Ways of the Word

Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place

Sally A. Brown, Rev. Luke A. Powery

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780800699222
• eBook ISBN: 9781506410302
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Preaching, and the discipline of preaching, is at a crossroads. The changing realities of church and theological education, the diversity of our classrooms, and our increasingly complex community contexts leave us in search of tools to help train a rising generation of preachers for a future whose contours are far from clear. The questions are immense: How to support preachers in contexts that are diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, both inside and outside the church? How to help students take varied contexts seriously as they are formed as leaders?

In Ways of the Word, a dynamic team of master preachers brings much-needed help. Different in race, gender, age, and tradition, both Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery speak with one voice their belief that preaching is Spirit-empowered event: an embodied, vocalized, actively received, here-and-now witness to the ongoing work of God in the world.

They aspire to help students and preachers alike to reflect on a journey of learning by doing. They aim to help preachers to become more attuned to the Spirit, more adept in preaching's component skills, and more self-aware about all that is at stake in proclaiming the redemptive work of God in specific contexts.

7

Designing the Sermon’s Form

Sally A. Brown

A while back, a pastoral search committee asked me to come help them think about preaching. Confronted with dozens of pastors’ dossiers and hundreds of sermons, they asked, “How do you know what to look and listen for?” When we met, I started by asking each one at the table to answer one question: “Let’s say that on your way out of church, you’ve turned to your neighbor and remarked, ‘Now, that was a good sermon!’ Why would you be saying that? What makes a sermon ‘good’?” Among the nine or ten folks around the table there were at least seventeen opinions. But on this much, they agreed: A good sermon takes you to a destination worth getting to—an insight, a shift of perspective, some strengthened resolve—and it leads you there by a path you can follow.^[1]

While this is hardly an adequate account of all that goes into a good sermon, theologically and otherwise, it highlights the significance of a sermon’s form, or design. No matter how compelling a sermon’s core affirmation, listeners will not grasp it or be grasped by it unless the sermon provides a path they can follow. The fact that the Spirit enlivens both speaking and hearing in the preaching event does not excuse us from designing our sermons to be as accessible as possible.

In the first part of this chapter we will consider two basic sermon formats, deductive and inductive. Sermons organized according to deductive logic state the sermon’s core affirmation near the beginning and then unpack it, working out its component parts and implications. Strong deductive sermons tap into not only ideas but also emotions, leading listeners to world-reframing insight.^[2]Inductive sermons, on the other hand, do not put the sermon’s core affirmation up front and build out from it; instead, through a series of moves they build toward the core affirmation, which ultimately occurs about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the preaching event.^[3] Inductive preaching coaches listeners to discover the core affirmation, instead of proposing it and then demonstrating it. Each of these sermon designs can be handled in different ways and each has its strengths.

In the chapter’s second half, we step into a hypothetical congregational setting, watching as its preacher considers different deductive and inductive sermon designs for a sermon on the feeding of the five thousand (Matt. 14:13-21), both aimed at encouraging the congregation’s response to a sector of a city devastated by sudden job losses. We close this chapter with a review of six basic composition skills that can strengthen our sermons.

Sermon Designs: Deductive and Inductive Forms

The parts of a well-crafted sermon flow one into the next so seamlessly that, for the most part, listeners don’t notice it happening. A sermon’s structure is meant to facilitate listening, not command attention. Although some worshipers like to take notes on a sermon, they shouldn’t have to. If the sermon is done well, it will be possible to recall key features or scenes of that sermon without having written anything down.

Every preacher needs to be comfortable with a few basic sermon-design options. This allows him or her to choose the sermon form that best fits the genre or structure of the Scripture text, the listening habits of prospective listeners, and the hoped-for outcomes of the sermon. Preachers who can move smoothly among different sermon formats, week to week, are more likely over time to capture listeners across the range of the listening spectrum.

There are many sermon form options, which can be helpful because there are a variety of listeners in any congregation. No two persons are alike or think the same, act the same, or hear the same things. Knowing different sermon forms can help preachers develop different ways of presenting the gospel so that they can have a hearing from different people. This also acknowledges multiple intelligences and different ways of knowing à la educational theory. Various ways of knowing require various ways of putting a sermon together. Homiletical versatility is a virtue, especially when you are preaching to the same people every week. It is too easy to get stuck in a rut and use the same form each time. But this doesn’t mean that one should necessarily pre-choose a form that will be placed on top of a Scripture passage. Through engagement with Scripture and prayer, how to put a sermon together for any given week will emerge (hopefully not at the midnight hour!). There are numerous options and it is wise to give them a try at some point because not every sermon form will resonate with every person. Form variations are an attempt to have a wider hearing on the long journey of preaching. – LP

Some listeners simply prefer deductively designed sermons. Ask them why, and they’ll say, “I’m a logical, linear thinker” or “I like knowing right away what the sermon’s about without having to guess.” Some listeners, in fact, are frustrated by sermons that do not start with the sermon’s core sentence and then spell out what it means. Ask these folks to listen to an inductive sermon, and they are annoyed; they feel they’re being teased. “Just say what you have to say, please, say why it matters, say it again, and sit down” is their plea. Inductive preaching strikes them as somehow devious.

Other listeners, raised on television shows and Web-based games that depend on following clues, prefer inductive sermon designs. Start your sermon by laying out its major claim right away, and you’ve lost them. A sermon that makes them passive targets for information may leave them disengaged, and clever visuals may not be able to win them over. They prefer sermons that, like movies, unfold scene by scene, letting them assemble the sermon’s clues, both conceptual and experiential, and work out the sermon’s major claim.

It’s a simple fact that not every listener will be equally engaged or helped by every sermon. This is something preachers need to accept, not fret over. Versatility on the preacher’s part improves the chances that every listener will be deeply engaged some of the time.

Deductive Sermon Forms

In sermons with a deductive format, the sermon’s core affirmation occurs early. Then the preacher develops some component parts and implications of this affirmation. A deductive sermon usually begins with an introduction—either an observation about the biblical text’s claims or an observation about some problem in human experience—that makes us want to hear the core affirmation and curious to know more.

Imagine that your preaching context is a rural congregation in an area that has experienced severe drought for months. Crops have failed, farmers are deep in debt for equipment, seed, and fertilizer in which they have invested but now can’t pay for. Worse, your small town feels ignored by local and state agencies that should be helping them. On every farm in the region, money is tight, discouragement is giving way to entrenched depression, and faith is giving way to doubt.

Imagine a deductively designed sermon on the text we studied in the previous chapter, about Jesus’ healing of a woman bent over for eighteen years (Luke 13:10-17). You arrive at this for your sermon’s core affirmation: “Just as Jesus focuses his attention on a bent-over woman whose suffering has become all but invisible to her community, God sees and cares about us when we are bent over by forces beyond our control and unable to envision a hopeful future.”

A brief sermon introduction might sketch in a realistic way what it’s like to wake up and face another day of scarcity: crossing the kids’ favorite cereal off the grocery list because it’s too expensive; dreading opening the mailbox to face more past-due bills; hoping against hope that a pair of school shoes that fit your daughter will turn up at the local thrift store. Then the preacher states the core affirmation (“Just as Jesus focuses his attention on a bent-over woman whose suffering has become all but invisible to her community, God sees and cares about us when we are bent over . . .”). The sermon might go on to explore what it is like to feel “bent over by forces beyond our control” financially, emotionally, and spiritually, and then explore ways those in the community can pull together, being open with their needs, discouragement, and doubts so that the stronger can help the weaker in these areas. Those who have can share. Those who can, listen. And when it is hard to sing the hymns of faith, hard to repeat the Apostles’ Creed and mean it, and hard to pray, others in a community can sing, believe, and pray on our behalf until we can find our voices again.

Another situation might call for a sermon directed more at caregivers. The preacher might start by reporting how he met a man at the local diner the other day who confided he’d been released from prison after a long incarceration but almost wished he hadn’t been. When the preacher asked why, he said, “I haven’t been here on the ‘outside’ [prisoners’ term for the world beyond prison] in eighteen years. It’s changed. I don’t know anybody, I don’t know how to navigate public assistance, and everything confuses me. It’s painful.”

This could lead to a sermon that invites listeners to open eyes and ears to discern types of human suffering that, like that of the bent-over woman whose community may have assumed her condition was simply a just punishment for secret sins, have become all but invisible to us. Starting with a core affirmation that states this, the sermon could explore the implications for sensitivity within our immediate families, our congregation, and our community.

Inductive Sermon Forms

As popular as deductive sermon plans have been and continue to be, many preachers are embracing more inductive sermons designs. An inductive sermon unfolds as a series of moves that “build” its core affirmation, disclosing it well into the sermon. Discoveries about the biblical text and slices of human experience culled from the news, films, church history, or literature converge to construct the core affirmation, step by step.

The Luke 13 sermon for the drought-plagued congregation just discussed can be designed inductively rather than deductively. The preacher might start by exploring at some length the financial, emotional, and spiritual burdens that weigh on church families and then turn to the biblical text. She might simply retell the story of Jesus’ encounter with the bent woman. The core affirmation then occurs, well into the sermon, gathering up the insights that have accumulated along the way: “Just as Jesus focuses his attention on a bent-over woman whose suffering has become all but invisible to her community, God sees and cares about us when we are bent over . . .” We can face our days when we know we’re upheld by a God and a community of faith that neither forgets nor abandons us.

Some readers may worry that inductive sermons lack a clear “application” section. We would contend that there is indeed application, but it happens differently. Inductive sermons draw their listeners into active curiosity, inquiry, and imagination. The preacher can point to practical consequences of a sermon’s core affirmation, but in an open-ended way (“What will this look like? I can’t be sure of the answer for you, but it might be that . . .”). When the sermon has activated listeners’ imaginations, we can trust them to recognize ways its claim reframes their world and allows them to act differently within it. Homiletician Fred Craddock often suggested that sermons should so activate listeners’ imaginations that they leave worship with one foot poised midair, so to speak, ready to be set down in Monday.^[4]

Choosing the Best Design for Your Sermon

Determining whether a deductive or inductive plan will serve best for any sermon depends on several factors, among them the text itself and the preaching context. Four questions can help narrow the options:

1. What are the listening habits of my congregation? Is this an occasion to go with what’s most natural to the majority, or is this an occasion to take a path that stretches them? Considering a congregation’s listening “habits” is especially important when a preacher is new to his or her congregation. A congregation long accustomed to sermons that stake a claim and then logically unpack it (deductive flow) may be confused the first time they hear you preach a sermon that works inductively. Younger congregants, on the other hand, may experience deductive sermons as authoritarian and heavy-handed. Multitasking fifteen-year-olds listen differently from eight...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Spirit-Animated Event of Preaching
• A Spirit-Driven Theology of Preaching
• Preaching and Prayer
• Preaching as an Act of Worship
• The Preacher as Interpreter of Word and World
• Interpreting Scripture for Preaching
• Designing the Sermon’s Form
• Embodying the Sermon
• Preaching and Technology
• Preaching and Christian Formation
• Index