Long-Range Preaching

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by John McClure in Connecting the Dots, Views from the Street

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communication, communication model, communication theory, Four Codes of Preaching, homiletic method, homiletic theory, homiletics, long-range planning, plan, preaching, sermon, sermon preparation, strategic communication, theology and preaching, transmission

Many of us view preaching as a short-term (tactical) practice of transmitting information. Communication theorists, however, have drawn attention to the inadequacies of the sender-message-receiver or “transmission” model of communication, inherited largely from classical rhetoric. There are a whole host of other elements at work in any communication situation: conventions of listening, worldviews, local history, felt needs, language repertoire, physical setting, and so on. J. Randall Nichols calls this the larger “communicative field” for preaching.

The “long range preacher” develops a preaching plan that contains certain goals for changes within this “communicative field” in the future. As a long range preacher, I see preaching as part of a process that takes time to complete, a process designed intentionally to promote over time certain themes, messages, doctrines, approaches to scripture, attitudes, theological worldviews, core values, or understandings of the relationship between Christ and culture. Preaching is a shared journey, and I am in it for the long haul.

This journey, of course, involves the entire communication life of the church and is most effective when the goals for my preaching are integrated with similar goals in religious education, congregational meetings, publicity (newsletters, website) and so on. In this way, preaching is seen as a part of what Seward Hiltner once called the larger “communicating perspective” on ministry.

In order to develop a long-range vision, I might want to engage in congregational study or careful critical reflection and try to discern theological gaps, inconsistencies, issues, or aspirations within the congregation. After such study or reflection, I might establish long-term goals for the communication life of the church, perhaps in consultation with my church board or leaders in the congregation.

For instance, my congregation might be ready for diversity of membership, increased knowledge of biblical history, a more socially-conscious approach to theology, a firmer knowledge its heritage, and more openness to the certain cultural and social changes. From this list, I can develop a list of concepts, messages, values, attitudes, and forms of communication that will, over time, contribute to bringing about these changes in the congregation.

It is probably too bold to say that sermons actually construct the way that a listener is situated within a communicative field. Listeners are participants in multiple subcultures and negotiate messages from the pulpit at the intersection of many overlapping discourses.

Over the long term, however, preaching can provide new categories of thought and encourage new forms of speaking and practice. Preached messages push, pull, nudge, encourage, and cajole listeners. If these messages are consistent and strategic, they can, over time, shift the position that listeners occupy within this complex communicative field, opening up new possibilities for thought and action.

Several approaches to preaching have attempted to take into account the ways preaching has the potential to re-shape the signs, symbols, theological worldviews, and conventions of listening within congregations over time. (see for instance, McClure, The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies, Tisdale, Preaching as Local Theology and Folk Art, Nieman, Knowing the Context: Frames, Tools, and Signs for Preaching).

Portable Preaching

03 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by John McClure in Musings, Views from the Street

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application, Christianity, Church, focus statement, Fred Craddock, function statement, homiletics, Lucy Rose, preaching, Religion, sermon, Spirituality, Thomas G. Long

John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman, in his essay “University Preaching” said the following:

Talent, logic, learning, words, manner, voice, action, all are required for the perfection of a preacher; but ‘one thing is necessary,’ – an intense perception and appreciation of the end for which (the preacher) preaches, and that is, to be the minister of some definite spiritual good to those who hear…. (bold-face and parenthetical change added, as quoted by John Broadus in his Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, 255).

In homiletics textbooks, this idea that sermons should have a “definite spiritual end” is normally labelled the “sermon application.” And in homiletics classrooms, teachers of preaching such as myself often speak about this as the business of making sermons “portable,” giving listeners something that is not only memorable, but motivational – that leads to specific actions, behavior, or to a new persuasion. Application also refers to “bringing home” an idea. Portability means that the message “comes to roost” – – it suddenly becomes about us, in this room, in this local situation and can be taken away with us into our daily lives.

I find Newman’s words helpful – urging us to offer some “definite spiritual good” to the listener. “Definite” means unambiguous, clearly stated, and decided beforehand by the preacher. “Spiritual good” implies that the sermon influences the human spirit in some way for the better.

