Divine Therapeia and the Sermon

Theocentric Therapeutic Preaching

Pembroke

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621898917
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Therapeutic preaching is badly in need of rehabilitation. Administering mini-doses of psychological self-help from the pulpit simply will not do. Therapeutic preaching that is theocentric draws listeners more deeply into God's healing love. It involves setting up a creative conversation between divine and human therapy. In a novel and deeply insightful way, Neil Pembroke shows how metaphors and analogues drawn from psychotherapy can be employed to draw out the power in divine therapeia.

1

Preaching and Counseling in Dialogue

An Historical Overview

As I indicated in the introduction, an important aspect of the model of therapeutic preaching that is proposed is the use of analogues to the divine therapeia drawn from counseling theory. In this chapter, a number of approaches to the relationship between preaching and counseling are surveyed in order to set the context for my own work. Moreover, critical engagement with the various approaches will serve to point up both positive practices and potential dangers.

Though there are clear similarities between preaching and counseling, the differences between the two are also very apparent. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that counseling involves a person-to-person dialogue, whereas in preaching it is almost always the case that only the person in the pulpit speaks. A second manifest difference is that counseling is directed to an individual or to a small group, whereas preaching involves communication to a large group—or at least large compared to the small groups that are associated with counseling. Then there is the fact that counseling works with psychological theory, while preaching is first and foremost a theological enterprise. A fourth difference has to do with the fact that counseling is (most often) construed as a nondirective process; it is the client who sets the agenda for the therapeutic work. In the preaching context, on the other hand, the agenda for the encounter is set by God’s redeeming Word. There are no doubt other points of difference that could be listed. But enough has been said to indicate that scholars seeking to integrate the two endeavors need to get over some hurdles. Over the past eighty or so years, there have been a number of attempts to set up a fruitful dialogue between preaching and counseling. These approaches are critically analyzed below. They are grouped according to the following four categories: Preaching is counseling in a group setting (Harry Emerson Fosdick, Edgar N. Jackson, and Arthur L. Teikmanis); preaching and counseling operate according to the same basic process (David Switzer, Donald Capps, and Randall Nichols); preaching and counseling share a common theological base (Thomas Oden, Asa R. Sphar, and Argile Smith); and preaching and counseling can be integrated around a particular activity (Edward Wimberly [storytelling] and James Wallace [image production]). The chapter begins, however, with attention to a figure who exerted enormous influence on North American preaching in the twentieth century, and indeed continues to have an impact—namely, Harry Emerson Fosdick. In discussing Fosdick’s “project method,” attention will also be given to those in the therapeutic preaching movement who were inspired by him.

Preaching as Counseling for a Group

Harry Emerson Fosdick famously stated that “preaching can be personal consultation on a group scale.”1 This was an idea that gained considerable traction among American preachers in the twentieth century. In the fifties and sixties, when writers addressed the issue of preaching and pastoral care, it was this principle that usually guided their approach. For example, in his book Preaching and Pastoral Care Arthur Teikmanis states his conviction that “dynamic preaching is basically pastoral care in the context of worship.”2 In a similar vein, Edgar Jackson, in writing on preaching to people’s needs, declares that the sermon can be used as “an instrument of group therapy.”3 Fosdick recalls that what planted the seed of this new approach to preaching was a counseling experience with a young man “from one of the church’s finest families” who was in the grip of alcoholism. Fosdick tells the story this way:

I recall my desperate feeling that if the gospel of Christ did not have in it available power to save that youth, of what use was it? When months of conference and inward struggle ended in triumph, when that young man said to me, “If you ever find anyone who doesn’t believe in God, send him to me—I know!” something happened to my preaching that courses in homiletics do not teach. This was the kind of effect that a sermon ought to have. It could deal with real problems, speak directly to individual needs, and because of it transforming consequences could happen to some person then and there.4

As we follow the outline of Fosdick’s approach, we will see that the three aspects identified in the last sentence of the extract are absolutely central. For Fosdick, preaching the saving gospel of Christ is fundamentally about addressing real problems, aiming one’s message at an individual need, and expecting that lives will be made-over as a result.

In an article published in Harper’s Magazine in 1928 entitled, “What is the Matter with Preaching?”5 Fosdick begins by pointing out what he sees as the deficiencies in both expository and topical preaching. In the expository form of proclamation that Fosdick was familiar with,6 the preacher begins by elucidating a scriptural passage. Then she or he proceeds to a description of the historical setting. The next step in the process is to identify the meaning of the text for its own time and culture. The meaning of the text is then developed more fully by referring to the theology and moral stance of the author. This is followed by an attempt to communicate the application of the truth(s) contained in the passage. Finally, there is an exhortation to accept the truth offered and to put it into practice in daily living. According to Fosdick, though there is certainly value in expository preaching, the problem is that most often it is simply done poorly. The preacher gets lost in the historical setting and in the intricacies of the theology of the author. The result is bored, disinterested hearers: “Who seriously supposes that, as a matter of fact, one in a hundred of the congregation cares to start with, what Moses, Isaiah, Paul, or John meant in those special verses, or came to church deeply concerned about it?”7 What makes a sermon a sermon rather than an exposition or a lecture is that it has for “its main business the head-on, constructive meeting of some problem which is puzzling minds, burdening consciences, distracting lives, and no sermon which so meets real human difficulty, with light to throw on it and power to win victory over it, can possibly be futile.”8

It might be assumed that Fosdick would be much kinder to the topical preachers. Not so. He chastises them for “turning their pulpits into platforms and their sermons into lectures, straining after some new, intriguing subject . . .”9 In essence, the problem is that the topical preachers start “at the wrong end.” They think first of their own ideas, when they should be thinking first of the people they will be preaching to. According to Fosdick, it is not a matter of coming up with a novel and intriguing topic to preach on but rather of focusing one’s mind on the real needs of the people in the congregation.

Fosdick offers his “project method” as a superior approach. Edmund Linn offers the alternative designation, “the counseling sermon,” for this innovative approach.10 Even though the “counseling” is offered to a group, it is nevertheless “a conversational message from soul to soul.”11 Such preaching is not simply the presentation of helpful information; it should have the power to bring renewal and healing to suffering and confused persons. That is to say, the goal of the counseling sermon is the transformation of persons. “The preacher should go into his pulpit expecting that lives will be made over, families will be saved, young people will be directed into wholesome paths, potential suicides will become happy and useful members of society, and doubters will become vibrant believers.”12

In presenting his project method, Fosdick draws a parallel with the innovative pedagogy of his time. The new teaching approach starts not with the subject but with the pupil. “Even the food which the child eats for breakfast, coming from the ends of the earth, is used to fascinate his interest in other lands; and we find our ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Preaching and Counseling in Dialogue
• Chapter 2: The Model in Outline
• Chapter 3: God in Christ at the Center of the Sermon
• Chapter 4: Connecting Two Worlds
• Chapter 5: Metaphors, Analogues, and Therapeutic God-Talk
• Chapter 6: Two Sermons with Commentary
• Bibliography