The State of Preaching

I don't know if I've earned the right to make such an evaluation, but here we go. I preached the first service of a weekend revival last night and after the service one of the members of the church engaged me on this very subject. He had spiritually grown up under the preaching of Steven Olford and others and he was lamenting the lack of preaching power and biblical depth in the pulpit today. After the service I went back to the pastor's home and spent the rest of the evening talking with the pastor's family (his wife and in-laws, who are retired Church of God ministers). Part of that conversation also turned to the state of preaching, particularly in the Church of God. Off of this non-scientific "survey" and my own convictions based on very little observation as well as the understanding I have gained here at Fuller both from classes and from teaching students, I want to make a few observations.

1. Based on homiletical training of students, almost all of the training for students focuses on exegetical and hermeneutical training. For instance, here at Fuller M.Div. students must complete both Greek and Hebrew as well as Greek Exegesis and Hebrew Exegesis prior to taking Homiletics. In other words you take four quarters of language study before taking one quarter of preaching. The basic homiletics class (called PR 500 here) is a 4 unit class that is required for the degree. After taking PR 500 the student must take 4 more hours in either homiletics or communications. Most students take a Preaching Practicum course or two (they are 2 hours each) to fulfill their last 4 hours (a total of 8 hours is required in the preaching area). All this to say that the students are heaped in language and study habits and are given some practical experience in preaching (most of the time you will preach twice in each class, so you may preach in class as many as six times before graduating. This doesn't count your field ministry experience where you will probably preach once or twice. The disconnect I see here is that we teach them how to put a sermon together but very little performance training.
2. My mentor, Dr. Clay Schmit, is one of the leading voices in the area of Performance Preaching. Many people are put off by the use of the word "Performance" because they associate the word with the wrong things. Actors perform by becoming a character they are not. Therefore, performance is viewed by many as being akin to fakery or falsehood. Interestingly, the same connotation is not given to soloists in the church. We don't mind that they perform a song. Why the double standard? Because we are still questioning the use of emotion in the pulpit. The subject of emotionalism in North American church history is long and complicated. From the Pilgrims stoic, unemotional delivery (described as the Perkins Method by O.C. Moore in his, "History of Preaching") to the firebrand style of George Whitfield, we are unsure as to how much emotion is too much - how much performance is helpful and how much is manipulative. However, any layperson will tell you that not only don't they mind some emotion from the pulpit, they would also appreciate it if a few more preachers learned the details of rhetoric and performance in their preaching. That is why the area of performance studies is growing and I firmly believe it is one of the missing pieces in how we train preachers today.
3. The lack of creativity in preaching is astounding. We all seem to be trying to emulate someone else. We try to preach like Rick Warren or copy the style of a Joel Osteen. We get sermons off the internet and try and preach them as our own. We discover someone else's outline and preach it as though it came from our sweet and brow. Preaching is not only about doing the study required to preach well, it is also about "finding your voice" in the pulpit. You have not been called to be someone else. God saw you as a unique vessel and decided to use you, your gifts, your talents, your personality, your quirky sense of thinking to be His vessel for sharing the Word. When we copy something from someone else we deny the reality that God desires to use us and that God knew what he was doing when he called us. Use your gifts. Be creative. A three point sermon with a poem at the end may have worked for someone else but each preacher must allow her voice to shine out.
   

Maybe these will resonate with some of you. Let me know. There is more to come.