's not supposed to end. It just keeps happening and keeps going on and kind of sets with the mood of Jesus still always on the go and still doing his thing.

Always on the— yeah, well, and, and I've, um, I've, I've tried to preach that ending in a variety of ways. One way is to say Mark doesn't finish it. Uh, get it? You're finishing it. Yeah, the story is being finished in our church. And then I know one time I've also preached it with the ending of Mark as saying, you know, the angel says to the women, "Go, tell!" And then Mark says once again, his disciples were completely disobedient. They didn't tell anybody because they were scared. In a sense, Mark is saying, well, you know, you know what they were frightened to say. You know that this isn't the end of the story. It's just the beginning. And we kind of have the delight of looking at the story, but we look at the story as those in the know, and the fact that, hey, we know that this story does have an ending, and in a sense, the ending is the beginning in the resurrection. And we wouldn't be here today reading this story if it weren't for the resurrection. So it's a very subtle, I sometimes say, you know, in my own preaching, I'm not half as resourceful, poetic, metaphorical, literary as scripture itself. The other day I was reading through the Gospel of Matthew Just amazing. Matthew starts his gospel with a genealogy. So-and-so begat so-and-so, and so-and-so begat so-and-so. I mean, what a way to begin. And, uh, I can't believe Matthew began that way because he wanted to be dull. Uh, uh, it just— so I'm not half as artistic in my preaching, uh, as, as the Gospels themselves.

Well, you know, we're talking about stories today and, and the Gospels being a wonderful way to tell stories. And, you know, Jesus is, is always teasing us one minute and surprising us with joy in the next, and then he's rebuking us another time, all with these stories, it seems like. And I just wonder, and I don't even know if if there's a good answer to this. This might just be something to reflect on, but something I wanted to ask: if Jesus truly is God in flesh, and he's a way that we get to see God revealed to us, I wonder what it says about God that he is a storyteller. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

Um, well, yeah, that, you know, in the beginning God said, "Light," and Scripture is a story. It's not a list of rules and dos and don'ts or knock-down, surefire principles for a good life. We preachers sometimes try to preach it like that, but that ain't the way Scripture preaches. It is, when you think about it, some have said Human life is a search for a story. That is, we all want to live lives that go somewhere, that have a beginning and a middle and an end, a sense of direction that has a plot. In fact, insanity could be described as the loss of a story. When your world isn't going anywhere, your life is just one confusing, odd, disconnected event after another. But there's no narrative. And maybe you could say that that's the point of preaching, or the point of reading Scripture, and that is to sort of give ourselves a narrative that's true, that goes somewhere, that catches up our lives. I know as a pastor, In dealing with people who fell into the grip of addiction or who got very confused in their lives, mentally ill, there's often that series about, "I don't know what to do next. I just don't think— I'm fearful that anything could happen. I'm fearful that I'm just walking into a—" off a cliff into an abyss. Well, scripture kind of says, no, God tells a story. And in fact, you can think of scripture as kind of God has a story too, and here's God's story. So it does seem as if God, I think it was a South African writer, Nadine Gordimer, Rick Lee James, who said, "God created man because God likes to tell stories." And in a way, you know, what does a parent do for a little child? You tell them stories, you read them a bedtime story. And in a way, you think, here's a human being that's entered into life without a plan, without direction, without a sense of that life is coherent, going somewhere, what do you do? Well, you tell them some stories. You tell them fairy tales. You tell them about people that had some fearful event, but then they lived happily ever after. Well, so I think one could argue God is kind of the master storyteller, and that's part of God's love for us.

