How Should I Preach? (5 Key Questions for Preaching in a Changing Culture #4)

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In previous posts in this series, I’ve explored shifts in our culture and their impact on preaching. I’ve suggested five key questions preachers must ask and answer in order to communicate effectively within this changing culture. We’ve explored three thus far:

When am I preaching? (cultural awareness)
Who is preaching (identity/ ethos)
What am I preaching? (content/ logos).

In this post we’ll explore question #4: How should I preach? This is a question about sermon forms/ structures/ delivery.

There are two primary answers to this question. Both are related to the fact that we live in a culture that values experience. People are longing for an experience with God not merely for information about God. This kind of culture calls for two kinds of preaching: narrative and creative.

We must preach narratively, using sermon structures that tell a story.

We must preach creatively, using sermon components that engage the listener.

Though the quote is dated now, it still speaks the truth about contemporary culture:

“We’ve already crossed the threshold into a new era–the age of visual literacy . . This year’s high school graduates have spent more time in front of their television sets that they have in a classroom . . . The parishoner who spends fifty hours a year in our pews (perhaps 100 hours if coming on Sunday evening) has the tube turned on in his home more than 2,000 hours each day . . . Cognitive science’s split-brain analysis would categorize traditional sermons, both the preaching of them and the listening to them, as left-brain activities. Homiletics leans hard on analysis, logic and language . . . Yet the cultural communications revolution is aiming people in another direction . . . For the first time in half a millennium the right side of the brain is clamoring for prominence and insisting on involvement in lie and learning. Our listeners are no longer hooked on printed words and linear logic. They are addicted to the right-brain sense of action and involvement.” (Ralph Lewis with Gregg Lewis, Inductive Preaching (Crossway Books, 1983) , 9-10.)

For too long preaching majored on left-brain structures. Michael Casey (Saddlebags, City Streets, & Cyberspace (ACU Press, 1995)) wrote about such preaching within the Restoration Movement. It was “concordance preaching” in which the preacher played the role of a systematic theologian. The sermon was a catalog of rational arguments and appeals. It was expressed first as “gospel facts” in which exhaustive numbers of texts were brought together to explain a topic, and then as “gospel bullets” in which multiple texts were used in preaching to debate and refute “false doctrine.”

Such preaching may have fit a right-brain culture. But ours is as much left-brain as right-brain.

And one way to engage the right brain is through narrative sermon forms.

Richard Eslinger writes that,

“Narrative bears the weight of the biblical record from the Garden to the New Jerusalem. The structure is that of a story, from first to last. The Old Testament is a story which leads up to the Gospel stories in the New Testament. Plot and counterplot, subplot and parentheses–stories and the story carry the record of human faith and folly down the stream of time. Of course the Bible includes deductive treatments for the instruction of believers. But any essays of doctrines, words of wisdom or theological treatises are landscaped amid a multitude of persons and their experiences. Where would you look in the Bible to find an abstract discourse on failure? There is none. Yet from Adam’s abandoned Garden to those left outside the city walls in Revelation 22, once case study after another illustrates human failure and God’s gospel of the second chance.” (Richard Eslinger, The Web of Preaching (60))

Inductive and narrative sermon forms in which “the point” or “points” are withheld until the latter parts of the sermon and which lead listeners along a journey are more likely to capture and sustain attention in a culture like ours. Craig Loscalzo writes that, “postmoderns will respond more favorably to an inductive homiletic method because they are skeptical, subjective, and non-sequential in their thinking and crave stories.” (Craig A. Loscalzo, Apologetic Preaching (Intervarsity Press, 2000).)

In her book The Write Stuff Sondra Willobee shares sermon structures that function narratively. They build suspense. They create a journey. They withhold resolution until near the end. These include the following:

What is it? What is it worth? How can I get it?
Problem, solution
What it is not, what it is
Ambiguity, clarity
Not this, nor this, nor this, but this
Mimic the shape of Scripture – e.g., follow the narrative plot of the text
Alternate between Bible and World

Thomas Long provides similar narrative structures in The Witness of Preaching (Second Edition (166-168)):

This is the problem…this is the response of the gospel…these are the implications. Called “law-gospel” or “problem-solution” it begins by exploring the human dilemma and then announces the claim of the sermon in responses. Most effective when listeners have some shared sense of need or crisis.
This…but what about this…well, then this…yes, but what about this…and so on. Represents a dialogue in monological format. Each step is followed by a questioning or probing of that step, modeled after an inquiring conversation. Most effective when topic is complex, nuanced, or controversial.
Here is a story: Single story = entire sermon is retelling of the biblical story or a biblical truth through a contemporary story; Story/reflection = story is told and then reflected upon for insight and guidance; Part of story/ reflection/ rest of the story; Issue/story = raise an issue or question and then tell story as way of answering question;
This…or that…both this and that. Presents a sermon claim that is either paradoxical or two-sided, such as “Jesus was a servant; Jesus is Lord; Jesus is Servant-Lord.”

Thus, first, we must preach narratively, using sermon structures that tell a story.

Second, we must preach creatively, using sermon components that engage the listener.

One component has to do with language. We must use creative language that engages the listener.

Andy Stanley and Lane Jones (Communicating for a Change (Multnomah, 2006)) remind us of the following:

“Attention and retention is determined by presentation, not information. “ (146)
“How you say what you say is as important as what you say.” (146)
Jesus was God’s ultimate presentation. “[God] wanted to be presented in a way that allowed His prize creation to understand and embrace Him.” (148)

It is important therefore for preachers to pay attention to the language used in sermons-not just what is being said but how it’s being said.

Sondra Willobee (89-91) writes about two types of language.

Steno-Language – the language of logic and definition, the language of business letters, scholarly articles, and management journals. This language relies on abstract, multi-syllable words.
Depth-Language/ Incarnational Language – This language relies on imagery and conveys multiple layers of meaning. It is the language of transcendence. It is expressive. It is “not simply decorative. It wants to bring about the experience or the change it describes.”

Depth-language is the language we must learn to preach in.

Ronald Allen explains it this way (Ronald Allen, Barbara Blaisdell, and Scott Black, Theology for Preaching: Authority, Truth and Knowledge of God in a Postmodern Ethos, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), 164 172.):

There is informational language. It seeks to spell out everything, leaving no questions unanswered. It consists primarily of factual statements. Using this kind of language, Psalm 42:1 might read, “In the same way that four legged animals seek liquid refreshment from a naturally occurring stream, so I sense within me a spiritual desire to know more about you God, the God of Scripture.”
But there is also imaginative language. It is the kind used in novels and poems. It evokes emotions and creates experiences for the listener. Psalm 42:1 is originally written in this kind of language: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”

Imaginative language is the language that captivates and creates experiences for the listeners. It is language that majors in images. Leonard Sweet (Soul Tsunami (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 200-209) writes that in the modern world, the word was the primary unit of cultural currency. In the postmodern world, however, the image is the primary unit. The modern preacher exegeted words to make a point. The postmodern preacher exegetes images. Imaginative language is ideal for exegeting images.

Sondra Willobee provides these hints for using language in ways that are more imaginative:

Choose Specific Details that Show Credibility (rather than “Adolescents face many challenges” say “14 year old Emily goes to Columbus Middle School. Four of her friends get drunk every month…”
Prefer the Words of Ordinary Speech (rather than “A period of unfavorable weather set in,” say “It rained every day for a week.”)
Don’t explain the metaphor.
Substitute Vivid Language for Clichés
Avoid Purple Prose (only include those details necessary to make your point)

Thus language is one component that can be used creatively to engage the listener.

Another component that can be used similarly has to do with media. “Media” has to do with anything that engages the listeners’ other senses. Here are some examples from my own preaching:

During a recent sermon (Jan. 2013), I preached 8 minutes, moved into communion, then preached the remaining portion of the sermon. During communion, we placed whiteboards near the communion stations. People were to write one word indicating what Jesus had washed them from (a theme of the sermon).
In a sermon on doubt (Jan. 2013), we handed each person a red balloon and a black balloon (see sermon video 24 minutes into video). Each person blew up the red balloon while thinking of something they are certain about. Each person blew up the black balloon while thinking of some doubt. On the count of three we released them all upward, lifting both our certainty and confusion to God.
In a recent sermon on the charge that the church/faith is overprotective, we produced a video testimony of the News Director for NBC sharing why she uses her gives in a “secular” rather than “sacred” realm.
In a sermon on specific sins (Jan. 2012), I had a larger than life coffin made with a Plexiglas cover. After the sermon, people came and dropped slips of paper into the coffin, putting their sins to death.
In a series on hell, in one sermon (Feb. 2012) I used 3 chairs to illustrate minoritarianism, majoritarianism, and universalism.
In a series on the I Am statements, leading up to Easter (Feb. 2012) we hired two local painters. Each Sunday we sliced off a piece of the canvas (series was called slice) and the painters painted something related to that Sunday’s I Am statement. We unveiled the painting on Easter Sunday.
In sermon “I am the door” (Mar. 2012) I had a contractor build a door on stage that would open both ways and used it during the sermon.
In a sermon on letting your light shine, we handed out a small round mirror to every Highlander and produced a video of two Highlanders letting their light shine.
At the end of a sermon on the environment, hand out a three inch by one inch piece of recycled paper on which were printed twelve practical steps people could take to be better stewards of the environment.
For a sermon on “fearing God’s purpose” I handed out lima beans at the beginning of the sermon and then ended the sermon by inviting people to come to the front and to exchange their lima bean (a bland and tasteless view of the Christian life) for a paper crown (a bold and scary view of the Christian life).
For a sermon on prayer (“into your hands I commit my spirit”) I invited people to take a three inch by five inch card on which was a graphic image of a suitcase. They were to write on the card their “baggage”—something weighing them down which they needed to entrust into God’s hands. As they left the service, they were instructed to drop the card into one of several large suitcases. I told them that God would take their baggage; they would no longer have to carry it.
At the end of a sermon on sin and the cross I invited people to take a grape, squeeze its juice into a large goblet, and walk away comforted that Jesus would drink that cup, the cup of the wrath of God, taking the consequences of our sin upon himself.

These are just a few of the possibilities. I rely on creative suggestions from others on my team to help me with this. In all of it, the goal is to engage the listener.

How do we preach in a changing culture? We must preach narratively, using sermon structures that tell a story. We must preach creatively, using sermon components (language + media) that engage the listener.