There are seasons in your life when the Lord brings across your path extraordinary and inspirational people who effect change in you. Richard Garnett, who died in early September, was one of those people. For over fifteen years, Richard came every summer to run the preaching and communications workshops at Oak Hill College, London, where I taught and was in senior leadership.

Richard was a R.A.D.A.1 trained actor, who trained alongside Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance. For fifteen years he trod the boards with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1989, in Peter Hall’s production of The Merchant of Venice, he was Lorenzo to Dustin Hoffman’s Shylock. The production ended up on Broadway. He appeared in several films, but arguably his most popular role was as Augustus ‘Gussie’ Fink-Nottle in the early 90s TV adaption of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. As a result of this role, a colleague and I always called him ‘Gussie’.

Recognising the cost to his family in living out of a suitcase, he gave up acting to found GSB Comms and became an internationally sought after communications consultant to large corporate executives in financial services commanding very large fees. He never charged anything for his workshops at Oak Hill apart from asking for a small contribution to the illustrative mug he gave to students on completion of the workshop. Then ten years ago Richard was diagnosed with mesothelioma, perhaps from being exposed to asbestos in old theatres. Although he endured seemingly endless treatments and was in much pain, he did not, to borrow a phrase from John Piper, ‘waste his cancer’.2 On the contrary, he talked about it as a gift from God, seeing life in glorious technicolour, and coming to love his Saviour Jesus all the more. Richard became a passionate evangelist (and poet) for a life of extravagant generosity, exhorting us to ask these questions: ‘Who owns it all? (It’s all God’s which means we are not owners but stewards.)’ ‘Am I investing in what God has given me, in terms of time, talent and treasure, in what really matters to Jesus and what he cares about the most, which is his kingdom?’ ‘Am I doing what Jesus wants me to do and only I can do in pursuit of his kingdom?’ ‘Am I making the biggest possible difference?’3 Richard modelled all of this and touched many lives in many ways, being particularly passionate on projects in the majority world. One of my last interactions with Richard was during the first lockdown. Stuck in our houses on campus, I organised a student evening and Richard very kindly read C. S. Lewis’s lecture, ‘Learning in Wartime’. He read it off his phone without any rehearsal. It was simply sensational.

With Themelios readers in view, I want to reflect on Richard to highlight the importance of generous communication in our preaching and teaching. If Barth’s Der Romerbrief was a ‘bombshell on the playground of the theologians’, then Richard’s communication workshops were a bombshell on the playground of British conservative evangelical preaching. Chris Green, who was responsible for homiletics at the time, had known Richard twenty-five years previously. When a space opened up at the seminary to teach an intensive communication workshop, Chris knew he needed someone with a bit of heft and challenge, especially for some students who thought they knew it all. Chris thought of Richard but had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He tracked him down, however, and phoned him up. The reaction was immediate. Forget the warmth of reconnecting, literally that morning, Richard had been having a quiet time, depressed by the quality of preachers he was being forced to listen to, and praying about whether there was any way he could have an impact. The phone call was a direct answer to his prayers.

When it comes to teaching preaching in seminary, I’ve had diametrically opposed feedback over the years. On the one hand you’d hear that you can’t really teach preaching, it just comes with time and experience, so focus on other things during your time at seminary. On the other hand, you’d hear that seminary should basically just be about learning how to preach … and often, learning how to preach in a certain way. Sometimes you just can’t win. Richard was not brought in to help one’s exegesis or hermeneutics; he assumed that work had been done already. Rather it was to help in the area of communication, because, and to put it delicately, it was felt that as a tribe we could be somewhat lacking in this department.4 Of course exegesis, hermeneutics, the work of the Spirit, and communication theory can’t be easily compartmentalized when it comes to homiletics, which at times led to some robust discussion. Overall, however, there was a recognised division of labour.

That said, students weren’t really prepared for the enfant terrible that was Richard. Yes, he was kind and hospitable, but he wasn’t tame. He had off-the-scale charisma and energy. He was passionate and one of life’s enthusiasts. He was a raconteur. He was also a rascal, a rebel, and somewhat contrarian. He spoke with a brutal honesty about the foibles and failings in his life. Over those three-day workshops, which we quickly made compulsory,5 he pushed people way out of their comfort zones. For some, he ‘pushed their buttons’ and certainly received some push-back. Word quickly got around about the communication workshop ‘experience’ / ‘ordeal’, and so there was a certain fear and trembling, and maybe even some kicking and screaming, as students entered the lecture room on that first morning, clutching with white knuckles the sermon they’d been asked to bring with them and seeing Richard perched on the end of a desk smiling like Cheshire cat, flip-chart ready to be scribbled on, and surrounded by a mountain of post-it notes.

