Third Horton, three sermons over three weeks.
I wish I had a picture of inside.
Inside is bright and contemporary with individual seats and a good audio-visual system.
Bit chilly up there on the hill.
I believe that historically sermons would have been regarded as “public” discourse. In the UK at least, part of “public” worship.
Some, maybe the better ones, (but who knows because we only have what we have not the ones we don’t), would be published, some written down and reported in newspapers, perhaps discussed?
I guess that over the years with the declining cultural significance of the Church sermons have become more as private discourse, addressed to the Church, the congregation, the family as it were.
Through the recent widespread recording and at times enthusiastic publishing of sermons online congregations are making them very much public discourse again, in the sense they are out there, beyond the immediate rhetorical context, for all to listen to and comment on.
One critical difference in this new public of the sermon in contrast to the old, is that the wider public does not share the wider theological underpinning that previously helped the sermon make sense, if not necessarily agreeable, beyond the walls.
I wonder who we think we are speaking to in a sermon, whether the public sharing needs to change our approach, and whether or not their are times we should simply turn the videos off and talk to one another in the house.
I learned long ago when in pastoral ministry not to take my rest day on a Monday. Main reason, I was still motivated and energized by the services (sometimes 2 and sometimes 3) the day before. At times I also had to pick up some of the reprecusions from the Sunday.
The Monday after the Sunday before could often be productive in preparation for the following week because I at least was still reflecting on what had been said and done the day before even if others were down to their 5% of remembering.
If in particular I was preaching from a series I was often ready to build and shape the next sermon, still somewhat in the flow.
I have had a similar experience these past weeks preaching three Sundays in a row at the same Church from the book of Exodus…Chapters 2, 3, and 4.
I have found that moving from the energy of the morning into some preparation for the following week in the Sunday afternoon has resulted in an early draft.
I like an early draft, for then as I put it down, to get on as it were with my day job, it remains in my subconscious, brewing away, and I can more easily, pick up and develop certain aspects of it, questions to be answered in the text, commentaries to be consulted, and illustrations and stories to be shaped.
So advice, (create your own series if you do not have one) and go with the adrenalin and the flow of one sermon into the next.
Preaching Exodus 3
“Do you feel the burn..?”
Sometimes we need more than the emblem, the symbol, the image, we need an encounter with the power and presence of the living God, coming, calling, creating, in causes of justice.
Reid identifies 4 main purposes for preaching.
Often people ask “can I not have more than one purpose?”
Yes we can…
If that is our purpose…
and…
honestly…
the many purposes are not an excuse for having none.
In a sermon there may well be teaching, encouraging, exploring, etc. but says Reid, one of them has to be behind the wheel, determining the destination.
Drawing on Reid, I stated my purpose in the conclusion to my sermon yesterday (which had some internal issues going on I was not happy with).. So I said, in response to a message about God redeeming and repurposing certain experiences in the direction of seeking justice and liberation, “I hope that some of us might say: May this be so in my life.”
While I struggled a bit to get there with the purpose and felt I was running out of time, it helped shaped the content and delivery. I got a sermon.
Reid’s fourth “voice” or purpose in preaching he calls the “Testifying” voice.
This is an approach that seeks the response: “Yes this conversation matters. Let’s keep talking.”
Reid sees this as an approach that leads to congregational formation.
It is an approach that aims at a “corporate” truth appeal but in a persuasively open way.
In this approach we would have “conversational” or “collaborative” approaches to preaching. These are forms of preaching when and where the members of the congregation are actively involved in sermon design, perhaps delivery, and certainly response.
Here, a classic text would be John McClure and “The Roundtable Pulpit.”
A lifetime ago I wrote a published article on “Community Theatre and Collaborative Preaching” if you are interested you can contact me for a copy.
While most examples of the conversational or collaborative preaching tend to be from mainstream North American Churches I argued for a broader application and practice – when and where congregants become co collaborators. There is some anabaptist writing on precisely this sort of preaching.
Over the years I have also had one or two students who have studied, developed, and made a good go of this in more evangelical contexts.
This is an approach where the members of the congregation become collaborators and co-creators of the “texts” performed in preaching and living.
In addition to teaching, and to encouraging, Robert Reid suggests that a third “voice” purpose for preaching is to “explore” possibilities leading to the response “Whoa! What will I do with (or make of) that?”
He calls this preaching in the “Sage” voice. He says that such sermons are “journey” centred and make affective appeals.
This is quite a tricky category in Reid if you have not followed some of the New Homiletic developments.
But if you have ever heard a Fred Craddock story and gone “whoa!” at the end, you will see what sort of thing he is talking about here.
This is the sort of response that Reid associates with more inductive and narrative approaches…Lowry and the Homiletical Loop.
It is an approach when and where people are led on a journey of discovery, that leaves them wondering personally about its implications for them and their lives.
It is an approach that is open and individuals may well respond differently to the same thing. The appeal the preacher makes is what Reid calls “persuasively indeterminate” – inviting but not seeking to control a particular response by the whole group.
Full disclosure…I love this at times…but it may require a congregation with knowledge so that they can get some of the nuances, although I think with appropriate content it can function more broadly.
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