In a similar fashion, Thomas G. Long, in his much-used basic preaching text The Witness of Preaching encourages preachers to jot down both a “focus statement” and a “function statement” before crafting a sermon. The focus statement summarizes the preacher’s message. The function statement summarizes the preacher’s desired result. For Long, this result should be tethered as closely as possible to the literary or rhetorical thrust of the biblical text preached. He wants us to ask first of all: “What do the words of the biblical text want us to do or become as a result of this sermon? Texts don’t just “mean” things, they try to do things!

At least three aspects of this way of thinking are much debated.

1. Should the preacher always decide beforehand what spiritual good is to be brought home at the sermon’s end? Inductive homiletics, under the tutelage of Fred Craddock, questions this presupposition. Instead of moving from the exposition of a general truth to its “application,” the inductive sermon moves through a range of experiences toward a general truth. In many inductive sermons, the listener is left to complete the picture – drawing conclusions that best fit their own faith experience.

Craddock’s picture of “Inductive logic” (from As One Without Authority)

2. The persuasive element in application-oriented preaching is sometimes called into question. Lucy Rose, in her book Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church, argues that this persuasive and transmissive model of communication is non-dialogical and reinforces a gap between pulpit and pew. It makes the goal of preaching the business of transmitting what the preacher wants to happen into the hearts and minds of rather passive listeners. This tends to disempower listeners – even if and when they nod and articulate their consent, as in call-and-response forms of preaching. In effect, listeners learn to be passive – awaiting the portable golden nugget(s) to arrive each week.

3. Others believe that “applications,” especially when they are too specific, let some people off the hook. If the preacher is too precise in spelling out a particular “pay-off”, people may find wiggle room enough to say, in effect: “That’s not about me.”

Despite these concerns, when interviewed about preaching, sermon listeners indicate that they generally listen for some kind of portable “take home” element in sermons. The Listening to Listeners to Sermons Project, a massive empirical project funded by the Lilly Foundation, contained several findings that point directly to the desire among listeners for some kind of “portable” application in sermons. Three of these, summarized by Ronald J. Allen, who spearheaded this project, point toward sermon portability:

The sermon should center in the Bible and make the biblical material come alive for the listener
The message needs to relate in a practical way to the lives of the listening communities
Congregations are eager for sermons to help them make theological and ethical sense of the range of life‘s issues
Ministers ought to be specific in helping congregations draw out the implications of the Bible and their deepest theological convictions

I sometimes draw out the distinction between denotative “applications” of the gospel, and the connotative “implications” of the gospel. This idea is not new. The great mid-twentieth-century homiletician H. Grady Davis, in his book Design for Preaching put it this way:

“…a sermon idea of more than a bare thought. It is a thought plus its overtones and its groundswell of implication and urgency.”

Whereas an application might denote a particular sought-after behavior or attitude, an implication is not always explicitly stated. Implications surround us with images, ideas, questions, angles of vision that “implicate” us in some way. Instead of striking directly, like an arrow, implications absorb us into a sphere of gospel-influence.

Implications should not be wishy washy. They can and should be intentionally pursued by the preacher. They can be honed as carefully sought “spiritual goods” within sermons, and might include such things as being implicated in the gospel’s relentless hope, or its ethical challenge, or its unexpected offer of forgiveness. Preachers still have to decide ahead of time what such implications are, but they do not have to turn them into a highly specific sermon-takaway (or a list of such things).

In the end, it is likely that all sermons have some kind of function (even if it is to put the listener to sleep). Finding that function, whether an “application” or an “implication”, truing it up, refining it, and focusing it on the situation of one’s listeners can be crucial for making a sermon portable in the best sense of the word.

The Garageband Sermon?

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by John McClure in Musings

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DAW, Digital Audio Workstation, Four Codes of Preaching, Garageband, homiletic method, homiletics, John S. McClure, Logic Pro, Mashup Religion, multi-track, preaching, sermon invention, sermon preparation, Track Sheet

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

Five ‘Places” to Find a Sermon (part two)

20 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by John McClure in Connecting the Dots

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Bible and Preaching, Four Codes of Preaching, hermeneutics, homiletic method, homiletic theory, homiletics, interpretation, Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics, sermon invention, sermon preparation, text-to-sermon, theology and preaching

In this post, I indicate two more places to find a sermon. Unlike the first three, the following two places are discovered, not by beginning with the biblical text, but by beginning with your operative theology (Place 4) or historical context and situation (Place 5).