And so would begin the experience. Richard knew that he was questioning certain orthodoxies and sensibilities in his teaching. He insisted that we should preach with no notes. He loved talking about the implications of the latest neuroscience for communication. And the things he got the students to do…. It was a common experience to witness students memorising the contours of the sermon, eyes closed, striding forward from one end of the room to the other; or the sight (and sound) of students roaring across the field. And then there were Richard’s acronyms, mnemonics, and questions which would eventually adorn those precious aide-mémoire mugs: A.E.I.O.U.6; D.A.N.C.E.7; (and who can forget) SExI (F.O.A.M.);8 ‘Will you lead me through the text and let me work?’; and the telling question, ‘If this was your very last sermon, how passionate would you be?’ Finally, at the climax of the workshops, students would preach their sermons in front of a camera with everyone else watching.

These were hard, intense days, but richly rewarding. I know, because over my time, I did the workshop twice. One didn’t have to agree with everything Richard said, or believed. I didn’t. Yes, there was always a danger that if the workshops were seen in isolation, then technique might start to triumph over other aspects of the homiletical science (or is it art, or even unction?). And yes, at times the line between the simple and simplistic, and between illustration and gimmick, is a fine one. And yet, going forward into ministry, and given the very different starting points of many students when compared to Richard, he seemed always to move the dial and persuade people of something of his heart and mission on the task of preaching which would effect real and lasting change, even if it wasn’t everything. One student commented to me this week that, as a former school teacher, Richard really helped him connect dots with what he knew from his teacher training and instinctively wanted to do in the pulpit but often felt restrained by convention.

Richard was a brilliant communicator of communication. That communicating and teaching about communication go together might sound obvious, but I don’t think it’s always a given. A major reason for this combination was a characteristic of Richard’s that I’ve already mentioned, a gospel generosity, which itself rests on a love of God and neighbour. Good communication is an act of generosity. As Oliver O’Donovan writes:

Communication is the readiness to assert a private interest only to the extent that it can become a common interest. Its logic can be summed up in the phrase: ‘what is “mine” is “ours”’—not ‘what is “mine” is “yours”’ (which is the logic of bestowal), nor ‘this “mine” is yours, and this “yours” is mine’ (which is the logic of exchange). These logics have their place within the broader logic of communication, but are secondary to it. The private interest must first be located within the common interest, the ‘I’ finds its context within the ‘we.’9

Although he might not have put it quite like this, Richard communicated with generosity about the generosity of communication. In those workshops, his giving to us was not that of bestowal or exchange but the ‘we’ of common interest, the common interest of showing Christ. And with that communication came community. Those workshops were only three days, but there was a feeling of life together and a relational safety, which was needed because what Richard was asking of us didn’t often feel safe.

Moreover, I would say that over time, as Richard grew in his understanding of generosity’s importance, he became more generous, and so a more persuasive and effective communicator. When I first met Richard, a little star-struck by his rubbing shoulders with Hollywood A-listers, I asked him what singled out Dustin Hoffman as a great actor rather than a good journeyman actor. Richard noted that when he first met Hoffman, he didn’t see anything that impressive. Here was a diminutive, softly spoken, and introspective guy. However, as evening followed evening, Richard noted that inexorably Hoffman grew and grew, becoming deeper, more nuanced and varied with every performance. There was a charismatic energy that was magnetic and communicative. This is what made him great. In a similar way Richard grew and evolved the communication workshops over the years, and this is what made him a great communicator. He listened and learned. He listened carefully to the feedback he’d been given and contextualized to his surroundings, recognizing the culture of the students he was with and the importance of how one hears and how one is heard. He knew that for these students sometimes he would have to push less so he didn’t ‘lose’ them, sometimes he would have to push more to break through shibboleths that needed breaking. I know that as he began teaching at another evangelical seminary from a different ‘tribe’, he was able to adjust and contextualize for them. In this I think he exemplified what David Powlison has argued are the marks of persuasive communication: know those with whom we wish to speak; genuinely seek the welfare of those you are speaking to; enter the hearer’s frame of reference; shake the reader’s habitual frame of reference; portray Christian faith in a fresh relevant way; woo, invite and open a door for readers to change their minds.10

Gussie was a gift of God to the church who modelled generous communication and who influenced a generation of students about the need for generous communication. His death has prompted much remembrance and thanks. A message from a former student is a fitting closing testimony:

‘Who are you preaching for?’

