From certainty to wonder. From explanation to exploration. From theological system to spiritual journey.
This is the arc of John L. Kipp’s preaching career, a long and faithful vocation that traced the contours of 20th- and 21st-century American Protestantism while offering something richer than the times demanded. His sermons reflect a lifetime of theological wrestling, spiritual growth, and pastoral insight. They offer a remarkable window into the evolution of a preacher – not just in voice and tone, but in the very way he understood God, scripture, and the life of faith.
I first met John and his wife Dotty at dinner at Patti’s 1880 Settlement in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. He the wise and weathered Executive Presbyter for Western Kentucky Presbytery, and I the young, green pastor just beginning ministry in Owensboro. He welcomed me with warmth and wisdom, an experienced leader who carried both clarity and kindness in his voice.
Later in life, after losing Dotty, John married my mother-in-law, and our lives became even more intertwined. Over the years, our connection deepened, not only as colleagues in ministry, but as family.
Since John’s passing in 2017, I’ve spent time reading and studying his sermons. Sometimes, I’ve approached them as a pastor seeking insight, sometimes listening again for his personal voice. What I’ve found in these pages is not only a record of theological conviction and pastoral care but also a living testimony of a man who grew in faith, wisdom, and grace over the course of a lifetime. His sermons trace the arc of his own spiritual journey, offering not just words for a congregation but glimpses of a preacher being formed alongside his people.
Along the way, I began to notice how his voice changed over time and how his preaching evolved in both style and substance. What started as firm proclamation matured into deeper reflection. What began in theological certainty grew into pastoral wisdom, poetic imagination, and spiritual humility. His sermons not only speak to the times in which they were preached but also reflect the journey of a faithful soul learning, stretching, and growing alongside his congregations.
The following reflections trace that journey decade by decade, highlighting how John’s theology and preaching style developed over the course of his ministry.
In the 1960s, John’s sermons bore the marks of classic evangelical conviction. The world was fallen, humanity was sinful, and Jesus Christ was the one sure solution. These early messages were tightly argued, rich in scripture, and structured for persuasion. They followed the patterns of Reformed apologetics: diagnose the problem, proclaim the cure, and call for a decision. Faith was described in propositional terms, sin was defined as separation from God, and salvation was offered in the language of substitutionary atonement. The sermons of this decade reflect a preacher standing on solid theological ground and inviting others to join him there.
Evangelical clarity is perhaps best illustrated in a 1969 sermon titled Against Hope Abraham Believed in Hope, where John challenges shallow optimism and instead proclaims a rugged, biblical hope – rooted not in human effort, but in the God who brings life out of death and calls into being what does not yet exist.
By the 1970s, the tone began to shift. John’s theological vision widened as he engaged more deeply with biblical scholarship, historical context, and the ambiguity of eschatological hope. In this period, he began to wrestle with the meaning of Jesus’ promises in light of delayed expectations. The Kingdom of God was no longer just a future event; it was something already breaking in but not yet complete. Instead of presenting easy answers, John started inviting questions. The certainty of youth gave way to the curiosity of a maturing theologian.
A growing theological curiosity is evident in a 1973 sermon titled Christian Attitudes on War and Peace, where John moves beyond rigid doctrine to grapple with moral ambiguity in light of the Vietnam War, inviting his listeners to reflect on how faith responds to violence, justice, and the tension between personal conviction and public responsibility.
The 1980s brought a turn inward toward the life of the spirit. Prayer, baptism, temptation, and discipleship became his central themes – not as doctrines to defend but as realities to live. These sermons are pastoral, personal, and often quietly vulnerable. John spoke openly about the difficulty of praying persistently, the slow work of spiritual formation, and the grace of learning through failure. His theology became increasingly incarnational: God was not only above us or beyond us but within us, beside us, and present in our struggle.
John beautifully captured this inward turn in a 1983 sermon titled She Laughed!, where he reflects on Sarah’s skeptical laughter at God’s promise not as a failure of faith, but as a deeply human response to the mystery of grace breaking into ordinary life.
In the 1990s, this incarnational sensibility deepened. John’s sermons from this era are marked by trust, mystery, and a refusal to pretend that faith resolves every tension. God’s presence was something to be trusted, not proven. Prayer was about relationship, not results. The preacher no longer felt the need to fill every silence with explanation. Instead, he honored the mystery of divine timing and the subtle ways grace moves in and out of view. His confidence in God had not waned—but it had softened into something gentler, more spacious.
This gentler, more spacious trust in God’s presence is expressed in very artful way in John’s 1997 sermon titled Pictures at an Exhibition. He invites his listeners to journey through a gallery of visual metaphors – paintings, pottery, tapestries, and driftwood – each offering a quiet meditation on generosity, beauty, and the sacredness of everyday life.
And then came the 2000s, when John’s preaching entered its most poetic phase. Stories, symbols, and memories carried the weight of theology. A peanut shell, a family camping trip, the sound of thunder – these became the sacraments of his sermons. The majesty of God met the smallness of daily life. In these later messages, faith is not presented as a ladder to climb or a system to master. It is a path walked with humility. It is a story lived in the company of others. It is the mystery of the Word made flesh, pitching a tent among us.
His sermon, Lessons from a Peanut, distills this symbolic turn. Using a jar of peanut M&Ms, John reflects on Psalm 1, reminding us that true happiness is found not in abundance, but in disciplined, purposeful, and joyful living rooted in God’s care. Here, story becomes theology, and love becomes the lens through which God is seen.
What emerges across this five-decade journey is the portrait of a preacher who did not merely repeat what he had once believed, but who allowed his faith to grow, stretch, and mature. John L. Kipp was never afraid to ask new questions. He let scripture speak in fresh ways. He trusted the Spirit to show up – not in certainty or control, but in unanswered prayers, in the silences between sentences, and in the ordinary textures of daily life: an M&M peanut, vignettes from an art exhibit, the laughter of an old woman.
From certainty to wonder. From explanation to exploration. From theological system to spiritual journey.
Dr. Kipp did not simply preach about transformation. He embodied it.
