Collaborative Preaching

01 Monday Oct 2012

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Bible and Preaching, bible study, Biblical Hermeneutics, Christianity, Church, collaborative preaching, conversation, dialogue, feedback, John S. McClure, preaching, preparation, Presbyterian, Religion, Roundtable Pulpit, sermon

I wrote a little book about “collaborative preaching” some years ago, and have been gratified by the number of folks who have adopted this method, and for all that they have taught me over the years.

Collaborative preaching is preaching that involves an intentional effort to involve others in both sermon brainstorming and feedback.

The Sermon Roundtable. As a collaborative preacher, you will form a small group of lay persons (what I call a “sermon roundtable”), including those from within and outside the church. This group meets each week with you to discuss biblical, theological, and experiential materials for the upcoming sermon.

It is important to keep the group small: usually 3-4 members. It is also important that the group changes regularly – every two to three months – so that an “in-group” dynamic doesn’t take over, and in order to add diversity to the insights that are provided to the preacher.

The Tag-Team Approach. One of the best ways to accomplish this constantly rotating group rhythm is through a “tag-team” approach. Each group member joins for a designated length of time. When a person leaves the group, it is their responsibility to “tag” someone to take their place. The goal is to seek someone who will “shake the group up a bit,” adding a new dimension to the biblical interpretation and theological ideas in the group. This might be someone younger, or older, or of another race or ethnicity, or from outside the church, or of another faith, or of no faith.

Change Group Locations. Another way to add richness to the process is to meet in different social locations so that sermon messages are not constricted by the worldview of your congregation. Sermon brainstorming might take place, for instance, in a public place such as a library or shopping mall, or at a women’s shelter or homeless shelter.

Your Task, Should You Accept It. Your primary task is to begin conversation about the biblical text, and to take careful notes. When you prepare the sermon, you will make use of aspects of both the form and message of the collaborative brainstorming process.

Face-to-Face is Important. Of course, collaboration could make use of technologies such as Facebook, blogs, bulletin boards, etc. But the genius of this method comes, in many respects, from its embodied, face-to-face quality. Much of what you can take into the pulpit comes from actual group dynamics, including bodily postures and attitudes: leaning in, hesitating, following, dodging, getting a footing, interrupting, re-framing, etc. I say more about this in the book.

Why Do It? The goals of this type of preaching are many: educating congregations on what sermons are and how they function in the community, increasing ownership of the ministry of proclamation in the church, teaching the Bible, widening preaching’s audience, promoting a public form of theology in the pulpit, and symbolizing a collaborative form of leadership in the church.

Beyond these goals, those who use this method testify to three surprising results:

1. Sermon preparation time is shorter. You would think just the opposite. If the groups are small and kept to about one hour, it is amazing how many new ideas for preaching can be introduced.

2. It is harder to avoid tough topics and prophetic issues. Again, you’d think just the opposite. But if you lead in a truly open-minded way, people will usually raise the tough issues. Most people want to hear their preacher deal with these topics.

3. Your “authority” in the pulpit will increase. Again, this seems counter-intuitive. But, as Jackson Carroll points out, authority in a late modern context is largely a function of relationships, and this method of preaching builds relationships around the pulpit.

A Couple of Videos. If you are interested in this method, or just want to know more, I’ve prepared a couple of small video presentations about it.

Is counterculturalism killing us?

11 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by John McClure in Views from the Street

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conversation, counter-culture, counterculture, homiletics, John S. McClure, ministry, narrative theology, pluralism, preaching, sermon, Willimon

In the current generation, the most predominant and popular image for the minister might be labeled “minister as counterculturalist.” William Willimon is perhaps the strongest proponent of this view, taking many of his ideas from the work of theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. (cf. Hauerwas and Willimon, 1989, Willimon, 2000). Charles Colson (2003), Walter Brueggemann, (1978, 1997, 2010), Rodney Clapp (1996), and John Howard Yoder (1994) are other prominent spokespersons with different theological perspectives who have articulated a similar view of the minister.

For those who adopt this image, the minister is a countercultural leader. Ministers are “aliens and exiles” (I Pet. 2;11) who march to the beat of a different drummer. They understand the current-situation as post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom, and post-denominational. In this situation, the church is freed from its overly comfortable co-optation by the dominant culture, and can now recover and express its true countercultural genius. The minister will not look or act like anyone else (managers, therapists, etc.) because the minister is ordained to be an utterly unique person whose actions and words will always seem odd according to prevailing cultural standards and mores. The gospel demands radically distinct forms of behavior and speech, including pacifism, non-violent resistance to principalities and powers, an insistence on the oddness of biblical language, the rejection of any attempt to translate biblical language and categories into cultural terms, and an inculturationist or catechetical approach to liturgics, preaching, and evangelism.

