Inductive Preaching (eBook)

2     A Promising Solution

Randy, a student in one of my preaching courses, waited to talk to me after class. “Why do my people watch the cows outside the church when I preach?” he blurted out with feeling. “I preach the best I know, but some of the people always look out the windows. They can see cows any day of the week. Why do they have to do it while I’m trying to keep their attention on the sermon? What can I do about it?”

I asked, “Why do you think they watch the cows?” We talked about his frustration in the pastorate. I asked him how he started his sermons and whether his major accent was on theology or the people. I inquired about his illustrations with human instances and case studies.

After a few minutes of discussion Randy still sounded desperate. “I’ll try anything you say. I really want to get their attention and hold it.”

We talked about a number of things he might try. Randy vowed he would work harder to involve the people in his Sunday sermons. He seemed determined as he left for the weekend at his student pastorate.

The next week Randy bounced into class. “Boy, nobody watched cows this Sunday,” he beamed. I saw he could hardly wait to recount his weekend.

I asked, “How did you do it, Randy?”

“Prof, I started with this sentence: ‘The go-go dancer knocked on the parsonage door on Saturday night at 10:30.’ ” He grinned as he added, “Those cows really got neglected during the entire sermon. Nobody looked outside; no one looked around. Everybody seemed to stop breathing, just waiting for my explanation.

“What a change to have their undivided attention. They’ve always been warm and cordial to me, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen them so engrossed in my preaching.”

Randy’s experience reemphasizes the preaching problem introduced in the preceding chapter. Involvement problems stalk every preacher—excited young seminarians such as Randy and tired old hands like Pastor Jones.

How can our preaching get the people involved?

Obviously not every preacher could start this Sunday’s sermon with Randy’s opening sentence. None should try. If you did, how could you top it next Sunday? You’d have to change more than the reference to the specific Saturday night hour!

But we can find the beginnings to the answer in Randy’s episode. Broken down and analyzed, this incident with my young student reveals three areas of concern that require our attention if we’re serious about our quest for involvement in preaching.

These three areas are not at all new. More than 2,300 years ago Aristotle divided his plan of communication into three parts or proofs: ethical—the speaker’s part; emotional—the listener’s; and logical—the speech’s or message’s role. That’s basic homiletics, and any fresh strategy for winning listener involvement will have to encompass all three aspects of communication. So let’s examine the implications for more effective preaching.

The Speaker or Preacher

Any hope for involvement must start with the attitude of the preacher. He or she has to want involvement. But that desire must grow directly out of the care felt for the people. No one cares how much we know until he knows how much we care.

In my early ministry I knew one rural pastor who became increasingly discouraged by his people’s lack of response. One Sunday he got so frustrated he called his congregation of Dutch-American farmers “a bunch of flat-headed Dutchmen,” stormed out the side door of the church, and stalked to the parsonage to simmer down. He certainly showed them he cared; but the expression of that frustrated caring ended any hope for an effective ministry in that parish.

Pastor Jones and Randy are better examples for us. They felt some of the same frustrations. But Pastor Jones’ compassion and concern for his people kept him from condemning them in a closing prayer. Randy’s concern for his people helped him curb the urge to shoot those cows and sent him searching for any help he could get from his preaching prof. Unlike the minister who blew up at his congregation, they were ready to accept some responsibility for the involvement problem.

That’s the fountainhead of any hope for involvement in our preaching. Ministry begins in the mind and heart of the minister. Paul spelled out part of this requirement when he said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who … took upon him the form of a servant … and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Jesus added further guidelines for ministry when he said: “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.… For the Son of man came, not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.… Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

But how does this impact on preaching for involvement?

It means that if we want involvement we have to be willing to involve ourselves. The true shepherd heart cares enough to identify with the people just as the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

Ministry demands sacrifice, and sacrifice is risky.

Effective preaching may mean taking the risk of experimentation. Like Randy, we may need to ask, “How can I be more effective? What can I change about my sermons to get my listeners involved?” Such change is risky.

But meaningful ministry requires more than risking our sermons. It means risking ourselves. It means placing ourselves in the pew with our people, admitting our humanness to ourselves and to them, and preaching with the conviction that we all are “workers together with God.”

That personal risk is the price of involvement; the preacher becomes vulnerable. Love and ministry always extract that price.

Comfort, complacency and indifference cannot identify the involved preacher. He has to say, like the Master, “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (John 18:37).

Yet, while hope for involvement in our preaching has to start with the attitude in the mind and heart of the preacher, it can’t stop there. Those attitudes of servanthood have to be reflected in his character.

In discussing the effectiveness of preaching, we usually accept the good character of the preacher as a given. But we can’t afford to downplay its importance.

Demosthenes ranks the personal appeal of the speaker above all other proofs; the good speaker is the good man speaking well. Ethos or the appeal of the speaker as a person combines with other discussion in Aristotle’s teaching; he emphasizes the importance of the speaker’s intelligence, character and goodwill.

Both the Bible and Christian tradition amplify the speaker’s role by accenting his integrity, sincerity, and desirable attitudes, along with personal morals and behavior. Practicing what we preach involves much more than merely rehearsing our sermon.

Christian thought through the centuries has explored what it means to be a good man. The minister’s attitudes, relationships, beliefs and behavior ought to buttress his spoken words. No subject is mentioned more often in the Yale Lectures on preaching than the preacher’s personal character.

Today many of our hearers hunger for a listening, caring, growing preacher who relates to the people. Most congregations would rather see a sermon than hear one any day of the week.

If we want involvement in our preaching, we do well to remember Kierkegaard’s fourth principle of communication: “Only one who is transformed by Christianity can teach Christianity.”1

In the September 1980 Review of Religious Research, Lutheran pastor William O. Avery and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania professor A. Roger Gobbel reported on two surveys of listening attitudes among Lutherans in south-central Pennsylvania congregations.

In the article “The Words of God and the Words of the Preacher” they said, “The credibility a sender has … depends upon the relationship between sender and receiver.” Almost 83 percent of the respondents judged warmth, friendliness, and kindness in a minister’s sermon just as important or more so than theological expertise or intellectual soundness.

“Laity do not demand moral perfection of their clergy, but they do seek attempted consistency between words and action.… They are sensitive to, and influenced by, the personal relationships they have with the pastor.

“When the laity perceive kindness and understanding in their minister, and that the minister has concern for them expressing openness, warmth, and empathy, they consider seriously interpretations of the gospel which may be at variance with their own understandings. When that relationship is positive, the laity are most prone to assert … that the Word of God has been spoken.…”

This research backs up Scripture and experience. Involvement has to start with the preacher’s attitude—an attitude rooted in the mind and heart and evidenced in his character, life and preaching.

But the...