Please Tear Your Sermon in Half!

04 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Views from the Street

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Ok. Maybe not exactly in half. But I’ve listened to lots of sermons over the years, and I’m worried about the way we begin sermons. I have to say that about three fourths of these sermons would be dramatically improved if the preacher started about two pages (or about 3-5 minutes) into the sermon. I don’t know what it is, but most of us love the “wind-up” not realizing that we are not baseball pitchers; sermon wind-ups are usually sermon “wind-downs.” Here are the most common “wind-up/wind-downs.”

  1. Re-hashing the biblical text. The preacher in this mode drags the listener through a long, expanded, or “imaginative” re-hashing of the text. No. This is not an exposition or interpretation. I’m speaking about a non-interpretive re-hashing of the bits and pieces of the text. Sometimes this never ends and lasts the entire sermon. The preacher forgets to have anything to say to us – or what is commonly called a “message,” and seems to assume that we’ll “get it” if we hear the old, old story re-iterated.
  2. The sermon “set-up.” In this mode, the preacher spends a few minutes exegetically framing the biblical text – providing what the preacher considers useful background information – some interesting tid-bits, mostly exegetical by-products.
  3. Touring the cutting room floor – In this approach, the preacher tells us how he or she arrived at this message – strolling us around the room and pointing out all of the fascinating options left behind on the cutting room floor.
  4. Climbing to higher ground. In this mode, the preacher tells the listener all of the ways she or he has heard this text preached in the past – leading us to the superior ground of their own interpretation.
  5. The rapport story. In this mode, the preacher decides to tell a personal story. This is not a story told about someone or something else, narrated through the lens of the preacher’s experience, but a story about the preacher’s experience (of self, other, family, sports, memory, life, etc.). This story might contain a catchy thematic hook designed to capture our interest. Often, the story goes on interminably. No matter what they are supposed to be illustrating, these wind-up stories seem to be saying something else, namely: “Welcome to my world – please like me and be my friend while I preach this sermon.” When this occurs over and over, genuine sermon content is sacrificed to a rather contrived rapport-building exercise. 
  6. The message grope – In my experience this is the most common “wind-up/wind-down.” When beginning to write the sermon the preacher didn’t really have a clue what to say. The preacher just started writing or speaking, hoping a message would pop out. By the time a message finally arrived, several minutes had been wasted groping one’s way toward it, and most of the energy of the sermon had evaporated. For whatever reason, rather than removing this material, it is kept.

Anton Chekov’s famous advice to writers comes immediately to mind: “Tear out the first half of your story; you’ll only have to change a few things in the beginning of the second half and the story will be perfectly clear.” This is serious and solid advice for many preachers. Once we’ve written the sermon, or organized it and preached it through a few times extemporaneously, it is a good idea to ask ourselves whether, in fact, the sermon would be better if we started it further in – on page two or three. If we did this on a regular basis, I believe we’d avoid many of the “wind-up/wind-downs” that currently sap the energy at the beginnings of our sermons.

Tone of Voice and the Expression of Religious Desire

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Musings

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In Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention, I argue that in vocal performance, the voice shapes the desire for God that is given expression in, under, and around the actual words spoken.

Popular culture theorist Peter Antelyes, when speaking about the music of Bessie Smith, used the intense closeness of the microphone as a metaphor to describe the graininess of her singing: “Bessie didn’t need a microphone because she was a microphone, or rather, she had swallowed it; and she would fill you up with her own ‘muscle.’”

Semiotician Roland Barthes calls this the “geno-song” which gives expression to the sheer material beauty or voluptuousness of the way the words are “bodied forth,” accentuating the shaping and uttering of sounds apart from their being communicable language in service to codes and conventions of proper speech and communication.

In the book (119-120) I go on the say that:

The grain of the voice invents the tone or tone of voice established by a theological composition. This tone of voice is pervasive and invents the shape of religious desire. … This desire takes many shapes defined by many tones of voice: persuasive, collegial, moralistic, wise, insightful, responsible, anxious, troubled, longing, hopeful, and so on, and contributes to the construction of a soundscape of religious desire that a theologian and audience inhabit and rely on.

