Preaching

Jeremiah Wright, pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, wrote an article that is included in Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st century Black Church about the legacy of Samuel D. Proctor for preachers in the 21st century.

Intellectual Excellence

Wright summarizes the legacy into four components. The first of these is Intellectual Excellence. Here Proctor pushed not only for his own excellence, but also excellence in his students. As preachers, we must always strive to do the best we can intellectually. The Gospel we handle and the God we serve demands that we push for intellectual excellence.

Cultural Relevance

The next component is Cultural Relevance. There is a lot of talk about "relevance" today. Often this is the "seeker-sensitive" approach that seeks to speak in terms that the people want to hear. however, Wright is speaking about a cultural relevance that comes from speaking from a particular cultural framework. We preachers cannot set aside our background when we preach, and we must use it to address the groups that we are called to preach.

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Olin P. Moyd gives an interesting quote on page 121 of his important work The Sacred Art: Preaching and Theology in the African American Tradition. He writes:

The preaching opportunity always occurs at the intersection where the human situation of a particular group and the Word of God meet in time and place. The sermon must be true to the text, applicable to life situations, and always relevant to present conditions and aspirations of the community being addressed. There must be divine answers to the cries, "What must I do in my present situation?" just as there are answers to "What must I do to be saved?" Preaching in the African American tradition always responded to both of these questions.

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About a year and a half ago I posted an article about the preaching methodology of Rev. Mark T. Davis of the First Presbyterian Church in Boise Idaho.

Immersion in the Text

In Davis' approach, the preacher does not attempt to determine what he or she is to say. The preacher is simply immersed in the text. The the preacher preaches out of that preparation. Note that structure is not a part of this preparation. This is a very interesting approach that may be helpful to some preachers.

Recently Fred R. Lybrand has written a book that describes his methodology of Preaching on Your Feet. That method is similar to Davis' approach. Here the preacher is not attempting to preach a set sermon, but is attempting to let the preparation and immersion in the text flow from the preacher to the people.

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Preachers are called to tell the truth. In this respect they are in the line of the Biblical prophets who had to tell truth to power. They had to say, like Nathan, thou art the man.

Bailout of the Super-Rich

This past week, the Senate and the House of the United States rushed together to push through a 700 billion dollar bill to support wall street and avert a collapse of the United States economy. The bill would help to bailout Wall Street executives who had engaged in unregulated speculations and had lost. To keep them from going down, the democratic congress and the republican executive branches rushed to essentially place a tab on the middle class to pay for a bailout of the super rich.

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In Celebration and Experience in Preaching Henry Mitchell provides various sermon types. These help the preacher either categorize or simply think about how to structure a sermon. One of these types is the Monologue or Testimony. An example of this type of sermon is when a preacher takes on the persona of a Biblical character and preaches a first-person story.

An interesting variant of this type of sermon is in Dr. Martin Luther King's book, Strength to Love. In that book, Dr. King provides a modern letter from the Apostle Paul to American Christians. The sermon provides a model for approaching sermons. While I do not think this should be done too often, every now and then it could open up possibilities for the people to really experience the gospel.

The challenge of this type of sermon is that you must really understand the text and its author in their context. This will require following a multi step process to exegete the text. You then must understand the current context. Download our free book You Can Preach: 7 Steps to an Effective Sermon which provides one approach to these first two steps.Finally, you must imaginatively place the Biblical character into our modern context in the sermon. Have you tried one of these sermons? Let us know your experiences by leaving a comment.

Many people contact me wanting a step by step method to learn to whoop, here is the outline of a method.

1. Listen to Other Whoopers

The first thing that one should do if you want to learn how to whoop is listen to other whoopers. Just like if you want to learn how to play jazz, you must listen to others who do it well. Please note that there are different levels of listening. The first level is merely for enjoyment. Here you simply listen for things that you enjoy or that "speak to you" on some level. Another level of listening however is critical analysis. Here you seek to understand what is happening. You listen to the whooper trying to hear the pitch changes. When does the whooper change pitch. When does the whooper change the volume? Does the whooper only get loud at the end? Does the whooper get loud and soft? Another question one might listen for is a sequence of pitches. Does the whooper make use of a sequence (sometimes called a riff in music)? What about rhythm? Does the whooper change his or her rhythm?

Read the Rest Here

As Reverend Harris notes in his helpful article, we should re-read the sermon before we can believe that we have prepared. I wish to make a small addition to that suggestion. When you read it, you should read it Out-Loud. Our inner voice can hide many issues that only show up when you read it out-loud.

Many professors emphasize that reading out loud is an important component of editing, but far too few preachers or writers take the time to really do this. Why does reading out-loud help?

1. It engages more of the senses of the speaker - As you read the manuscript out-loud you exercise all the senses of silent reading plus you use the vocal muscles which employs speech. In addition, you hear the sermon thus employing hearing.
2. It is more like the preaching event than reading silently
3. It allows you to practice the preaching event while editing

Simply put, if one is going to read the manuscript to edit it, one might as well read the manuscript out-loud and gain the added benefit of a more accurate simulation of the preaching event.

This is the final post in the series discussing notes on Dr. Charles Adams' class entitled "Preaching, Black and White." Specifically the lecture entitled "do's and don'ts." Teresa Fry Brown wrote up notes from that lecture on page 164 and 165 of her book Weary Throats and New Songs. We have had nine articles in the series:

• Avoiding a Dull Sermon - How to avoid being dull in preaching effectively.
• Don't Apologize for the Message - When God gives you a message, don't be afraid of it, stand up and preach it if you are to be an effective preacher.
• Preachers must Protect the Voice - If you are to be an effective preacher you must not abuse your voice.
• Your Voice is an Instrument - Preach like It - Don't preach in a monotonous way, use changes in dynamics, tone, and rhythm.
• Preach with the People - Don't preach above or below the people, but to them.
• Stealing Another Person's Sermon - What It Says About You? - What are the results when we steal other people's sermons.
• On the Reuse of Sermons - How to Re-use a sermon.
• Should You Imitate Other Preachers? - What happens when you imitate other preachers?
• How Long to Preach? - How Long should your sermon be?

These tips can help any preacher become a much more effective one. You can read any of the above articles simply by clicking the article titles.