Yeah, you know, I was thinking as you were talking You know, and so oftentimes songs are stories in the form of music too. And one of my favorite passages from the J.R.R. Tolkien book The Silmarillion is in the intro of the book. The character that he has representing God in those stories— it's a creation story in that book, and Tolkien actually has this God character singing creation into being, and he's singing out their stories. And it's a really beautiful metaphor for what God does. And it's quite interesting, and it's kind of a dry book in a lot of places, but the intro of it is just beautiful. And I've often thought of that with the Genesis story, and whether it be a story we tell to people or even would pass along as a song. So oftentimes stories do live in song throughout the ages, and I just think it's a beautiful way of telling the story. Well, you have some really terrific stories that you have written and have been collected in a couple of different volumes over the years, and Stories by Willemijn is a really good read, and I really appreciated this. Oh, thank you. Spent most of last week taking a little time each day to get through it, and some of the stories I had heard before, but so many of them were new, and I was so glad to have them. And I wonder if you might be willing today to share with us, as the author, as I often like to have authors do on this show, would you mind reading maybe one of the short stories from your book, or even just a short passage from your book that could give our listeners a taste of what they can get whenever they crack the pages of your book?

Well, thank you. Here's a short selection, an episode that is sort of related to my own sense of vocation, but a memory of a preacher. I'll read that. Sure. Doing my bit in the voter registration drive while I was in college, I was in a little southern town when the racially segregated schools were integrated. There was a meeting attended only by people of my color at the town's high school. What was to be done to save our schools? What could we do to keep them out of our schools? One by one, angry speakers rose to call for boycott, Resistance, even force, whatever was necessary to protect ours from theirs. There was an old half-broken Baptist preacher in that town who had baptized, married, and buried just about everyone at one time or another. His once clear bass voice was now cracked, sign that he was about ready to be put out to pasture. He came late to the meeting that night, stood at the back, and silently listened. After an hour or so of the crowd's racist tirades, he half raised his hand to ask for the microphone. The crowd made way for their beloved pastor as he, with dignity and some ceremony, made his way to the podium. He stood before the microphone silently His eyes slowly swept across the gathered throng in silence, and then he spoke in measured, sure, certain cadence. There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, white nor black, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, for there is one Lord, one faith, One baptism. Go home, read your Bibles. He paused for effect, and then he slowly, dolorously said, looking over this assembly, gazing at your faces, I this night have realized that I am the worst preacher in the world. A gasp from the gathered throng. If you think that anything in our faith justifies your presence here, that the sentiments expressed here tonight are in any way exemplary of the way of Christ, I failed miserably in my work as a preacher. I have poured out my life for nothing. Vanity. All is vanity. It's in the Bible. Then with the meeting reduced to stunned, awed silence, he ceremoniously walked to the back of the room and slammed the door as he left. The presider made an awkward effort to resume the meeting, But for all intents and purposes, the evening had ended. Slowly, people drifted out. The schools integrated that fall without incident. And I, college sophomore that I was, sat there stewing in my new undergraduate imagination, muttering, one day. I'll have that much power. Go ahead, Lord, live dangerously, walk on the wild side, make me a preacher. Okay.

I love that story. That's just for our listeners' benefit, that is story number 7 in Stories by Willemijn, and it's called Powerful Preacher. Incredibly powerful story and just a wonderful example of what you get when you read stories by Willemijn. And I've actually used a variation of that story in the past, and one of my college professors, Steve Hoskins, actually used that in a sermon years ago. And I've always found that to be— Yeah, and I've always found that to be such a powerful story. And so I was so glad that you read that today. That's just one of my favorite moments on this podcast. So thank you for doing that. What a powerful example though of the witness of an elderly preacher who just stayed and was a part of his community for his whole life, you know, and was just faithful to be there. And even though he thought himself a failure, obviously the effects of him preaching the gospel day in and day out and being there and marrying and burying and doing all the things that pastors are doing, we sometimes don't see the effect that that really can have on a community. But I thank you for that story. It's really wonderful. Mm, thank you. Well, I want to ask you, because you have written down so many really good stories over the year and you've written so many good stories, I want to ask you quickly a question about the way that you preach and then about the way that you write stories as well. And the first question I have: when you preach, do you generally preach from a manuscript?