Place 4. In the Theological Claims of the Text. In this approach, your operative theology (liberationist, feminist, evangelical, existentialist, etc.) and/or tradition (Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) becomes much more active and acts as a guide, leading you to the place where you find a sermon. Following the lead of this theological guide, you travel toward a key theological claim at work in a text; a claim about justice, mercy, sanctification, salvation, hope, etc., depending on your operative theology. Once you arrive at that claim you will allow it to shape the message and form of the sermon.

William Sloane Coffin, whose theology was often strongly liberationist in tone, once preached a powerful sermon on the healing of the paralytic. His theology drew his eyes to the moment in the text when the paralytic, whose sins had been forgiven, was invited to get up from his pallet and walk. For Coffin this moment in the story revealed a crucial theological claim – that new forms of ethical responsibility should accompany and in fact complete our experience of forgiveness by Christ. To paraphrase Coffin’s words “the problem for the paralytic was not forgiveness, but responsibility – response-ability – the ability to respond to the love of God….to get up off that stretcher and walk.” Coffin then highlighted the tendency among many Christians to spend their time celebrating and basking in the blessings of forgiveness in a way that effectively kept them on stretchers – unwilling and unable to get up and do the liberating work of God. For Coffin, the theological claim of the text was the unity of justification (forgiveness) and sanctification (liberative action), and it was from this theological place that he preached his entire sermon.

When preaching from this place, your theology generates both the tone and focus of your sermon. The language of the sermon will not reiterate the words on the page of the Bible (place 1), develop continuities with historical events or formations such as “empire” or “exile,” (place 2) or imitate the way the language of the text works (place 3). Instead, the sermon will focus on a particular moment, or set of moments in the biblical text that identify, focus, or illuminate a particular theological claim you are making. Sermon listeners will hear those biblical moments shaped into a sermon by your theological claim regarding forgiveness, liberation, hope, idolatry, obedience, love, etc.

Place 5. In today’s situation as catalyst for the text’s meaning. In this approach, you begin the journey toward a sermon with something significant that is going on in your situation or broader context. You then ask what meaning or idea in the text is catalyzed by its confrontation with your context today. Throughout history we have seen how meanings in the biblical text are catalyzed by our own moment in history. Often these are meanings we could never have known before. For instance, the civil rights movement catalyzed new meanings from the biblical text about slavery, systemic evil, and oppression. The feminist movement catalyzed new meanings regarding sexual violence, forgiveness, and atonement.

Adopting this approach, you might pick up the newspaper or reflect on an important issue confronting the larger community or congregation. Then, ask “What meaning lies dormant within this text awaiting this moment in our history or life together as a nation, community, or congregation, to be discovered?” Although this may lead to a dead end (or to frightful eisegesis – so be careful!), it is amazing how often you will find a genuinely helpful idea, or an entire re-framing of the current situation provided by a seemingly unrelated biblical text.

The Sunday after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon I was slated to preach at a large church. I had originally chosen to preach John 3:16 – a difficult sermon in which I was trying to re-think more exclusivist interpretations of this passage. After the attack on the trade towers and Pentagon, I felt strongly that the situation at hand was catalyzing a different trajectory of meaning from the text – one that hovered around the deeper meaning of “belief” (“whoever believes in me”) as a form of trust. I moved the entire focus of the sermon toward the ultimate trustworthiness of God in a world where trust had been shaken to its core.

When preaching a sermon from this place, you will use language that shows how the listeners’ own context is, in fact, already there, in the world projected by the biblical text. The ultimate meaning of our context exists as a latent trajectory or horizon of meaning in the text awaiting this moment to be discovered. Instead of hearing you draw dynamic analogies from the words of the text (place 1), identify historical continuities behind the text (place 2), re-perform the text’s rhetoric (place 3), or locate specific theological claims in the text (place 4), listeners will hear you dig deep within the immediate situation and discover there a thought or image that serves as a catalyst for a hidden trajectory of meaning within the biblical text.

In summary, there are at least five places to find a sermon:

Place 1. On the page of the biblical text, finding equivalences to its obvious features

Place 2. Behind the biblical text finding historical continuities between then and now

Place 3. In front of the biblical text, in what the text’s language does to us as readers

Place 4. In the theological claims of the text, attenuated through the lens of our operative theologies

Place 5. In our situation, where trajectories of meaning from the text await this situation to be discovered.

