Preaching as an Art

Here's a post by Mike Cope that I completely agree with. He expresses well how I feel about sermons.

I USED TO THINK of preaching as science. Take the text into the lab, dissect it, and carve it into three points and an application. Above all, make points.

NOW I THINK of preaching more as art. The goal isn't to make points but to arrive at a point (destination). The message, like Christian discipleship itself, is a journey -- informed by the text, shaped by the text. Instead of seeing myself as the one who explains the Bible to everyone, I see myself as a leader in the journey who escorts people into the messy, marvelous, unbelievable, life-altering world of scripture.

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My biggest influences in narrative preaching were primarily Fred Craddock and Eugene Lowry. I heard Craddock's sermon "When the Roll is Called Down Here" several years ago in college and it immediately connected with me. After reading several books and taking snippets from my talented professors at Ozark, I've decided that even intellectual sermons connect by being overheard. When a sermon involves me in discovering a truth and I get to have an "aha" moment, then the truth becomes mine.

So my attitude each Sunday is that of a tour guide, leading others on a journey that I've just recently taken, recreating the emotions of figuring it out. I'm just trying to arrive at one point and make that point well. It's harder to preach this way and I'm not always very good at it, but it's more rewarding.

It's not abandoning structure. On the contrary, it's more structured than the traditional "three points and a poem" sermon. I think the "boring" preachers out there put their three points in random order or at least not in the best, most intuitive order. And what if an aspect of the faith has more than three nuances? Or less? I put a lot of thought into each "movement" and I'm definately trying to follow Lowry's homiletical plot, where the structure of the sermon takes the listener on an intellectual and emotional journey. People comment that it's more listenable and that they've never heard it "like that" before. I think they have.

It seems to me that Jesus preached this way. By telling stories. By leading his listeners through a thought process until they reached the proper conclusion themselves. Jesus rarely, if ever, gave lessons pre-packaged in predictable standardized units. Even Paul, who you may consider a little more left-brained, chased rabbits in the middle of heavy theological discourse. It was as if you had a transcript of a dinner-table discussion. More natural than artificial, designed for the listener rather than for the speaker.

It seems reasonable to follow that example.