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~ a blog by John McClure

Otherwise Thinking

Tag Archives: John S. McClure

This Sabbatical: Trying On A Few (Old) Shoes

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by John McClure in Who is this?

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Charles G. Finney, circuit rider, identity, if the shoe fits, itinerancy, itinerant, John S. McClure, preacher, Princeton Theological Seminary, road show, Sabbatical, Vanderbilt Divinity School

IMG_0038

Finney (Converse All Stars), Mitchell (Merrill Hiking Shoes)

Most or our parents hope that we will, to some extent, follow in the footsteps of our name sake – filling their shoes, so to speak. Well, here’s the rub. I’m named after a great uncle who was a Southern Methodist circuit rider, John Stephen Mitchell – an itinerant circuit rider in the backwoods of east Tennessee and North Carolina. He literally saddled up his horse every morning and trotted between Knoxville and Ashville, over the mountain passes, preaching the gospel along the way to all who would listen. The problem is this. I’m not big on horses. I’m not a Methodist. I’m not crazy about accosting strangers and preaching to them out of the blue. If I were to fill his shoes, I’d need some pretty hefty hiking shoes.

Circuit Rider

To make matters worse, there’s the whole business of my named professorship at Vanderbilt. I’m not sure whether Divinity School Deans think the same way parents do about “filling the shoes” of those whose named professorship one holds, but if they do, mine presents all kinds of issues. I occupy a chair at Vanderbilt Divinity School named the Charles G. Finney Chair of Preaching and Worship. And Finney, many of you recall, was a rather fiery, pragmatic, itinerant revivalist preacher for much of his career. He firmly believed in something he called The New Measures – by which he meant that there are, no longer, any “measures” and so anything goes in the conversion of sinners to God. Dare I try on those shoes?! In our generation that might mean trying on a pair of Converse All Stars.

Charles G. Finney

Charles G. Finney

So why me? I’ve not been a fan of itinerant preaching most of my career. In fact, as a purveyor of so-called “collaborative preaching” I’m probably the person least likely to fill the shoes of either of these itinerant types.

When I left parish ministry and went into teaching preaching, I realized, about one year into the job, that all teachers of preaching are faced with a tough choice. The job description is simply too big, and something has to give. Teaching, research, writing, and publishing constitute a full time job, and being a seminary’s publicist as “road show preacher” on top of that, if one wants to have a family life, means that one of the other pieces of the job description has to get the short end of the stick. And even if one can get a reduced teaching load, or a guarantee (in writing) that one’s tenure committee will value this kind of “service to the church” as highly as published books or articles, life on the road still threatens one’s time with family.

Because I placed a very high priority on my family, and I loved classroom teaching, research, and writing, I moved itinerant teaching and preaching into the back seat. I learned to say “no” and only preached and taught locally – within a 50 mile radius. In effect, I let itinerant preaching go. I don’t think the seminary president or the development officer liked it, but for the past 25 years, I’ve only preached 3-5 sermons a year – not much to be sure.

It turned out to be a good decision for me and for my family. Weekends at home, going to the ball park, tucking in my kids, going to church together as a family, meal times and prayers together – these were all hugely important, and our family flourished.

I realize that there are those in my guild who are by nature and calling itinerant preachers – good ones. They have to be on the road doing what they are called to do. I know it makes things pretty tough when it comes to time at home, and many of these folks manage amazingly well.

Now that my children have graduated from college and are on their own, I find myself wanting to re-up that part of me that loves being in the pulpit. I don’t have the weekly time to take on a congregational placement on the side, so this means that I have to re-think itinerancy – trying on those shoes once again, so to speak.

And so, for this sabbatical, I decided to turn the “no” button off and accept a couple of invitations to preach (once abroad and a 6 sermon series at a pastor’s school in Hastings, NB), and devote at least 25% of my current sabbatical time (that’s a lot for me!) to writing, practicing, and preaching sermons, not quite one per week, like the old days in the parish, but enough to prime the pump so to speak, in case the coming years present me with a few more possibilities of getting “out and about” as a preacher.

Back to the shoes. Why in the world I was named after an itinerant circuit rider and wound up as the Charles G. Finney Professor of preaching? Is it a sign? Is God having a little fun at my expense? I don’t have a clue. But you know what they say: “If the shoe fits wear it.” So, on this sabbatical, I’m “trying on few (old) shoes.”

Collaborative Preaching

01 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by John McClure in Who is this?

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

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.

Preaching the Good News as GOOD News

30 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by John McClure in Musings

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

anger, Good News, Gospel, imperatives, John S. McClure, motives, nagging, positive preaching, preacher, preaching, preachy, sermon

Preaching the Good News…

Image …as Good News

For a variety of reasons, we often fail to communicate any motivating “good news” in our sermons. From my experience, there are several reasons for this.

Sometimes we cave in to the culture’s pejorative definition of “preach” – thus the need to sound “preachy.” We load sermons with hard or soft imperatives: “we must,” “we should,” or “let us,” and “we are called to….” When this happens, I am reminded of the hospital nurse, using the “nurse’s ‘we’”: “we need to take our medicine now,” “let’s sit up now and eat some lunch.”

At other times, we worry that the congregation is not doing all that it could do to support our exciting vision for church growth or social justice. We feel compelled to nag at our congregations for their failings.

At other times, we lose sight of the redemptive good news altogether. We are lost in doubt, lack of theological confidence or conviction, and can only muster a few “hints and helps for daily living” as a positive message on Sunday morning.

In the worst case scenario, we allow ourselves to become angry with something in the congregation or culture at large. We feel the need to “load up on people” week after week, dividing the sheep from the goats.

There is certainly plenty of bad news in this world, and the good news that we preach should not appear pollyannish. With this in mind, I still feel compelled from time to time to remind myself that the heart and soul of preaching is the good news of God’s redemptive grace and mercy. Whether preaching a text from the Hebrew Bible or from the New Testament, we are fundamentally in the service of a God of redemption and hope. With this in mind, I offer these suggestions:

  1. Preach only what inspires you. It is easy to finish several hours of exegesis only to arrive at a completely flat, moralistic, and insignificant message. Ask yourself whether your message is inspirational good news for your own life. Then proceed.
  2. Examine your motives. Be sure that you are not motivated in your preaching by either anger or your church administrative agenda. Are you motivated by the desire to preach a life-changing and world-changing word of grace and hope?
  3. Be sure that the good news you preach is faithful to the biblical text you are preaching. There is not only one good news message in the Bible. God’s grace and mercy take many different shapes. It is not always “personal salvation” or “liberation,” or whatever our doctrinal preference may be. Seek out the richness of God’s redemptive presence in the Bible.
  4. Although there are occasions and biblical texts that call for an imperative word from the pulpit, it is best to avoid both the hard and soft imperative voice in preaching, unless it is first grounded in the solid indicative of God’s grace. Weed out the language of “must,” “should,” “ought to,” “let us,” “we are called to,” and try using the language of identity, possibility, process, and vision. Give the strong impression in every sermon that the church is a powerful agent of grace, living more deeply into its redemptive identity every day.
  5. Regularly rethink your theology as it meets your congregation. Ask yourself: What do I really believe? What is God doing in our midst? Who is Jesus Christ and what is Christ’s good news for our world today?

These simple practices may help us reorient our preaching toward a redemptive purpose so that the good news that we preach on Sunday morning is really good news to our hearers.

The Garageband Sermon?

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by John McClure in Musings

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Tags

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 one)

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by John McClure in Connecting the Dots

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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.

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