For more about these options, see The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies, and the section on “hermeneutics” in Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics.

Five ‘Places’ to Find a Sermon (part one)

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by John McClure in Connecting the Dots

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Bible and Preaching, Four Codes of Preaching, hermeneutics, homiletic method, homiletics, interpretation, John S. McClure, Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics, sermon invention, sermon preparation, text-to-sermon

In this post and the next, I will describe briefly five “places” to find a sermon. Although there is nothing strikingly new here, it is always good to be reminded of the options that are available. These options are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

Place 1. On the page of the biblical text. In this approach, you find a sermon idea among the obvious features of the biblical text (in translation) or what is “on the page.” Of course, in order to be sure that you correctly understand what seems “obvious,” you need to study the text in its context first. But as a preacher, once you are certain what the text is saying, you will return to the words and thoughts (ideas, metaphors, images) “on the page” as the place to find the sermon. As you think about these words and thoughts, ask yourself: “What might be dynamically equivalent to this thought/image/word in today’s situation?” By dynamically equivalent, I mean to imply that you allow some well-considered latitude. Don’t remain overly wooden or literal when identifying an equivalent idea. For instance, In the story of Mary and Martha the image of Mary seeking instruction from Jesus is dynamically equivalent to any action of attending carefully to the words of Jesus in today’s context. A non-dynamic or literal equivalent would focus only on instances when women attend to Jesus’ words and thoughts today. This may constrict and overly narrow the meaning of the text.

When you preach from this “place,” your congregation will not hear you referring so much to the historical context for the biblical text as to the translated words on the page of the biblical text. In effect, you are asking them to live lives that are in some way imitative of, or closely analogous to the clear and straightforward meaning of the words on the page.

Place 2. Behind the biblical Text. In this approach, you find a sermon idea “behind the text” in its historical situation. Through careful exegetical study, you arrive at the text’s historical, traditional, social, and religious situation (exodus, exile, poverty, empire, wilderness, passover, etc.). Having arrived at this “place” behind the text, you will preach a sermon that invites the congregation to live in historical continuity with the community of people who spoke or recorded the words on the page. You ask questions such as? “How are we also people struggling with exodus, empire, or some other similar situation in these ways?”

In Ched Myer’s commentary on Mark’s gospel, for instance, he argues that the “fishers of people” text is best understood in a situation of empire in which the gap between rich and poor is ever-widening. He notes that Mark’s listeners would have heard these as apocalyptic words referring to images of fishers in Jeremiah 16:16, and Amos 4:2 where fishing hooks and nets were not only used for gathering in God’s chosen people, but for separating out the evildoers from their midst. In our current post-Enron, debt-crisis situation, the preacher may discover strong historical continuities between first century struggles with empire and our own struggles, and the need for “fishers of people” who will both gather in the wounded and pronounce judgement on the purveyors of empire.

When you preach from this “place,” your congregation will not hear the words on the page as much as references to “Mark,” or “Matthew’s community,” or “during the exile,” and other indicators that your sermon comes from behind the biblical text. In effect you are inviting listeners to live lives in historical continuity with our forebears in the faith.

Place 3. In Front of the biblical Text. In this approach, you find a sermon idea “in front of the text,” in what the language or rhetoric of the text does. One way to get to this “place” is to say: This text sounds like __________” (a sales pitch, a prayer, lamentation, praise, a lover’s quarrel, a negotiation, an argument, etc.) For instance, Tom Long once preached a sermon about Jesus’ trip to the temple as a little child. He was struck with the way the language of the text seemed to shout: “Everything about this person is a mystery!” He used the litany “Did you ever get the feeling there’s something going on you don’t understand?” to draw the reader deeper into the mystery of Jesus created by the language of the text.

When you preach from this “place,” your congregation will not hear so much the actual words of the text, or about “Mark’s community’s desperate struggle with empire,” but a re-performance of the text’s rhetorical or communicative force – what it “does” to us.

Let’s stop here for now. These are the first three places you can go, if you want to find a sermon. These are all “bible-centered” approaches – starting in, behind, or in front of the biblical text. In the next installment, we will look at two places you can go that are not as textually centered – but which still honor the biblical witness.

For a more detailed description of these options, see The Four Codes of Preaching: Rhetorical Strategies, and the word “hermeneutics” in Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics.