There is a rhythm to preaching that is hard to understand. We all know what it feels like when we are able to get our sermon in "the groove. Some weeks we have it and some weeks we don’t. It’s better when we have it!

As I prepare I have begun to look for sermon elements that can help me find my groove. Perhaps it will be a story that I can tell particularly well. It may be a question or a problem that I know that will resonate with people. I’m looking for some piece of the sermon that I know I can deliver with confidence. This is an aspect of the sermon that can help me get the sermon to another level.

As I ordinarily work without notes, I find it particularly helpful to know that there is at least a part of the sermon that (1) I know the listeners will find compelling, and (2) that I have assimilated especially well. I know that these two things should be true of every sermon that I preach. Yet, I know that if I have at least some sermonic aspect that nails these pieces, I will likely be fine with the rest of the sermon as well.

I’ve found that as preachers, we can intentionalize this sort of thing. This past Sunday, for example, it was an interactive element. I was speaking on the theme of worship from John 4 and I decided to interact with some of the worship team members would be in the congregation. I knew that my listeners like that sort of thing and that the implication of the interaction would be deeply helpful to the people. I also knew that it was an element that I could deliver with confidence.

Sure enough, when that part of the sermon came along, I was able to get the sermon to another level. From there it was smooth sailing. I was truly “in the groove.”

Hermeneutics sounds like it ought to be a dry and boring subject and it would be if it were not for the fact that it is so important to the real-life issues of our time. I am often amazed by the cavalier approach taken to the Scriptures by people who claim to hold a high view of the Bible. A high view of Scripture does not guarantee an honest reading.

For that reason, I was pleased to read Manfred Brauch’s Abusing Scripture. Brauch serves the church by showing us “the consequences of misreading the Bible.” Those consequences include problems with the use and justification of violence in human affairs, abusive understandings of the relationship of men to women, and a disinterest for justice and the sanctity of life in church and culture. The book is worth considering for the helpful contribution to those three issues alone.

In terms of Brauch’s hermeneutic approach, the book describes…

the abuse of the whole gospel which occurs when we fail to integrate both the personal and social dimensions described for us in Scripture;

the abuse of selectivity in which we ignore parts of the Bible which support something other than what we want to champion;

the abuse of biblical balance whereby we “emphasize certain biblical doctrines, perspectives, teachings, themes or mandates, while ignoring or minimizing the equal, or even greater, importance of complementary ones”;

the abuse of words where words and expressions are interpreted in ways that are not in keeping with the original intentions of the biblical authors;

the abuse of literary and theological context through we fail to appreciate the interpretive keys offered us by textual context; and

the abuse of historical situation and cultural reality in which we fail to appreciate the distinction between things in Scripture that are culturally or historical focused on the specifics of a particular time and place and thereby limited in their trans-historical authority.

In each case, Brauch richly demonstrates his thinking with examples that display the hermeneutic and illustrate the consequences.

This stuff really matters, and it matters doubly for preachers who are charged with the responsibility of rightly dividing the Word of Truth. You really ought to read this book.

Ed Stetzer has published an excellent research-based article on the ways that preachers use the Bible: How Do You Handle the Word of God. Lifeway research looked at 450 online sermons in order to discern the place of Scripture in contemporary preaching.

Some findings…

“Half of pastors traveled verse-by-verse through a passage, and almost half organized their sermons around a theme. Almost one out of five pastors named and explained a Greek word in their sermon. More than half explained verses by using other verses in the Bible.”

“In fact, 41 percent explained at least one church or theological word during their sermon. Another 21 percent avoided such words altogether. This means more than half of the preachers we studied either avoided or at least explained some of the church or theological words they used. While this is notable, it still means that one out of three preachers are not speaking in the vernacular of their audience—at least if the uninitiated or unchurched are in attendance.”

“Half of these preachers focused their preaching around one block of scripture text, moving verse-by-verse through the passage. … Another 46 percent of preachers focused their preaching around a main theme, question, or topic using multiple Scriptures to support it. …Finally, the other 4 percent organized their message around one main biblical character using multiple Scriptures to support the theme.”

“The preachers we surveyed had a definite preference for the New Testament. Nearly three quarters (71 percent) of the main biblical texts were found in the New Testament. More than a third (37 percent) of the sermons came from the New Testament letters alone. A quarter came from the Gospels.”

“When preachers flipped through their New Testament looking for a passage to preach upon, they didn’t flip far. Matthew was the most preached-upon and the most referenced book in the entire Bible. Genesis was the most preached-upon Old Testament book. Luke, John, Acts of the Apostles, and Romans—all from the New Testament—were the other most likely biblical books for preachers to use as a main text.”

While these statistics are interesting, Stetzer’s analysis is important. “How we handle the Word of God matters,” he says. “As preachers, we have a limited time with our audience every week. The question is, how will we use that time? Will we handle the Word of God in a way that demonstrates its authority in our lives and over the lives of our listeners?”

I discovered an older source on the subject of comedy and preaching by Joseph Webb. I’ve increasingly noticed a tendency toward humor in preaching, and decidedly so among the biggest and most successful preachers in North America. As I’ve observed “They’re all funny!”

Webb offers an excellent academic discussion of the nature of humor and the validity of its appropriation for preachers. Ironically, I found these sections a little dry given the subject matter. Still I have a lot of respect for someone who so obviously values the element of humor.

The comic spirit has at least five major dimensions, according to the author. They are, “(1) its immanence, or the clear and unrelenting focus of comedy on human relationship as the essence of all life and being; (2) its doubting, or its deliberate drive to question everything; (3) its incongruity, or its wavering focus on the disparities present in all human life and interaction – in other words, its fundamental irony; (4) its drive to create and sustain ambiguity; and (5) surprisingly, its underlying goal of promoting human, or social, equality and solidarity (21).” Webb describes how each of these develop in a sermon.

For Webb, the comic sermon, sharing many of the elements of a narrative sermon, is the right kind of fit for postmodern times. Based on a logic of juxtaposition, comedy is a more relational way of communicating. Ideas may not be related causally, but they are still relevant if we can connect with them relationally. Webb suggests that such sermons ought to be build episodically, juxtaposing stories and components that may or may not be funny, but which tease out the right kind of response by the way that the sermon elements build upon each other. “Comic,” he writes, “may not mean funny in any overt sense, but may mean that the stories or sequences are humorous by virtue of their sheer humanity, their sketching of human foible and/or encounter (148).”

Academic distinctions aside, most of us look to humor as a way of being more entertaining in our preaching, and this is not a bad thing. Webb quotes Henry Mitchell who once said to the Academy of Homiletics, “We say that we don’t believe in religion as entertainment. We believe in preaching educational sermons, not entertaining ones. Well, the opposite of entertaining is BORING, not educational. And unless we ENGAGE an audience, we need not try to teach them anything at all. Our problem is simply HOW to entertain with integrity; how to engage an audience compellingly, with the gospel, and for high purposes (38).”

Webb adds, “It is time to embrace the idea that the pulpit is a place where something called entertainment should go on. Boredom fostered by the pulpit not only is not being tolerated by contemporary people, many of whom are now former churchgoers, but it will not be tolerated as a preaching paradigm of the future (38).”

Perhaps it is time that comedy be taken seriously, particularly by us preachers.

Just for fun, here are the ten commandments translated for the technologically literate in your crowd, as published in Fast Company. I’ll admit I had to go back to Exodus 20 for some of the translations!

1. no1 b4 me. srsly.

2. dnt wrshp pix/idols

3. no omg’s

4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)

5. pos ok – ur m&d r cool

6. dnt kill ppl

7. :-X only w/ m8

8. dnt steal

9. dnt lie re: bf

10. dnt ogle ur bf’s m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl.

ttyl, JHWH.