My communications workshop was long ago that I struggle to remember when or why Richard asked this question. Immediately he was given more than suitable theological answers. Naturally, as is often the case in theological college, the answers could be boiled down to ‘God and those we’re preaching to.’ And then Richard asked the killer question. ‘Why then do preachers often preach so selfishly?’ I was so floored by the question I wrote it down.

When we preach we mix together language, theology, scripture, imagery and other brilliant things to unpack and apply God’s word for God’s glory and for the benefit and joy of the congregation. At least that should be the goal. But when our language is beautifully intricately complex, when our theology is dense and intellectual, when our imagery is as niche as the preacher would like, when the applications are vague and gentle, who are we preaching for? ‘Why then do preachers preach so selfishly?’ His words will stick with me forever, as will the memory of a fantastic vibrant man in Richard who in his love for Christ and others, as good as demanded a far more deliberately selfless delivery of biblical preaching and teaching from those he taught.11

Generous or selfish communication is such a good prod for preachers and teachers. We can be right and fail to serve people in our mode of communication: are we preaching for our congregations or for ourselves, producing sermons that would earn me a pat on the back from our peers but not connecting with and feeding our people? We thank our generous God for Richard’s generosity and his challenge.

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[1] The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

[2] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Cancer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).

[3] Listen to the moving interview with Richard by Simon Guillebaud, recorded a few weeks before his death, which includes a powerful address Richard gave to a church network on the theme of generosity. ‘Generous Living in Preparing to Die’, Inspired Podcast, https://tinyurl.com/ysxv6jr8. 

[4] Although the context is different, see Erik Raymond, ‘Brothers, We Can Do Better’, TGC, 2 May 2023, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/brothers-we-can-do-better/.

[5] Which meant that over the years, Richard brought in others to assist him in the work, a work that eventually would cover other Bible colleges and Christian organizations too.

[6] Attention with an ask; Empathize with our pain; Insight mountain; Options, What about U?

[7] D.A.N.C.E was concerned with effective teaching on-line during the pandemic: Dot (as in look at the camera on your screen); Away (you don’t always have to look at the camera); No Scripts; Cinematic Energy. One can watch Richard’s 3-session online preaching workshop during the pandemic, hosted by Keswick ministries, here: https://tinyurl.com/myuspwbs; https://tinyurl.com/a84n72pd; https://tinyurl.com/4t9trdp5.

[8] State; Explain, Illustrate (Fact, Opinion, Anecdote, Metaphor).

[9] Oliver O’Donnovan, ‘Communicating the Good: The Politics and Ethics of the “Common Good”’, ABC, 5 December 2016, https://tinyurl.com/4huws7aa.

[10] David Powlison, ‘Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions’, Journal of Biblical Counseling 28 (2014): 2–14. Powlison here is speaking of a strategy for ‘redemptive’ communication in talking to non-Christians. However, I think it can also apply more broadly to communication between Christians.

[11] It’s instructive to compare this comment with J. C. Ryle’s description of Whitefield’s preaching, an essay Richard quoted himself: ‘For another thing, Whitefield’s preaching was singularly lucid and simple. You might not like his doctrine, perhaps; but at any rate you could not fail to understand what he meant. His style was easy, plain, and conversational. He seemed to abhor long and involved sentences. He always saw his mark, and went direct at it. He seldom or never troubled his hearers with long arguments and intricate reasonings. Simple Bible statements, pertinent anecdotes, and apt illustrations, were the more common weapons that he used. The consequence was, that his hearers always understood him. He never shot above their heads. Never did man seem to enter so thoroughly into the wisdom of Archbishop Usher’s saying, “To make easy things seem hard is easy, but to make hard things easy is the office of a great preacher.”… Another striking feature in Whitefield’s preaching was his singular power of description. The Arabians have a proverb which says, “He is the best orator who can turn men’s ears into eyes.” If ever there was a speaker who succeeded in doing this, it was Whitefield. He drew such vivid pictures of the things he was dwelling upon, that his hearers could believe they actually saw them all with their own eyes, and heard them with their own ears.’ ‘A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield’, available at https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/ryle/ryle_georgewhitefield.html.

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