The Preacher as Performer

Kenton C. Anderson

There is nothing like a great performance in the concert hall, on the athletic field, or on the Broadway stage. I have found myself spellbound by the cello of Alisa Weilerstein, the bat and glove of Mookie Betts, and the performance of any number of great actors I have seen on stage and screen. I have even witnessed some outstanding preaching by the likes of Robert Smith, Timothy Keller, and others, each of whom were very entertaining in their individual ways. But should we see them as performers? Is that how we understand the task? Honestly, I sense a reluctance, appropriate perhaps, to name our preaching as performance.

It can be tempting for preachers to perform for their audience. Given that listeners consume preaching by choice, it is understandable that preachers would seek to satisfy their listeners through sermons that are likely to compel a crowd to continue attending and supporting the preacher’s efforts. Listeners have options. There are other churches and other preachers, if not in the immediate neighborhood, then certainly online and on their media feeds and sources. Preachers could be forgiven, perhaps, for wanting to perform somehow for the crowd.

There is an obvious danger to this tendency in that preachers seeking to delight their audience risk losing their primary purpose which is to help people hear the voice of God through the exposition of the biblical scriptures under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Being funny and telling homespun stories might not be enough to support the preacher’s first and foremost calling to preach the Word. 

But perhaps there is another way to understand this idea of performance. Perhaps preachers could not merely perform for their listeners but perform upon them. I have benefited greatly from those doctors who have performed surgery upon me. I have been delighted on occasion to drive a car with a high performance engine. This is to suggest that performance etymologically is about getting something done. It is about achieving a desired outcome, which is a fine and worthy expectation for any biblical preacher.

When I preach, I don’t want to see myself as acting, like the movie star whose performance is a kind of pretend, or make-believe. Though, again, when we think about the word means, we might take a different understanding. To “act” is to take meaningful and purposeful action upon some desired outcome. To be pro-act-ive is to be decisive about something we would want to see happen in the world. 

Some of the best movie actors like Daniel Day Lewis or Christian Bale are known for their “method acting” whereupon they embody a role as if it were not imagined, but that it was so. To act, by the very meaning of the term, is to take action or to achieve some intention by act-ual function or act-ivity.

I could go further to challenge the common thought that preachers should not be entertainers. I remember Rick Warren saying that the basic act of an entertainer is to hold one’s attention, which is a worthy aspiration for any good preacher. We often speak of entertaining as a way of describing hospitality, particularly in the context of one’s home (1 Peter 4:9). 

What I am laboring to say is that the preacher’s purpose is not merely to express ideas or to put thoughts out among the congregation, even when they are worthy concepts derived faithfully from Scripture. The purpose of our proclamation, rather, is to announce and enact God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We do this by our words and our ideas, but also by our presence.

I understand preaching to be an event in God’s presence. We preach a living God who is not absent but who is actively engaged in the process, getting something done in the world. He does this in part through calling out preachers who will speak his Word into being in the world.

When we preach, we are performing spiritual surgery, excising falsity and evil, while establishing truth and grace in congruence with the objective truth of the universe that God is establishing. We perform the act of preaching, such that the Word of God does not return empty but achieves its purpose in the people and in the world. 

High performance preaching is the proclamation that God uses to see his purposes complete within the world. In the end, this is the work that God does through his Word and through those he has called to perform this mighty calling known as preaching.

Kenton C. Anderson is president of Providence University College and Theological Seminary in Otterburne, Manitoba, Canada.