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This Friday, I willl be taking my son to a NHL playoff hockey game. Here in Canada, that is big stuff. My son, twelve years old, is almost beside himself in anticipation. This will be an event! We plan to arrive forty-five minutes early to watch the warmups. We will be wearing team colors and when the game starts, oh will we cheer! We will wave our white towels and focus closely on every shot, hit, and goal. We can hardly wait!
Obviously, I am a hockey fan and there is nothing particularly wrong with that. Still, it has struck me on more than one ocasion that it is a shame that I/we can get so worked up over a sporting event when the event of the Sunday sermon seems to be so routine. A hockey game is a lot of fun, but hardly the stuff that shapes eternity. If we believe that God speaks when his word is preached, there ought to be a much greater sense of anticipation that this event could change everything. There ought to be an Isaiah 6 sense to the sermon, expecting that the smoke will billow and the doorposts will shake, because we wield the Word of God and that his voice will be heard!
The Event
The sermon is a unique and unrepeatable moment. While much profit can be found in reading published sermons from previous times and places, in fact, such readings amount to new sermons. Preaching helps people hear from God. Such hearings are tied to the particular places and times into which God speaks. Preaching, then, is an event. The fourth stage of the process of preaching is delivery, the means by which the preacher delivers the unique moment in time when people hear from God. Preachers and listeners ought come to this moment with a holy sense of expectation. This is a time of reckoning, unique and unrepeatable. It is worthy of the removal of the preacher’s shoes, for the place upon which we tread is holy ground.
Steps to Delivery
There are several aspects to the effective delivery of a sermon. Each one must be considered with a purposeful attention to context.
Step One: Sermon Notes
A key consideration in the presentation of the sermon involves the notes that the preacher uses. The preacher needs to decide whether he or she will make use of a written manuscript or an oral manuscript. Using written notes, whether a complete manuscript, or only partial notes offers the advantage of confidence. The preacher who has notes in hand has less to worry about in the pulpit. The Holy Spirit can work in the wordsmithing as effectively in the pastor’s study as in the pulpit. The disadvantage, however, is in the potential for coldness in delivery. A sermon read to the congregation often communicates an unwelcome staleness. The listener can get the sense that the sermon is a canned and packaged product dangerously near its sell-by date. This potential, can be mitigated by the use of partial notes, ensuring that the preacher remembers the critical features without gluing the speaker to the page.
The other option, of course, is that the preacher adopts an oral manuscript, preaching extemporaneously without any notes at all. The obvious advantage is communication. A speaker who stands in front of a crowd, looks them in the eye, and speaks truth to them is hard to resist. Of course, the disadvantage is incoherence. The potential for confusion is high when the preacher is working from memory. Such a potential is avoided only by effective sermon assimilation. Memorization is not normally the solution. Sermons that appear to be memorized have the same problem as those that appear to be read. Any advantage is lost if the listener gets the idea that the preacher is simply reciting. Worse, the preacher can find him or herself struggling to remember words memorized as opposed to concentrating on the proclamation of the truth.
The preacher is advised to find a method that suits his or her present state of competence. The resulting method should allow for maximum eye contact and personal communication while offering maximum comfort for the preacher who needs to be focused on the message and not on the manuscript.
Step Two: Physical Presentation
Homiletic textbooks give much attention to physical delivery. Of course, the best-delivered sermon, will not achieve much if the message is not well founded and well assimilated. Correct gesturing is of little use to a sermon that doesn’t bear the word of God. Nevertheless, preachers will do well to give consideration to the physical aspects of delivery. The difficulty, however, is that there is little that one can say about the subject that will carry the freight in every situation and for every purpose. How one dresses, as an example, is entirely dependant upon the vagaries of the setting in which one will preach. Wearing a tie could be death for a preacher in one setting; just as forgetting to wear the tie could be mortal in another. Rather than seeking one-size-fits-all prescriptions, the wise preacher will look to adopt whatever helps. If it helps to wear the tie, then by all means, do so. If the pulpit is only getting in the way, then the preacher ought to get out from behind it. If the PowerPoint presentation can be used in a way that enhances delivery without creating a barrier to communication then its use is warranted.
Of course, it is difficult to predict infallibly what will be helpful in sermon delivery. This of course, requires the preacher to pay particular attention to audience exegesis and sermon assimilation. The preacher that is striving to strategically insert the correct gesture is investing energy in the wrong thing. The best gesture will derive naturally from the preacher’s engagement with the message as it is offered in the moment. Preachers, awed by God’s presence, and compelled by the truth they are communicating will not be caught up in the self-conscious fears of one who is playing safe, or hiding from the people.
The preacher ought to speak with conversational passion. A grand style, forced upon people unfamiliar with such eloquence will only distance both preacher and message. A disinterested stance will create a similar lack of interested in the congregation. The listener needs to gain the sense that the preacher is speaking directly to him or her and that there is some urgency to the engagement. The preacher ought to think about a time when he or she was engaged in energetic discourse in a cherished subject with a good friend over coffee. That would strike the right tone. Listeners need to feel like they are in conversation with someone that they trust. Yet, at the same time, the listener needs to know that it matters – to the preacher, and to God himself.
Step Three: Mental Attitude
Delivering a sermon can be frightening. Standing in front of a crowd talking about things that really matter is not for the faint of heart. Roast preacher is a familiar meal at table Sunday afternoons. Preachers are like anyone else. They like to be liked. No one wants to be criticized, and yet preaching can feel like offering gilt-edged invitations to criticism to every friend and stranger who is gathered. Preaching feels as risky as the newest extreme sport.
Fear in preaching is inevitable. The way to deal with fear, however, is not to try to banish it, but to try to manage it. Preacher fear can take one of two forms. It could be cast, as the fear of man or it could be the fear of God. The fear of man is debilitating. Preachers need to think about what the listener thinks in the sense that they craft sermons that will help the listener hear from God. Yet preachers ought not take it personally. When people confront the word of God, it often pinches. People who don’t like to be pinched will often try to behead the messenger. Preachers get caught in the crossfire of a listener’s anger with God. Preachers that allow themselves to fear this kind of response will find themselves handcuffed.
The answer is for the preacher to transform the fear of man into the fear of God. The fear of God is not debilitating. It is motivating. The fear of God leads the preacher to say with Paul, “woe is me if I don’t preach the gospel.” The fear of God burdens the preacher with the knowledge that life, death, hell and worlds unknown are hanging on the event of the sermon. The preacher who fears the right object will find the power is turned up instead of down.
…Let the Spirit Prevail
A few years ago while attending a conference on preaching in Boston, I returned to my hotel room late in the evening and turned on the television. Much to my delight, they were broadcasting a hockey game between the Boston Bruins and my beloved Vancouver Canucks. I confess, however, that I spent most of the time thinking more about preaching than about hockey. I noticed, as the team was returning to the ice from the dressing room for the second period, a motivational saying that was embedded in the carpet in the hallway out toward the ice. This was the last thing the players saw before stepping out onto the playing surface, and it struck me that, while it was good advice for hockey players, it was even better advice for preachers. It said, “Master technique, but let the Spirit prevail.”
We do the best we are capable of to master the various theories and techniques of the homiletical task, but in the end the power belongs to the Spirit of God. We do our part, but if anything of importance and value is going to happen in the sermon event, it will be his doing.