Um, you know, I began my ministry— I bet in my first 20 years, uh, I always preached from a manuscript. It was sort of like— it's kind of the way I'd learned to preach. I had written every— I wanted to pay attention to the language. I wanted to say it like it ought to be said. I meant to say it, so I wrote it down. However, somewhere along the way, I started trying to get free of that manuscript just as soon as I could. And I mean, in the sermon itself, get the manuscript down to an outline, memorize for all intents and purposes the manuscript, because I learned the value of not reading and looking at people in the eye and maintaining eye contact. And in my later years of preaching, I now rarely preach from a manuscript. Most of the time now I preach from a sort of outline I worry about that because I think sometimes, you know, the longer you preach and the more you sort of memorize and inculcate kind of set pieces and set expressions, that just so easily can slip into cliché and truism. You put a quarter in and you immediately get some spiritual kind of sounding talk back. And I remember my father-in-law was a preacher. I mentioned that I wrote out my prayers on Sunday morning because I wanted to take prayer seriously. I said, "I look forward to being in ministry as long as you've been so I don't have to write it out." And he said, "Son, you don't need to write it out until you've been preaching for 20 or 30 years, then you must write it out." And by saying that, One virtue of writing it out is not for it to just degenerate into superficial clichés and truisms. So, I think it's good for preachers to take care in what they say. On the other hand, I think always to remember that preaching is oral communication., and it is not best done by reading from a manuscript. And sometimes you learn when you get away from the manuscript, you know, you don't need to be that careful. What you're saying is not all that— it's not all that necessary to get it down word for word in a careful way. Better is to address people, to engage people, to connect, and a major way to do that is by speaking as directly as possible to them. One more thing is that preaching that is done staring people in the eye, preaching without notes and all, it really restores the quality of preaching as testimony. As witness. I'm speaking up. It always seems strange to me when a preacher is like narrating a personal story and you look and the preacher's reading it, saying, I got on the airplane, I moved to my seat. You know, I mean, come on, just tell the story. That's the way it ought to be.

So, sure. Well, thank you for that. And I, I asked that because, um, I, I do think it's important— and you probably feel this way too on some level— that preachers do write their sermons down, not even so that they would preach it necessarily from the manuscript, because I know a lot of preachers who pride themselves on how few notes they use and how little they have to look at their notes. And I actually, as you just said, I think that's wonderful because we need to tell the story. But to reference my church history professor at Trevecca University again, Steve Hoskins, he drilled molded into us that those who change the world are those who learn to write. And I think it is important that preachers especially do learn to write, and maybe some of their greatest legacy might be left behind after them if they can learn to write them down and in a way that people can benefit from the stories. Because otherwise— Yeah, go ahead.

Excuse me. No, go right ahead. The woman that teaches, the head of our writing lab here at the Divinity School keeps saying, writing is thinking. And it's really hard to think clearly without writing, learning how to write clearly. And clarity is essential for good preaching. In fact, that's one of the Most frequently heard comments, criticisms I hear from laity is we can't tell where our preacher's going. We— it seems to be on a subject and then seems to get off the subject and then we're not sure where he is. That's undoubtedly because the preacher is not clear about what ought to be said. And the way to do that is through writing. I had a friend that always wrote out his sermons word for word in the manuscript, and he repeatedly read through the manuscript, and then he stuck the manuscript in his desk and went into the pulpit without it. Wow. And his thing was, I did all the work. I really tried to state clearly what I wanted to say, but then I don't want to give up that kind of eye contact with the congregation. I'm looking at them. They're giving me clues about whether they're connecting or not. And then, and I'm through my eyes, you know, I'm addressing them, looking at them. I read recently an article by a professor. I think it was in First Things magazine in which a professor was complaining about preaching. The superficiality of the preaching, the preaching not being well thought through, substantial and all. And the article said, "Please, preachers, stop thinking you're supposed to preach extemporaneously. Please write it down. We would rather you read it to us than that you stand up and mouth some superficial little truisms that are really not— so a case can be made for that.

