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For years now, I have read articles and papers written by Robert Stephen Reid whose work, in some respects has paralleled my own. Now with the publication of The Four Voices of Preaching we have opportunity to consider in full, Reid’s system of understanding and classifying sermons.
Similar to the model I offered in Choosing to Preach, Reid offers a four quadrant model based on “authority” and “language.” His “nature of authority appeals” distinguish between appeals to “corporate truth” and those that pursue “personal truth.” His “nature of language appeals” distinguish between the “persuasively indeterminate appeal” and the “persuasively determinate appeals.” The result is four distinct voices for the sermon: (1) the teaching voice (argument-centered), (2) the testifying voice (formation-centered), (3) the sage voice (journey-centered), and (4) the encouraging voice (advocacy-centered). While not an exact parallel, this matches the model offered in Choosing as follows: teaching/declarative, encouraging/pragmatic, sage/narrative, and testifying/visionary.
What I take from this, is not so much that we have identified the same exact categories for preaching, but that we have both seen the way that different voices and learning styles adopt different approaches to the work of preaching. No doubt Reid’s take on the situation develops differently due to the fact that we come from different traditions and perspectives within the Christian world.
Interestingly, Reid suggests that the four voices are not options for the preacher. Rather, the preacher is to discover her or his most authentic voice and then to be true to it. “Sermon form,” he writes does not create a voice. Rather, it is an individual’s cultural assumptions about the nature of language and the nature of authority that provide the center of gravity that places one or another voice behind the wheel that brings a sermon to a successful destination (202).”
Further on he writes, “Let me be clear. One does not take up a different voice in preaching by deciding to use a different arrangement theory in preaching. Discovering a preaching voice is not a proposal for a cookbook of personas one can don for different homiletic occasions. Such a view subverts authenticity.”
No doubt, we do have our natural voices – those ways of preaching that come most comfortably to us. Still, I would not hesitate to say that a preacher does well to learn as much as possible from the various voices. As far as I am concerned, an integrative approach that utilizes aspects of all four voices will serve listeners well. After all, preaching is about creating an authentic experience of hearing the Word of God for the listener more than it is about the preacher offering an authentic self-expression.
This book is worth the consideration of serious students of preaching. It is not light reading, but is well researched and will profit those who want to think deeply about the way in which preaching is heard.