The idea of the minister as counterculturalist is built on a particular kind of narrative theological method sometimes called the “Yale school” of narrative theology. (Comstock, 1986). Ministers attracted to this theological method believe that all religions, denominations, and cultural worldviews are defined by the way that they narrate the world. In today’s context, larger “meta-narratives” such as the metanarratives of Enlightenment, Socialism, Capitalism, and Christianity, have been reduced in size and importance and now take their place alongside other cultural and social narratives. These narratives are like games, or “language-games,” generating very different worldviews.

In this situation, ministers are radical pluralists. They believe that the rules and concepts for one game cannot be translated into the rules and concepts of another. The world is a pluralistic arena of competing language games or worldviews, some religious and some not. In this situation, the Christian minister is obliged to represent the Christian language game as forcefully and conspicuously as possible. The odd grammar of the Christian language game, provided by scripture and tradition, must be made larger, more consistent, and more univocal.

But is this, in fact, the best way to read the situation in the world (and church) today? Instead of a situation of competing narratives, in which we must learn to compete better than anyone else and win, it appears to me that our situation, both inside the church and in the surrounding culture is one of divisive, and increasingly violent cultural-narrative entrenchment. The church’s current social and political context and its inner life has become a potentially dangerous and divisive climate of competing and mutually exclusive narratives and monologues. Entrenchment within different and competing cultural narratives is destroying the fabric of life both inside and outside the church, creating a situation in which “countering” others has been turned into a force for division across religions and cultures that has tremendous destructive potential.

In today’s popular media, countering opposing narratives has become the prevailing model for political rhetoric. Increasingly media outlets are adopting strict, consistent ideological/narrative frameworks. It is now evident that “counter-speaking” is what sells. People tend to seek out like-minded, self-referential news sources that are defined by their stances against certain others. In a nutshell, counterculture has been commodified and largely co-opted by the prevailing culture. Paradoxically, counterculturalist ministry mirrors this prevailing cultural norm, in which competing monologues vie for control and power as commodities within the marketplace of ideas. And it trains communicants in this kind of behavior.

For ministers to adopt the image of minister as counterculturalist is to adopt the predominant cultural image for courage and “authenticity” within popular culture itself.

I do not wish to wade into arguments regarding whether, in fact, it is possible to be un-tainted by other cultural currents – whether, in fact a counter-cultural posture is even possible. Kathryn Tanner has demonstrated adequately the difficulties inherent in all culturally separatist thinking. (Tanner, 1997) Neither do I wish to argue against the importance of standing up to unjust or potentially violent cultural or religious ideas of impulses. A critical posture to dangerous or violent worldviews is a crucial component of any minister’s identity.

I only wish to argue that in our present context it takes more courage, and requires more genuine Christian authenticity to adopt what may, at first glance, seem to be a less exciting image for the minister: something like “the minister as informed conversation partner.” What is needed most in this generation are not narrativists, but pragmatists. In a situation of competing cultural narratives or worldviews, what is needed are not those who are focused on further cultural-narrative entrenchment, but those who are able to relate and connect worldviews, and negotiate shared meaning and truth across differences on behalf of the common flourishing of all..

Another way of putting this is to say that we need dynamic pluralists, not radical pluralists. The dynamic pluralist, like the radical pluralist, agrees that each worldview or religion has a narrative quality including rules, practices, and symbols often shaped by a long history. Where the dynamic pluralist disagrees with the radical pluralist is on the possibility of communication and correlation across worldviews. For the dynamic pluralist, there is much to be learned from strangers who are living according to the rules, practices, and symbols of other language games. In fact, the dynamic pluralist sees all of us as constantly conversing between, correlating, and re-framing multiple worldviews. This is not to completely de-center the Christian worldview. Rather, it is to insist on the permeability of the boundaries of that worldview, and to seek to honor the way in which Christianity is, in fact, always “othering” itself – seeking its deeper identity through creative relationships with those who are different.

(THIS POST IS EXCERPTED FROM VARIOUS PARTS OF A BOOK CHAPTER THAT IS PART OF A BOOK PROPOSAL – IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENT WELCOMED)