Well, and I appreciate too that one thing that you do very well, and we see this a lot in the Stories by Willemijn book that you wrote, which has almost 100 stories in it, one thing that I think you do so well is is you're able to tell stories from your own experience as well. There's just a lot of stories about things that have happened to you or people that you knew or situations that you lived in that you are able to tell so well because you lived it or someone close to you lived it and was able to relay that to you. And I think sometimes those of us who are in ministry maybe sell our own stories short, and we're always maybe looking for somebody else's story to be able to tell. And yet I think you do a great service in the sense that the way that you can reflect on things that have happened in your own life and try to relate them, because really that's where every one of us lives, whether we're behind the pulpit or whether we're sitting in the pews. We do have these daily encounters every day with the Divine that we may not even be aware of at times, but learning to reflect on them in such a way can really help us to see the divine revealed. And so I really appreciate the way that you have taken time to write down these stories.

Well, and you know, to me, the main justification for a preacher reading my stories, listening to my stories, is that I hope it evokes a sense of confidence in the preacher to claim his or her stories. And I know the preaching that I remember, I think, as a kid growing up was sermons had stories, but they were always stories about Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, famous people, citations of what some scholar had said. To me, that's pretty uninteresting. On the other hand, I don't know that many of us enjoy hearing, you know, sermons where preachers spill their guts and share with us their own turmoils and trials and tribulations. That can get pretty thin quickly. On the other hand, I like stories to be moments when the preacher was— saw the gospel. When the gospel was revealed to the preacher, oftentimes through somebody else, through some layperson or something, through some event. I have to give Fred Craddock credit for sort of freeing me Growing up with Southern storytelling preaching, I decided preaching needed to have better ideas. We needed to have some substantial ideas and none of this stuff about Mama with an apple pie greeting me in heaven or plowing behind a mule or, you know, as a poor boy, all that kind of stuff. And so I thought it'd be ideas Well, ideas extracted from the gospel, for reasons we were just saying, can be unfaithful to the gospel, and the gospel's unique way of revealing God. Craddock sort of helped me. In Fred Craddock's stories, he's invariably the little bald man who is just wandering around in the sermon, and then gets whacked, blindsided by the gospel, often delivered unknowingly by a layperson or something. And I think that's a good model. But when you use personal stories, it sort of brings the gospel closer to people to say, you know, I went in this hardware store to get to get some nuts and bolts. And the man there, I said to him, just to be nice, hey, how you doing today? And to my surprise, he said, not well. My best friend died yesterday, and I just don't know how I can continue without him. Well, suddenly there's a meaningful conversation that occurs in the hardware store. Well, and well, everybody— not everybody has been to the Holy Land. Not everybody has had a dramatic spiritual experience on a mountaintop, but everybody's been in a hardware store. And you're kind of making a statement, you know, you want to meet God? Well, tell you, just, you know, Go about your daily work and God will find you and God will show you things. Be attuned. And so sharing personal stories can really do that.

Well, you know, I want to ask you another question that as we start winding down our conversation today, and this may be something that you've never experimented with and I don't know, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it anyway. I am not one who gets to preach very often because I'm a songwriter and a music leader, and I do a lot of things throughout the week. But most of my storytelling, I guess, is with song because I lead music on Sunday mornings at churches or concerts out at different places. But I wonder, have you ever— because you've written a lot of different things over the years, obviously over 70 70 books. I wonder, have you ever endeavored in hymn writing or in doing any kind of writing for the church or collaborating with any musicians like that? I've always wondered that, but I've never thought to ask. It seems like it might be something you might also have a knack for.

I have tried. One, it's made me more in awe of people who do write music and write songs. I've written, in fact, I've had published a couple of hymns and a collection of new hymns. But it's hard. As someone has said, you know, we, Charles Wesley, for instance, wrote 4,000 hymns. Well, we only sing at best 8 or 10 of his hymns. Of course, they're great hymns like "Over a Thousand Tongues to Sing" or "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." Well, most of what he wrote in hymns has been cast aside by the church. Well, the trouble with writing contemporary music and all is you don't know— the church doesn't know yet What of it is really worth singing and good? And what of it, you know, let's sing it for about 100 years, then we'll let you know. And so that means it's a real challenge. On the other hand, I think, you know, when you're a preacher, you love words, you love trying to find good ways to say things.— and so, for those of you who have the gift, I think it is a gift worth developing, and what a gift to give to the church.

Well, and I think that— and by the way, I'm going to have to look up your hymns because I didn't realize that. I had wondered in my mind.

I don't know whether you can find them, but they came out in a hymnal that somebody published. I forgot the name of the hymnal, but it—

yeah. Well, I do think there's a lot of benefit to those of us who write songs to read a lot of stories and to learn how to be people who craft stories well and be able to turn phrases like that, because I do think that there's some real power and And there's something about, as you said, songs that have stood the test of time and the way that sometimes they help us to even be discipled more because those are oftentimes things that will stick in our minds with a tune. And I just wonder if, while we're talking about songs, and I'm curious about this, are there any songs that you can think of? And it doesn't necessarily have to be a song that's a Christian song or a hymn, but just one that does a really good job of narrating and telling a story. And I'll give you an example of one that I think of that often gets sung at Easter time, and it's one that's several years old now, but it's Don Francisco's He's Alive, that just, you know, kind of narratively tells this whole story. And over the years, it seems like I think people have really connected with that song, and who knows if it'll stand the test of time along the way, but it's been a lot of years and I'm still hearing it. And it's partially because of the way it just simply tells the story. I'm wondering if you can think of any off the top of your head. Do you have any favorite kind of story songs that you think do a good job of being able to narrate while still being very artistic?

I'm woefully ignorant of contemporary Christian music, and, you know, sometimes when I complain about some of the music that I hear in churches, so-called contemporary music, people who are more knowledgeable than I say, wait a minute, you're complaining against bad contemporary Christian music, not good And that could easily be true. I really hadn't thought about the notion that hymns often, part of their power is they tell a story. They're like ballads that— and I think, I guess many of the hymns, I'm thinking of these are all traditional hymns that come to mind. They probably are kind of celebrations that come at the end of a story, like Christ the Lord is Risen Today, or Joy to the World. You know, you kind of have to have the story to make the hymn work. Although one of my criticisms of a lot of contemporary praise music I hear is there's not enough of the story in the hymn. It's just, "Praise Jesus, praise Jesus, praise, praise, praise," without saying anything about what Jesus has done that is praiseworthy, without speaking of the complexity of cross and resurrection. And so I think what you're asking for is a noble thing to do, and it would be fun to— one time I had a very talented organist, choir director at Duke Chapel, and I was preaching through some of these wonderful narratives in John's Gospel, and I challenged them. I said, why don't you find some anthems related to the woman at the well, or anthems related to the healing of the blind man, or the wedding at Cana. I said, "John, these are masterful stories." And they were somewhat hapu, anthems they could find on that. So I challenged them. I said, "Well, why don't you write one?" And the organist tried his hand at it. And you know, I found it interesting. I don't know that it really— I don't know that the song about the story was as good as the story, but nevertheless, you know, a good story has so many of the same dynamics as a good hymn, a good song. So— Yeah, that's true. I think, you know, just as we said, one of the purposes of preaching is to give people, to read people into the story of Jesus. I think one of the great things that songs, hymns do for is they can sing us into the song of Jesus. They can, I've always thought on Easter, you know, the songs we sing about Easter, are invariably kind of more to the point of Easter than my sermon. It's when you're, you know, standing before such a mystery as the resurrection, you know, Lord, don't try to explain it. Lord, don't try to say, here's 3 things you need to do next week differently in your life because of the resurrection. Better to just stand and sing, Christ the Lord is risen today, hallelujah.

So yeah, no, I appreciate that. And the only reason I took you down the music road was because we do have a lot of songwriters that listen to this podcast as well. I think it would be a great encouragement to them, you know, as they dive into some of these stories. And I couldn't help but chuckle to myself just a little bit when you were talking about the kind of songs that don't really tell a story. And I was thinking of the hymn, I Love to Tell the Story is what it's called. And it's interesting, there's 4 verses to that hymn, and it's in most hymn books, and it does not say one word about a story the entire time. It just sings about how much he loves it. Never. I will love. I love to tell the story.

If there's anything there, I will know it.

But there's nowhere that he actually gets around to telling the story. He just keeps saying how much he loves to tell it.

I know the Charles Wesley hymn, My Chains Fell Off. Oh yes. And it's picking up on the story of Peter being released from jail, which is a wonderful, dramatic, even funny story in Luke's telling of it in Acts. And in singing that hymn, it's like Uh, we, we become Peter being released from bondage. My chains fell off, I was free, I, uh, and I strode forth and followed thee. And, um, uh, there's a rousing tune to it. Yeah, I can't— I don't know what the name, how it goes in the hymnal.

It's actually You know what, it's called "And Can It Be." And actually, I know that because I had a version of that song that I wrote an arrangement for, published and put on one of my albums. And you're right, there is that third verse. I've told this story a lot of times that no matter if I'm in a small group Bible study, a little church, a big church, big auditorium, wherever I sing that song, it's amazing to see Again, a song that's very old now, The Way That People Come Alive. When you get to that verse that says, long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night, thine eyes diffused a quickening ray and I awoke, the dungeon flamed with light. And then the words that really people seem to come alive is, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. And, uh, yeah, I love it.

Yeah, powerful. And I have I love that dynamic too. I think in our contemporary culture in America, we tend to think of freedom as the goal, I mean, itself. You know, I was free and I followed thee. And I love Charles Wesley, and I particularly, I love it when people like you will take Wesley and who I just think was one of our greatest poets, and will take that and put it to contemporary idiom. And I have seen some powerful things done where someone just stands up with a guitar and will sing a Charles Wesley hymn, and it comes across as a kind of a powerful testimonial. And yeah, yeah, that's good stuff.

Well, you know what, I've taken a lot of your time today, and we ended up talking about music more than I meant to, but I appreciate your thoughts on it.

And thank you for reading the book of stories.

Oh man, it's, it's so good. And, and I do want to encourage our listeners, the Stories by Willemijn, it's It's a really good read, and especially if you're— whether you're a preacher or a songwriter, even just a layperson, these are really good stories. There's a lot of humor behind them. There's a lot of real poignant messages to them, and it's great to have them collected in one place like this where we can hear them together and be able to share. Remind me real quick and remind our listeners, what is a good website for them? I believe you have a website. Is it willwillimon.com?

I do have a sort of a blog that I periodically am stirred to blast off with. Um, uh, it's called Peculiar Prophet, but it can be found at willwillimon.com. W-I-L-L-I-M-O-N dot com. Willwillimon.com. We'll get them there. And I post sermons and, uh articles and things that I will, you know, not to the same degree as this podcast that you do, but anyway, yeah, thank you.

You're welcome. Well, thank you so much for being here again this week, and we'll make sure in the show notes of this show at voicesinmyheadpodcast.com to have links to as many of Dr. Willemann's sites as we can. It's always a joy to get to talk with you, and I always appreciate that you take time in your busy schedule to come and talk to us. Thank you also for sharing one of those great stories from your book, and I look forward to reading more in the coming days. I've read a lot of your books, but knowing that you have over 70, I still have plenty more to read for sure. Thank you. All right, well, you take care, and thank you again for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Alright, thanks!

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.