The tone or grain of the work is pre- or extra-verbal. It expresses an intention: life lived within this religious soundscape, prior to, or in spite of the content of one’s words. It says such things tacitly as: “welcome to the intimate, exclusive soundscape of the wise mentor who desires for you to learn what she knows,” or “welcome to the loud, nagging soundscape of the angry parent who desires a more obedient child,” or “welcome to the inviting, interpersonal soundscape of persuasion and the desire for your conversion.”

As the sound of religious desire searching for language, the voicing of theology lies at a deeper, more interior level than words or ideas can express. As theologian Burton Cooper puts it: “Our love of God, our trust in God, our felt need of God, our loyalty to God, in other words our emotional relatedness to God, lie at a more fundamental level than our ideas about God.” Even without the words, the grain of the voice expresses a very particular religious intention, creating a soundscape that shapes the form of religious desire that exists between communicator and audience. The final sound of a theological performance, therefore, is a profound expression of religious intentionality, giving voice to the shape of the God-shaped hole between performer and audience as it reaches toward adequate words. When an audience hears the final mix, they tune in to the tone of the work, and hear beyond words the sonic shape that desire for God can take within the larger soundscape of their lives.

From “Air Guitar” to “Air Preaching”

05 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Musings

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From time to time, I’ll be posting items on this blog taken from the blog for my new book, Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theological Invention.  In the book, I suggest that those who compose theology at the interface between the academy and popular culture, whether creating blogs, engaged in religious education, advocacy, preaching, etc., could learn a great deal from those who make popular music. One element from popular music making that could easily migrate over into performance-based modes of popular theologizing, especially preaching, is the art of “covering” other artists work (riffs, hits, beats, rhythms, etc.), and then “styling” on those tropes until they become one’s own. There are many aspects of the larger process of “covering” the work of others, but one useful aspect is found in what is known as “air guitar.” Air guitar playing is the act of imitating the rhythms, notes, accents, movements, riffs, cadences, and overall style of another guitarist. For the actual guitarist, this is the beginning of the process of “living into” another artists unique style, absorbing much of it, and making it one’s own. Here’s a great short clip of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page almost unconsciously engaging in air guitar to a classic riff by guitarist Link Wray.

JIMMY PAGE from “IT MIGHT GET LOUD”

 

This practice could easily migrate over into the way one learns to preach or compose theology in general. For instance, now that so many sermons are available in recorded form online, it is simple to listen to or watch preachers who are seasoned and have lots of great “riffs,” and then “air preach” their work, embodying gestures, attitudes, or facial expressions (if video is used), but more importantly, learning any number of stylistic “tropes” or figures of speech that could be used in sermons. Here is one I sometimes use in class by the renowned preacher Fred Craddock. Like Link Wray in the video clip above, Craddock’s style represents a now classic genre of preaching sometimes called “inductive preaching,” in which the preacher begins with the particulars of experience and moves slowly toward a large idea. One of Craddock’s favorite tropes for getting listeners on board experientially is to have them imagine a word or category of thought with him. It’s a simple trope, and I sometimes have students listen to him several times, then “air preach” with him, and finally “style on” his work by choosing another word or category (fear, hope, peace, etc.) and developing it in a similar way. Try it out. Here’s the sermon clip containing the trope used by Fred Craddock.

FRED CRADDOCK: SERMON CLIP

The Garageband Sermon?

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

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In my new book, Mashup Religion: Pop Music and Theogical Invention, I develop a series of analogies between making popular music and composing theology in a variety of forms: sermons, blogs, educational events, etc. One of the analogs to music-making in the book is the multi-track recorder or DAW (digital audio workstation). DAWs come in lots of shapes and sizes (Garageband, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Acid Pro, etc.). These software programs assist musicians as they record or “track” audio. In effect, they help musicians layer and sequence (or stagger) bits and pieces of audio. Typically a recording will consist of rhythm tracks, melody tracks, lead tracks, and fills. By analogy, in a sermon, we layer and sequence four types of audio tracks – scripture tracks, message tracks, theology tracks, and experience tracks. Here’s a little video to show you how this works.

 

 

For more on this book and other analogies between making popular music and composing theology at the interface between academia and popular culture go to the blog I’ve set up for the book at http://mashupreligion.blogspot.com

 

The Place Where God is Revealed!

03 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in Connecting the Dots

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Over time, most of us as preachers have a typical “place” where we find most sermons. (See the previous two blogs for common options) If you were to look carefully at the past year of sermons you’ve preached, you could identify the usual place you travel to to get your sermon messages. If you go to a particular place over and over again, you are tacitly telling your listeners that this is the place where God “speaks” or reveals God’s self – not only in preaching, but in our lives.

If you go to Place One, finding the bulk of your sermons in the obvious words and sentences on the page of the Bible (in English translation) you are, in essence, telling your congregation over time that God reveals God’s “Word” through biblical propositions. This is sometimes called a propositional view of revelation. If you find your sermons mostly “behind the text” in the history to which the text witnesses (Place Two) you are telling your congregation over time that God is revealed in history. This is sometimes called a historical view of revelation, or revelation as history. If you find your sermons mostly “in front of the biblical text,” in the way the language works (Place Three) you are telling your listeners that God is revealed in symbolic forms. This is sometimes called a symbolic view of revelation. If the place where you find most sermons is a theologically charged moment rumbling beneath the text that makes a claim on our lives (Place Four), you are telling your congregation that God is revealed as a sovereign reality transcending history to which the text bears witness. This is sometimes called a theological or Christological view of revelation. If you tend to find your sermons at a place deep within your current historical and cultural context where fresh ideas and insights about God are sparked by the ways in which biblical symbols and contemporary events interact (Place Four), you are telling your congregation that God is revealed within your context. This is sometimes called a contextual view of revelation.

What is important to see is how the way in which you use the Bible (sometimes called your biblical hermeneutic) shapes an understanding of God’s revelation within your congregation over time. Of course, no one will call it this! Lay persons do not go around saying things such as: “Our congregation has a contextual view of revelation.” Or, “My way of interpreting scripture is grounded in a propositional view of revelation.” Regardless of this, congregations are being formed, or “catechized” over time, by the way you preach – in this case by the way you use scripture in relation to God’s revealed “Word.”

Now, if you were to see yourself as a conscious an intentional practical theologian, you might work backwards from the view of revelation you want to support and shape in your church toward your preaching. In other words, you might ask yourself: “What view of revelation is needed in my congregation?” Or, “What understanding of revelation would help this congregation grow as people of God? Then, once you have answered that question, you might decide on the best “place” in relation to the biblical text from which to preach in your community of faith.

At the end of the day, I would argue that all of these views of revelation have some truth in them. They are not mutually exclusive. Not all of them, however, will be helpful at a given time within the life of a congregation, and sometimes too much of a good thing breeds problems.

For instance, if your congregation has a long history of always going to Place One, and your listeners have, therefore, learned a propositional view of revelation, they will encounter serious limitations when it comes to interpreting difficult issues in our context that were not addressed head on in the biblical text – ordination of gays and lesbians, ordination of women, sexual and domestic violence, etc. A simple dynamic equivalence approach to the words on the page of the Bible (in translation) will not be helpful for understanding women’s role in first century Christianity, or biblical words like “pederast”  that are commonly (and wrongly) confused as being similar to homosexuality in today’s world. In such a congregation, it might be helpful to shift the focus and preach more often from Place Two. This will begin to teach a more historical view of revelation, lessening the grip of what “seems obvious” on the surface of the biblical text. You might also consider the ways in which a contextual view of revelation (Place Five) could be helpful.

On the other hand, for a church that has, for a long time, imbibed a historical view of revelation (Place Two), the text may seem far removed for ordinary life today. For years sermon listeners have been told (tacitly) that they need a special interpreter, with knowledge of the ancient historical context in order to get to the place where God is revealed. This may have taken the Bible away from laity in the congregation, giving them the feeling that there is nothing in scripture for them – unless, of course, you tell them where and what it is. In this situation, preaching sermons from Places One, Three, or Four might be helpful as a way of returning the Bible, and access to God’s revelation, to ordinary folk.

It is possible, therefore, to think of any number of practical theological reasons to change your usual homiletical practice, choosing the best place to find each Sunday’s sermon in your congregation.

For more on this see “Word of God” and “hermeneutics” in Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics