There’s more than one way to skin a cat. The truth behind this rather disturbing adage also applies to preaching. There is more than one way to skin a sermon…or something.
Many sermons today could pass as lectures, with their points and subpoints, logical structure, and symmetry. I read recently that the structure of a lot of sermons is to begin by telling the congregation what the sermon is going to be about, deliver the sermon, and then finish by telling the congregation what the sermon was about.
“Today I’m going to speak about the love of God….”
“The love of God is like…”
“This message was about the love of God…”
There is another school of thought, however: Narrative preaching. Highlighting the claims of Eugene Lowry in The Homiletical Plot, Tom Long writes that
One group of writers have as succinct a definition of preaching as you’re likely to hear: Preaching is shared story.
There is much that has been and could be said about this way to skin the proverbial cat, but one of the central truths commending it is this: When we preach grace, we are not preaching about an abstraction or a concept. We are telling the story of a God who has definitively revealed his grace through the story of Jesus, specifically the story of his death and resurrection.
This ties in with yesterday’s post. We bring people to the vantage point where everything is seen as gift by allowing them to be swept up into the drama of God’s gracious action towards his creation. The hearers of the story must become participants in the story. That’s the goal. The lecture-sermon (or lermon, if you like) cannot achieve this. It can do a lot of good things, but it cannot do this, because it does not make the story the thing. Something else is, but what exactly?
Many sermons today could pass as lectures, with their points and subpoints, logical structure, and symmetry. I read recently that the structure of a lot of sermons is to begin by telling the congregation what the sermon is going to be about, deliver the sermon, and then finish by telling the congregation what the sermon was about.
“Today I’m going to speak about the love of God….”
“The love of God is like…”
“This message was about the love of God…”
There is another school of thought, however: Narrative preaching. Highlighting the claims of Eugene Lowry in The Homiletical Plot, Tom Long writes that
…what really gets the juices going for hearers is not learning about ideas but resolving ambiguity, and thus, good sermons should be built on the chassis of a narrative plot that moves sequentially from stirring up ambiguity and resolving it, from conflict to climax to denouement.
One group of writers have as succinct a definition of preaching as you’re likely to hear: Preaching is shared story.
There is much that has been and could be said about this way to skin the proverbial cat, but one of the central truths commending it is this: When we preach grace, we are not preaching about an abstraction or a concept. We are telling the story of a God who has definitively revealed his grace through the story of Jesus, specifically the story of his death and resurrection.
This ties in with yesterday’s post. We bring people to the vantage point where everything is seen as gift by allowing them to be swept up into the drama of God’s gracious action towards his creation. The hearers of the story must become participants in the story. That’s the goal. The lecture-sermon (or lermon, if you like) cannot achieve this. It can do a lot of good things, but it cannot do this, because it does not make the story the thing. Something else is, but what exactly?
No comments:
Post a Comment