Tuesday, February 27, 2024

The Parish and Evangelism

 

This is the third of my series of blogs on Evangelism. In this, I want to lift up three things.

1.    How Evangelism fits today amid secularization and the end of Christendom.

2.    The Discipleship Movement.

3.    Two Programs that have enhanced the work of evangelism in congregations.

In my first blog, I shared TEC’s official definition of evangelism, its origins, and its unique emphasis on “within the fellowship of the Church.” To the credit of the Billy Graham Association, three decades ago they did research on the follow up with those who decided for Christ at one of their Crusades. What they found was that only about 25% of those who had come forward and made such a response had followed up with this decision.

This was so troubling that the organization made an important decision. Instead of just putting on these Crusades, they reached out to involve local pastors. They asked for their involvement and gave permission to pastors to pray for those who wanted to repent and receive Christ. They also gave permission to pastors to invite the new believer to their congregation for follow up if they did not already belong to a church. I even knew Episcopal clergy that did so.

In other words, the most well-known evangelistic group in North America embraced in practice the last part of our definition, “within the fellowship of the Church” because of the critical importance of giving support to the new believer. It was an important correction. According to the Association, the results were significant. New believers were given spiritual support, teaching, and fellowship on the local level. They more than doubled the number of people who followed up on their decision.

This underscores the relationship between evangelism and membership in the body of Christ. Of course, in the New Testament, the two were assumed to be the same thing. It was the decision by the emperor Constantine to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire that this changed in a dramatic way.  It was the victory of the Cross over the State that had for 300 years persecuted with various intensity believers. Unfortunately, it also gave birth to the possibility of “nominal Christians” or Christians in name or membership only. 

It made possible what we now called Christendom. And its existence comes down to us even today. It is membership without evangelism or discipleship. In the US, where we never had an official state church, The new nation’s constitution enshrined separation of Church and State, however, this did not change the many cultural benefits to being a church member in a dominant Christian nation. This changed after the second world war. With the decline of “Protestant Culture” and the rise of secularism, we have seen the erosion of the benefits of such nominal membership. However, I’ve met many Episcopalians over the years who were members in name only. This remains the reason that I believe we need to do evangelism among our members. This is especially true in all so called “mainline churches.” 

To underscore what I just said above, I want to point out that the major movement of the 1990s was without a doubt the “Discipleship Movement.” It was ecumenical and it touched many people. This was the Christian response to growing secularism and the end of Christendom. In my first 30 years of ordained ministry in TEC, I almost never heard the word disciple applied to individual church members. In my experience, the best method for moving members to disciples was Cursillo.  It was a four-day event of mostly lay teaching and witness done in an incredible environment of worship, love, and support. The summary testimony of so many participants at the end was “when I came, I knew not Christ. Now I know him and want to follow him.”

A popular program aimed at members and new people was Alpha. I had many reservations about the Alpha claim that it was basic Christianity, however it was effective where parishes followed the program. Often the Holy Spirit Weekend at the end was a powerful experience for new believers as well as long-time Church members. Unfortunately, the heavy emphasis on conservative biblical interpretation often brought in people who during the early 2000s were going to have predictable reactions against some of TEC’s decisions regarding gender. My fundamental objection was simple that I had never known a Christianity without the sacraments. Teaching baptism and the Eucharist as not “basic” to the faith already revealed the problem Anglicans and Episcopalians would have with this.

I believe the present theological state of TEC makes Alpha no longer compatible to our congregations and clergy. It also seems that Cursillo has waned for a number of reasons. This, however, does not change the need our congregations have for doing evangelism both inside our churches and between our churches and the increasingly secular society. It actually increases the need. It would be a very helpful thing to have congregations doing this kind of work share their methods for doing it. 

In my next blog post, I will be sharing what I have said to many congregations and clergy about creating two intentional paths in their communities. First, is the path toward full inclusion in the parish versus just making people members. The second path is that of discipleship. These obviously are closely related, but there is a need for both of them.

Monday, January 29, 2024

Learning to do Evangelism


After my ordination, I quickly found that my seminary training had not prepared me for leading a parish It had left me spiritually bereft in dealing with a troubled and difficult parish. The Good News in this was that it left me open to a moment of spiritual renewal. This motivated me to learn more about ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I attended an ecumenical conference in Tulsa, and this ended with a group of five younger Episcopal clergy having dinner with the Rev. Robert Harvey. He was an older priest who led a vital and vibrant congregation. During our meal, we asked him a number of questions about leading a renewal of a congregation. After several questions about how to do this, he stopped us and asked an important question. “How many of you have done evangelism either in your church or among non-churched people?” After a long silence, he suggested that all of us learn how to do evangelism and recommended several places where we could learn this skill. We knew he was right.

This led me to call the New England headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ. It was a hard thing to do. I knew the organization had a strong fundamentalist and evangelical core, but I was willing to sign up for their next “Disciple Making Seminar.” I arrived at the two day event not knowing what to expect. I was stunned to discover that the other participants were all college students. With my clerical collar, I stood out from the group.  I told myself that I might learn something and to just listen.

The first day was spent introducing us to their standard evangelism tool. It is called “The Four Spiritual Laws” and was intended to be used one on one.  The teacher was engaging, but I found myself put off by the simplicity of the four spiritual laws. Essentially, the four laws are (1) God created us and loves us, (2) We have sinned and rebelled against God as sinners, (3) Jesus repaired the gap between us and God by his death on a Cross. (4) We can be reconciled to God by accepting Jesus’ death for us, confessing that we are sinners, and repeating the disciples’ prayer. At the end of the day, I remember thinking “that’s it? That is evangelism?”

Of course, my mainline theological education gave me grave doubts about all this, and the next day I was not prepared for our assignment. We were divided into groups of two and told to go out to a public place and share the booklet with someone. Our approach was to ask, “Have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?” If the answer was no, we were then to offer to share them by way of the booklet with its simple illustrations.  Thank God, my paired student seemed eager, and I was glad to let him take the lead.

We ended up at a laundromat. There were just a few people and the only one alone was a young man in his middle twenties. I nodded encouragement to the student, and he smiled and said, “Since you’re a pastor, why don’t you show me how to do this.” He added that “I will be praying for you both.” I was not wearing my clericals, dressed casually, but I knew that despite my reluctance, there was no way out. 

I approached the young man, introduced myself, and said “Have you ever heard of the four spiritual laws?  He looked curious and said, “No, what are they?” I proceeded to walk through the booklet with him explaining each law. Occasionally, he would nod and look thoughtful. Finally, we reached the end, and I asked THE question. Would you like to accept Jesus and say this disciple prayer? He thought for a few moments and responded, “Yes, I would.” I could see my partner smiling. So, surprised, I said the only thing I could like of, “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

I could not believe that anyone would respond to such a basic presentation, and I genuinely wanted to know why he did. At first, he simply said, “Hey, you are the one who shared this with me!” I pulled myself together and seeing the panic on my partner’s face, I simply asked, “What made you want to say yes? I will never forget his response.

“Well, I’ve heard about Jesus, of course, even attended a few churches over the years, but no one has ever explained this before. I could understand it, and I wanted to say yes.” So, I read, and he repeated the sinner’s prayer and his commitment to follow Christ.  After I suggested that he follow up by finding a church or Christian fellowship. I gave him the booklet and he smiled and thanked me. As we left, he was reading it over carefully.

Later that day, we regrouped and shared our experience in trying to share Christ with others. A few also found a person who, after a few questions, agreed to say the prayer. Fortunately for me, the instructor had my partner share what had happened with us. He did share about my asking why my person wanted to pray, and then went on to share the young man’s response. 

I went home with a bag full of Four Spiritual Laws booklets and a lot of things to think about. I kept thinking about the young man’s honest answer to me. No one has ever explained this to me in a way that I could understand it. I realized that all my theological training and experience in the ministry had left me incapable of sharing the heart of the gospel in a clear and simple way that led to an invitation to respond to God’s gift in Christ.

I also learned the importance of intentionally in trying to share this message. I would now say that evangelism is to intentionally share the good news of Christ with another person or persons, and to invite that person to respond to that message. The role of intentionality struck me. Neither was I trying to argue with someone or to try to intellectually convince them that Christianity was true. I was intentionally trying to share the good news with another.

A lot happened after that. I found other ways to intentionally do this. And I found a more personal way that felt more congruent with me. In my next parish, I started my ministry by preaching the Gospel in such a way that I offered to my congregation a chance to personally respond to the message. To my surprise, a number of longstanding members of TEC responded and I prayed with them as they made such a decision. A mentor taught me during all this to “never assume that a church member has made a commitment to Christ unless you hear them say that they had.” Note that my mentor did not say that I should assume that someone had not made that decision and judge others. He said do not assume they had.

I later learned how to equipe members of my congregations to be able to say that they had come to Christ and to invite others to also do so. That will be my next blog. For now, remember this. Evangelism involves an intention to share. Many times, over the years, I have prayed that God would give me the opportunity to share the faith with another, but I realized that even if that happened, I would have to be prepared to do it and know what I intended.

Imagine a whole congregation praying, “Oh Lord, give me the opportunity to share my faith with others and wisdom to intentionally do this when the moment arises.” I have further learned evangelism is the Spirit’s work and that God is the great evangelist longing to win the world to God’s own self but has left the message with us to share. 

Let me close with this story. When Jesus ascended to heaven after the resurrection, a group of Angels gathered around him and asked, “Lord, how are you now going to win the over the world.” Jesus, responded with, “I have commissioned my disciples to do this work.” The Angels looked at each other and one finally said, “Lord, what’s your plan B? You know how humans are.”

Jesus answered, “There is no plan B.”

In my next blog, I will share how I equipped others to do this work both in my parishes and in workshops in numerous other congregations.

 

 

Monday, January 22, 2024

Turning to Christ

This is the title of Dean Urban Holmes’ book on evangelism. It is now a classic, and it is my favorite phrase for understanding evangelism. Holmes also had a great insight into a problem TEC has with evangelism. He pointed out that the Church has a linguistic problem. We all share the same vocabulary, but often we mean different things when we use terms. When it comes to the word evangelism, our problem is that all of us know and use the word, but often we mean different things by it.

When I served in Southern Ohio, the Bishop asked me to chair a new commission on Evangelism. Holmes’ point was driven home in our first meeting when I asked each member what they meant by evangelism. The answers varied greatly, and I remember two responses. One person said, “Evangelism means proselytizing other people and I am here to make sure we Episcopalians don’t do it.” A second person added, “I came from an evangelical denomination, and I joined the Episcopal Church because we don’t do it.”  This latter answer is something that I will return in a later blog when I discuss the resistance within the Church to doing evangelism. The first 5 meetings of the Commission were spent just trying to reach some agreement about the word evangelism.

I also learned the painful truth about how people use the word. After a year of discussion and planning, we went back to the bishop to suggest a strategy for evangelism in Southern Ohio. After he read it, he said to me, “That’s not what I think evangelism is.” The bishop a disillusioned former evangelical now believed evangelism meant advocacy and social change. At first, I felt let down by the bishop, but Urban Holmes’s comment helped me understand that I was naïve to take on the work without finding out first what the bishop meant.

As the Church prepared for the decade of evangelism in the 1990s, our bishops spent much time coming to a definition for TEC. They built on William Temple’s saying that “Evangelism is the presentation of Jesus Christ in such ways that men and women are led to accept him as Savior and follow him as Lord. When Temple's definition was expanded to “follow him within the fellowship of his Church,” English evangelicals led by John Stott objected to this. They stated that our job was “to proclaim” the good news of the Gospel and not to attach people to the Church. They argued that evangelism was centered on the decision and not on church membership or formation.  Of course, the baptismal service affirms the role of the Church in the formation of a new Christian. Fortunately, our bishops embraced Temple’s fuller definition and added the words “in the power of the Holy Spirit.” After all, evangelism is God’s endeavor through Christ and not based on human determination to “make” people believers.

What is evangelism according to TEC? Our official definition is “Evangelism is to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that persons are led to believe in him as Savior and follow him as Lord within the fellowship of the Church.”

What is not evangelism? It is not as one Bishop famously said, “everything the Church does.” It is not diversity, inclusion, and equality. It is not demanding social justice. It is not offering a food bank, or providing shelter for those who need it. It is not marching for someone or some group’s rights. As important as all these things are, they are not evangelism. I would add that if everything we do is evangelism then nothing is evangelism.

However, I would strongly like to repeat an observation often made by Bishop Payne. He would point out that “evangelism is the most inclusive thing the Church does.” Remember the biblical witness. In the beginning, all Jesus’ followers were Jews. Then the gospel was shared with the Greek Speaking Jews. Then it was shared with the Samaritans. Then it was carried to the gentile Cornelius and his household. And Acts tells us that the home of Paul’s missionary work was not Jerusalem but in the multicultural community of Antioch. And, of course, it was there that the followers of the way were first called Christians. This was the risen Christ’s intention, “go and make disciples of all nations (“etna” or “people groups”) baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them all I have told you.”

Clergy often say that the decade of Evangelism was a failure. That is not correct. From 1995 to 2000, TEC was the only growing mainline Church in the United States. Why was this true? It happened because with a clear definition of evangelism, we expanded the ways that we presented Jesus Christ to our own members and to the non-churched. Many congregations started offering different methods for evangelism and many dioceses sponsored them. Are there Episcopal congregations and clergy who still do evangelism? Yes, there are, but they are now seen as outliers and are few in numbers.

In this series, I intend to explore this topic more fully. In my next blog, I want to share how I learned to do evangelism and what I learned about evangelism by doing it.

 

 

 

 


Tuesday, November 28, 2023

ASA: Love It or Hate It but Use It


 I have read with interest several comments by Episcopal leaders critical of measuring and reporting the Average Sunday Attendance of congregations. This is important. ASA is not a measurement of success.

For Example, a congregation with an ASA of 250 is not “more successful or better” than a congregation with 95 ASA. Bigger is not better when it comes to congregations. As a consultant, I use ASA as one measurement reporting this number. My interest is rooted in the fact that I am one of two people who made the Average Sunday Attendance a factor in the annual parochial reports of Episcopal congregations. I learned the importance of this number from my mentor Lyle Schaller.  I thought it would be helpful if I clarified what this number means and what it does not mean.

Let me repeat what I have taught for 30 years. Average Sunday Attendance of the 52 Sundays of the year is NOT, as I have heard said by several leaders lately, a measure of success!  It is a tool to help measure the trends and health of a congregation and can understood best in context. 

The first trend is what this year’s ASA is when put alongside the ASA for the last ten years.  When Bishop Payne would visit a congregation for confirmation, he would meet with the Vestry and share with them 3 numbers for the last ten years in graph form. One number was membership. The second was stewardship (the average annual giving.) and the third was ASA. When we shared this information with leaders, we would often ask them what they thought this means for the future of their congregation. 

I still remember two experiences in doing this. One vestry member said after some silence, “Well, will the last member please turn out the lights when we are forced to close our doors!” The information raised a sense of urgency for a congregation long in decline with leaders who were complacent with the status quo.

A second revealing comment generated while looking at these numbers in a fast-growing congregation but one with conflict was “Who the hell are all these new people anyway?” A single statement made by a long-term leader showed what the conflict was about. My bias remains the same. I think all congregational leaders should have access to this historical information. After all, why do planning and stewardship without knowing the long-term trends. One thing leadership must understand is that if you keep doing what you have done, you will get what you have always gotten.

The second thing that ASA over time reveals is the type of congregation. We used Schaller’s numbers for four sizes: Family size between 20 and 70, Pastoral size between 80 and 150, Program size between 225 and 400, Recourse size between 400 and 1,000, What do these numbers mean? There are 4 distinct ways of being the Church. 

How a congregation remains stable, or declines, or grows is particular to each size. Some of you will remember a helpful tool from Presiding Bishop’s Office, “Sizing Up the Congregation for New Membership Growth” by Arlin Rothauge. What we did in the Diocese of Texas was to resource our local leaders with this information and easily 80% would plan and make healthy choices based on their size. Using these resources, we helped the Diocese become the fastest growing diocese for five years in both numbers and percentages. That was a remarkable result. Our result led the 815 staff to incorporate these three measurements into the Annual Reports. These are still being made available and can be found on the Episcopal Church’s website.

Again, while the growth was remarkable, success was not what we were measuring, the ASA and other numbers were diagnostic. You can also see why simply looking at last year’s ASA has little meaning outside of the longer trends.

Now let me say this. Some Episcopal leaders including Bishops, do not want to see this information because (a) our numbers for the past 20 years are very bleak, and (b) they are in denial about the implications of these trends. Denial is never a healthy response by a person, a leader, or a congregation, or even the Executive Council of TEC. Of course, the decline of TEC is a complex issue and needs to be understood in the context of Christianity in North America. My suggestion to leaders is to get out of denial and work for the spread and health of the Church given the current realities.

Some who read this will notice that I intentionally give gaps between the sizes, the most important one in my experience is the gap between the large Pastoral Size congregation and a small Program one. This became so clear to me as I worked with over 150 congregations that I wrote a book about it. If you fall in this in-between ASA, “The Myth of the 200 Barrier” is still a valuable tool. Episcopal Leaders might be interested to know that this book has been used by many Lutheran and Methodist congregations with positive results. 

All of this has been reinforced by the application of Systems Theory to ASA and its revelations for leaders. Each size represents a system or culture that can have both positive and negative health implications.

So, the next time you hear one of our leaders denigrating the use of ASA, note what it reveals about that leader’s denial and why the use of Average Sunday Attendance is still important. By the way, the ASA for our congregations dropped from pre-Covid of 65 to today’s 35! No wonder many of our leaders are caught in such strong denial!

 

 

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Preaching Habits

 

There have been in recent years several significant books on the dynamic of habits. I have read much of the literature on this topic and watched several YouTube videos that show both the benefits of habits and the downside of habits. I would like in this blog to apply some of this to our preaching. 

Habits that Help

Right up front, we should acknowledge that we clergy have formed some significant habits around how we prepare our sermons. For example, I keep an illustration file that contains material and stores from different sources that I may use at an appropriate moment in a sermon. I draw these from wherever I can find them. In recent years this has included items from the internet. Mostly in my early days of preaching, these were from books or articles. Occasionally, I borrow from other preachers. When I do this, I cite the source. I was once disturbed by hearing a preacher use an story from The Anglican Digest that I had read the past week. It was disturbing because he made it first person, as if it was his experience. Of course, this is plagiarism. As one of my teachers once said, “Stealing sermons is like stealing shoes. It’s wrong!”

Another habit that I have developed over the years is doing my research on the lectionary readings on Mondays and start writing the sermon (or outline) on Thursday. I always do my final version of my sermon on Saturday. For many years, I also had a habit of reviewing the Gospel readings for the next season of the Church Year. This became even more necessary with the three-year lectionary. In my last decade of full-time work, I would just review my notes from past studies. In other words, sometimes our habit help us. 

I mention all this because they illustrate habits that help me prepare for preaching better. I have known a couple of Presbyterian preachers who prepared an outline of sermons for the next year. I cannot imagine doing this. However, my sermons have both a title and a descriptive sentence (often called a “sermonic sentence”), and I keep these in order from Advent though Pentecost. That way, I can look back on my last year and see if a particular form or theme has been overused. 

 On the other side of the preaching event is another habit that some of you have discovered. It is to periodically ask your congregation for feedback.  Providing a structured way for people to give such feedback is a habit that many clergy have found helpful. The topic of helpful habits for preparing a sermon is one that could be shared in a discussion group with other preachers. 

Unhelpful habits We Should Avoid

The top of my list would be using the same form for every sermon. As I have mentioned elsewhere in my blogs, I learned the need to vary the form of my sermon from Fred Craddock in his classic text “Preaching.” 

In speaking of the forms of oral communication available to a preacher, this is what he says. “The forms of which we speak are and have been for centuries the common store of writers and public speakers. In other words, these structures have demonstrated repeatedly that they can carry the burden of truth with clarity, thoroughness, and interest, and therefore, have come to be regard as standard.” 

Then he lists eight these. He uses descriptive terms and not those of classical rhetoric.

  What is it? What is it worth? How does one get it?

   Explore, Explain, Apply

   The Problem, the solution

   What it is not, what it is

    Either/or

    Both/ and

    Promise, fulfillment

    Ambiguity, clarity

    Major premise, minor premise, conclusion

    Not this, nor this, nor this, nor this, but this

    The flashback (from present to past to present)

    From the lesser, to the greater 

Then he observes, “No small amount of biblical, theological, and pastoral instruction, encouragement, and urging can be framed on these forms with a minimum of distortion, reduction, or dullness.” (Preaching, pg. 177) He is right! In my sermon note pad, I keep a list of these forms and during preparation I ask, “Which of these forms will best communicate this sermon?” I find that if I don’t remind myself of these variations, I tend to overuse two or three of them. I find that many preachers do not even try to vary their form. Like the torture bed of mythology, we arbitrarily make every message fit our favorite form. 

The Most Overused Form

I have no doubt which of the above forms is used and overused by too many Episcopal Clergy. It is the “Explore, Explain. Apply” method. I call this the Seminary of the Southwest Form because I worked in the Diocese of Texas for almost 10 years, and it was the form most used by their graduates. They have developed a form for their sermons and their habit of using it over and over makes preaching predictable and sometimes boring. I also observe that over time the applications tends to be too overused. We need to remember that even the most profound truths repeat time and time again become cliches. 

Another over used form comes from 19th century preaching and is essentially a written form. I was once on the staff of a large Episcopal Church. The Rector was conscientious in putting together his sermons. Unfortunately, he had learned to use a common 19th century form. It was Introduction, 3 points, and a conclusion/application. I once asked him why all his sermons had 3 points. He observed that they could have less or more, but that the 3-point division was easy for him to build upon. What he did not observe was how his congregation had learned his form. If he took to long for his first point, people began to look at their watches. He had become predictable. 

Another Rector of a large church said he used the 3-point sermon because 3 points were all his people could remember. It made for what he called “a logical progression.” I have the same dislike for the 3-point sermon used constantly as I have for those clergy who have told me that they only preach for 10 minutes because “that is the limit of how long people will listen.” When I teach preaching, I share that time is a secondary value in a sermon. Then I add that a 10-minute sermon that is bad is 9 minutes too long. 

The habit of using the same form all the time is a bad one no matter what that form may be. Besides, why not take the great insight from Craddock. Why not use a form of preaching that best fits the text before us. Trust me, people will listen and will be able to follow and remember. He also observes that another positive use of these forms is variety. Develop the habit of asking, “What oral form would best serve the message of this text and the message of my sermon?” 

For example, recently the lectionary had what I consider the singular hardest passage for Episcopal clergy to preach. The pagan widow pleads for Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus responds with “Is it right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs?” I read and listened to several attempts by Episcopal preachers to deal with this text. I noted that all used the Explore, Explain, Apply method. And what did they explore? In this story Jesus sounded cruel. If he said this to the widow, he may even have been racist, but he was certainly heartless. They went on to explain basically that Jesus would never have said such a thing. Obviously, the problem for our clergy is that the story does not fit our 21st century view of Jesus. It did not allow him to be (a) human, (b) someone who could be astonished, (c) confrontational, and most of all (d) Jewish. A better form would have been the one intended by the gospel writer, “Not this, not this, but this!” I think a better message from this story is “Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was astounded to find faith were his people never expected it to exist. We Christians can find too that faithfulness isn’t only the prerogative of God’s chosen people!” 

Use of a Narrative is an Underrated Habit

If you want a suggestion for a more effective and usable form, I suggest Narrative with the use of elaboration, teaching and illustrations. Recently, I joined my fellow 8 0’clockers at Grace and heard an excellent sermon using just such a form on the parable Jesus told of the two sons. As you remember. one said “no” to working in the vineyard but later repented.  The second son said “yes” but did not go. Our preacher started in the right place. Staring at us she asked the question that led Jesus to share this parable. “By what authority do you preach?” She noted, it was a fair question by those appointed to authority themselves. Her ending drove home her point. When we speak God’s truth, the words contain their own authority, just like John the Baptist and Jesus! 

Summary: In learning to Preach Better, there are habits that help and habits to avoid. Building on the good habits makes us a stronger communicator of the Gospel. Avoiding bad habits, makes us a more interesting and effective preacher.

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Develop Your Preaching


Underscoring the difference between oral communication and written communication is important in preaching. Improving our oral communication is an important skill for any preacher. 

In this blog, I want to share how my own preaching developed. Your preaching should develop in your own way given your own personality and preferred style. But avoid arriving at your own comfortable way of preaching. Learn to stretch yourself. People will thank you. 

Why this is a Pivotal Time for Preaching?

Most historians agree that the Protestant Reformation was directly connected to the invention of the printing press. Some even suggest that written communications revolutionized the whole of Western culture. But today, our society is becoming increasingly more visual. Hence the rules of oral communication also work better because oral communication is most effective when it paints a picture for people. 

What I was Taught and What I learned

At my seminary, the assumption in both the preaching classes I had was that a sermon was something we wrote. That was modelled for us by almost all my professors. The most glaring exception was the Dean in my last year. Dean Allen was an entirely oral communicator who never used notes and extensively used story, narrative, and illustrations in his preaching. Several of my professors let us know that his “wasn’t normal” and to try an avoid this. After all, as theologically trained people, we wanted to be theologically and biblically precise. I would add that even if we were wrong, we still needed to be precise, but perhaps I am being unfair. 

So, I went forth with text in hand for all my preaching opportunities. I guess because my personality type was more intuitive, I often felt that my text stood between me and the congregation. It often did not feel natural to the way I spoke or even taught classes. The sermon seemed forced even when I thought the content was good. I often heard “nice or interesting sermon.” Since I grew up in the South where the words nice and interesting are not necessarily complements, I didn’t like this feedback. 

Preaching is after all a form of Communication. 

The first change for me was when I began to read more books on communications in general. In these, the main points were often about communicating better. My training had been on communicating more accurately. One phrase I found in a book in the late 80s on creating presentations stuck with me. It was called I Can See You Naked. (I think today it’s in its 30th edition!) The author used short chapters, illustrations, and practical advice, hence, modeling what he was teaching. One chapter was titled Lectern or No Lectern. The author said no lectern because lecterns reminded people of pulpits and “we all know how boring preaching is.” From this communication book, I resolved to never bore people again! 

There it was the unspoken truth in many churches. Preaching was often boring. It was in this book that I was first confronted with the idea that oral communication was different than a lecture or sermon which were often written and hard to follow. This is a point that Fred Craddock reminded his students about throughout his text Preaching. But it would be several years before I discovered Craddock. I hope you have discovered him. I was the beneficiary of hearing him on tape and then at live workshops on two occasions. 

My question and quest became what was I to do? The idea hit me that most PowerPoint presentations for example could produce notes and these notes make for excellent outlines. So, I moved to experimentations with outlines instead of a written pulpit sermon. I still wrote a sermon (I still do at times) but now I converted them into outlines for preaching. 

You know, typically something like this:

1: A Introduction

1: B The Text repeated

2: A Who wrote this and why 

I meant well, and it worked better. But I remember the day I looked down at my outline while preaching and I had written 3:a Walmart illustration. I paused and looked again and said to myself, “What the hell does that mean?” When I figured it out later, I discovered the two-fold problem. “Walmart” didn’t bring back the illustration and the illustration didn’t really follow the point I had been making that well. It was just an interesting illustration. 

Discovering a Narrative Outline? This led me to more research and one day I discover the term “Narrative Outline.” Maybe you use this yourself. A narrative outline doesn’t have numbers or titles like a formal outline. It has the NEXT SENTENCE you intend to say. So, when I finished my point, I would look down and see, “This reminds me of a run in I had with an angry shopper at Walmart.” The first sentence did two things. At first, it made preaching easier. I often still use a narrative outline for sermons. However, over time I noticed something else. Shouldn’t the point of my last paragraph naturally lead me to the next sentence? 

The reason the Walmart story didn’t come naturally is because often this next sentence was a change rather than building on what had come before. Today, I carry a narrative outline into the pulpit but by the next service, I do not need it. Often when I review my outline on Saturday night, I find that some point doesn’t really fit. I thought when I wrote it, it did. But now with some space I see that it doesn’t fit. So, I take it out. 

I call this the pruning stage when I lecture on preaching. I point out that this pruning almost always strengthens my message. I have heard lots of sermons that could use such pruning. As you can see, preaching from a text often doesn’t help you see that your points aren’t organically hanging together. A narrative outline often makes it obvious. 

Okay confession time, some illustrations are just too good to take out, but at least I am forced to admit why it is there. The danger with this, of course, is that the illustration is so good, people often remember the illustration and forget the point of the sermon. This is NOT good communication and blaming it as the Holy Spirit is a dodge. 

In my next blog, I want to build on one of Fred Craddock’s tremendous insights about the relationship of a sermon to its text. 

Let me close by asking, are you developing as a preacher? I am 77 and I still read books on preaching and communication. I like to think that old dogs can learn.

 

 

  

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Preaching Better: Helpful Hacks

 

I have been listening to sermons by mostly Episcopal Clergy for over 52 years. I have also taught preaching at seminaries and in numerous workshops. And of course, I have preached many sermons. Often, I find some common mistakes we make that contribute to making listening to our sermons difficult for our members. Here are a few things that I have discovered, used, and recommend to our clergy who want to be more effective preachers of the word. 

Remember that sermons are oral communications. One comment that I often hear from our clergy is that they would never get into the pulpit without a manuscript in front of them. When I hear this, I say something like “that’s fine as long as you don’t read it to your congregation.” What is wrong with reading a sermon? 

The point here is that the rules of oral communication and the rules for written communications are different. The oral communicator has the advantage of eye contact, of allowing voice inflection to underscore a point, and of using body motions and expressions to communicate.  Written communications use a different set of assumptions. 

For example, writing allows for more precise language, and I often think that such preachers are communicating more with their seminary professors than with the folks in their pews. It also allows the reader to gaze back in the text to remember the thread of thought. This doesn’t work in oral communication. This is why many written sermons sound like essays. I recommend to such preachers who really prefer this method to consider adding printing out the sermon for their congregations or sending them out as emails. 

I once met a pastor from Korea that had a congregation of over 10,000 members. He told me that his sermons went out to his members the week before he preached them and then the small groups in his congregation discussed them after he preached them. Most of us Episcopal folks don’t have the discipline to do such work, but then we don’t have 10,000 members who pay us to primary preach. I should mention that was a Presbyterian and his sermons were longer than 20 minutes.  My point is that he used the written form to enhance his oral communication. If you use a text, try this to enhance your effectiveness. 

Why All This Matters.  To further drive home the importance of the difference in oral and written communications, I point out to manuscript preachers that just about the best compliment they will get goes, “Gee Father (or Mother) you preached that sermon just like you weren’t reading it!” Bishop John Coburn was the only Episcopal preacher I’ve heard that always used a manuscript but never seemed to read it. I asked him once about this. His response was telling. He said he would never be comfortable in a pulpit without a text, but then he added that of course he memorized the sermon before he preached it. 

I recommend Preaching Without Notes by Joseph Webb as a wonderful book to underscore this difference and to show ways that manuscript preachers can bridge toward more effective oral communication. For example, he reminds his students that if you have a story or narrative in your text, it is easy to look up and tell the story. Like any good story or joke, they have a beginning, middle, and ending. Often the ending has a unique twist to it. This draws people more into the communication process.  

In a recent Podcast on changing peoples’ minds, the speaker, also a writer, shared that research shows that narratives and stories are much more effective in opening people up to new things while rhetorical arguments tend to only reinforce people in their opinions and attitude as a natural internal resistance and pushback to what they are hearing. Have you won any political arguments lately? Probably not by arguing.  

One last thing on oral communications, most of Jesus’ sermons and teachings were narrative and stories. Well, who wants to preach like Jesus? 

And Illustrations Matter!  I have heard and read several teachers on preaching who tend to treat illustrations as “superficial.” This seems to suggest that illustrations are nice but more like fluff compared to didactic material. Contrary, I have found that our listeners often need an effective illustration to drive home the message and make it memorable. Good preachers I know keep files of illustrations to use at appropriate moments. They know that if you can’t illustrate it, it may not be as insightful as you think. 

But what do I mean by “effective illustrations?” First, I mean that an illustration should be directly related to the point you are illustrating. This takes time and thought which by the way is why I seldom write or create a sermon on Friday or Saturday. I prefer my study and first outline be done on Monday. Then I ferment and finally I edit and create the final outline. More on outlines in my next blog. 

Second, I greatly appreciated Bruce Thielemann’s insight that there are some illustrations that are particularly effective at speaking to our listeners’ cultural understandings. One example from historic American culture is what he calls “the myth of the wisdom of country folks verses the foolishness of city folks.” 

A guy from Houston gets in his sports car and takes a road trip to East Texas. He goes down a freeway, then turns on a county road, and finally follows a gravel road till he gets to a farmhouse where the farmer is sitting on his front porch. He spins his convertible to a stop and says to the farmer, “Hey old man, have you lived here all your life?” The farmer thinks for a moment and responds, “Not yet!” 

Such a story makes even city folks laugh at themselves. Thielmann lists five of these cultural examples that I’ve used often. It is worth reading his notes on preaching. He is my favorite preacher of all time. 

Let me close this first blog on preaching hacks with an insight that has helped me when it comes to illustrations.  I read an article back in the early 2000s about “younger” people. By this the author mean “people younger than 40.” I was 58 at the time. He wrote that the average American under 40 years of age have seen 98 movies for each book they had read. I tried this out on folks at the Cathedral. I stopped using books as a reference in sermons and started using movies whenever I could. This got immediate positive feedback especially from parents who told me that their children paid a lot more attention when I mentioned Star Trec or The Lord of the Rings. I noticed the parents did too. My rule is to never mention a book when a movie would work better for our listeners. And even if your congregations are bell-curve 65, even we watch movies. (For NCIS fans, I call this the Tony Principle. 😊) Everything you need to know to illustrate is found somewhere in a movie!

In my next blog, I will share how I transformed preaching that I learned in seminary into more effect oral communications.