Preaching Connection: Preaching

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The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

The author visits Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley’s birthplace, and the museum there.  Its executive director, Dick Guyton, illuminates Elvis’s stage presence: His “theory is that Elvis’s church experience, oddly enough, inspired his semi-obscene stage style, those signature bumps and grinds.  ‘The preacher in the church he attended as a boy—that preacher played the guitar, he...
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“Joke” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith

“Many ministers include in their sermons a joke or two that may or may not be relevant to what the sermons are about but in any case are supposed to warm up the congregation and demonstrate that the preacher is just folks like everybody else. There are two dangers in this.  One is that if...
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The Grapes of Wrath

Suppose the preacher’s text du jour is one from Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel about how God’s judgment can leave the land desolate, or a house desolate, or the people desolate.   Wind has swept the land of its crops, the farm animals have been sold or wandered off, the cities have turned into ghost towns,...
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A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

Annie Proulx describes Maclean’s art by quoting a talk Maclean once gave on “Teaching and Story Telling.”  Maclean had been in the woods as a young man and had slept in bunkhouses where men told stories at night.  He learned “things fundamental to the art: I saw early that oral stories have to be short....
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Creative Writing: For People Who Can’t Not Write

“A good writer is a graceful guest in the reader’s brain.”  Cites Hemingway: “Easy writing makes hard reading.”  The writer hasn’t worked at it.  And the reverse is true too: hard writing (i.e., the kind of writing the author has suffered over) makes easy reading.
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The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

“I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound.  You may be able to do without them if you have genius, but most of us have only talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and...
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Creative Writing: For People Who Can’t Not Write

“Many readers claim to be bored, but no writers claim to be boring. W. Somerset Maugham said, ‘I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.’ Most writers admit about anything before they admit they are boring.”
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Craddock on the Craft of Preaching

Craddock spent his preaching and teaching life encouraging preachers to get very specific in their references and descriptions [he wouldn’t say “references and descriptions;” he’d say “get very specific in what they talk about”]. “We don’t want to get lost in all those long words that end in ‘-ity,’ ‘-ship,’ and ‘-ness’: responsibility, stewardship, righteousness,...
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Craddock on the Craft of Preaching

Craddock used to tell lots of stories and was good at it. Here he gives a little advice. Use as few words as possible, and especially as few adjectives. Let characters’ words and actions tell the audience who they are, not your piling up of explanatory adjectives. Don’t do that. Let the listeners do a...
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Craddock on the Craft of Preaching

“The Bible takes listening very seriously. The Bible’s term for “listening” is translated most often as “obey” [as if listening leads seamlessly to obedience, or maybe even constitutes the first stage of it]. The Bible doesn’t know the difference between “listen” and “obey.” Listening is fundamental, but it is so hard to do. We have...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

p. 315, from John Broadus, A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (1889 ed.) Broadus points out that the Gk. word homilia (from which we get “homily”) means “conversation, mutual talk” and that the 9th century writer Photius remarks how like conversations Chrysostom’s homilies were. He seemed to have his listeners right in...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

p. 313, from John Broadus, A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (1889 ed.): “Rhetoric has to do with the use we make of material, the choice, adaptation, arrangement, expression. But after all the material itself is more important . . . The things which ought most to be thought of by the...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

from John Broadus, A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (1889 edition): Broadus speaks of the young preacher’s penchant for imitating older, more experienced preachers, and of the resident perils. All are aware that there is a both a conscious and an unconscious imitation. That which is unconscious is, of course, not so...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

Augustine knows that various purposes of rhetoric—e.g. to instruct or to inspire—require different forms of rhetoric. “If the listeners need to be instructed, this calls for the narrative style, provided, at least, that they need to be informed about the subject to be dealt with, while for the clearing up of debts and the establishment...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

Augustine highlights the need for those who would be eloquent in the service of truth to listen to those who are already eloquent: “The fact is that, given a bright and eager disposition, eloquence will come more readily to those who read and listen to eloquent speakers than to those who pore over the rules...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

This is Augustine in On Christian Doctrine, distinguishing “those,” i.e., the pagan sophists, from “these,” i.e., Christians who use rhetoric in the service of the gospel: “Rhetoric, after all, being the art of persuading people to accept something, whether it is true or false, would anyone dare to maintain that truth should stand there without...
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The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present

Lischer introduces a section from Book 4 of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine: Augustine knew that sophists used rhetoric for nefarious ends—chiefly to persuade people of falsehood. But this in no way suggested to Augustine that the church should therefore abandon rhetoric. The church finally lays claim to truth and beauty wherever they may be found....
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“Preaching to Unbelievers”

We live in an unchurched culture, so that preaching to unbelievers is cross-cultural ministry. We don’t mind preaching to the raven-haired Presbyterian women, aged forty-five, who look good in their sweaters and wool blazers. But who will talk to the SOB’s? Remove every barrier except the scandal of the cross. Preaching is crucial in addressing...
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Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Buechner’s recipe for wording the Sunday sermon: Let [the preacher] use words, but in addition to using them to explain, expound, exhort, let him use them to evoke, to set us dreaming as well as thinking, to use words as at their most prophetic and truthful. The prophets used them to stir in us memories...
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“Beyond Self-Help Chatter”

“I took a vacation last summer, and of course I visited a church. It was a mainline church, which meant (among other things) that the Scripture readings for each Sunday were prescribed. In the best of circumstances, set readings motivate preachers to dig into a Bible passage not of their own choosing and to listen...
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Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Lamott offers a short story plot formula that will probably work for narrative types of sermons. It’s the ABDCE formula from Alice Adams. Action: A revealing happening good enough to hook us. Background: Who are these people? How did they get that way and how did they come to act as they do? What was...
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“Echoes of the Gospel-event in Literature and Elsewhere”

Reflects how many gospel themes are also in fairy tales you read to children: good/evil struggle is the transcendent one; but there are also others. Ordinary people are assigned extraordinary tasks for which they get supernatural aid; a prince marries a princess who is then elevated by the process (Christ and the Church); the refrain,...
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The Four Pages of the Sermon

“Sermons need to major in God and in grace. Social justice liberals and evangelicals alike tend to give us shoulds, musts, and have-tos. We don’t get enough Easter, Pentecost, Ascension. We get Emerson under other names. We get self-reliance preached to us, and it can’t save us. Preachers avoid grace because it ‘lets people off...
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Why Preach? Why Listen?

A Yale Divinity school student of the late 60s was all charged up about Karl Barth. He pestered people in seminars, and became annoyed at the mild interest of some of the other students and the profs. He preached 40 minutes of Barth from local pulpits, arranged all his papers so that they would conclude...
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“Preaching to Believers”

(Here’s one listener’s summary of what Ortberg said) When a person is called, gifted, etc., and preaches, something happens! Main reaction the preacher has at some point; I must be crazy! Who am I? We get sick of our own sermons. We’ll be criticized. We fail. Then we have to greet people. People thank us...
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And the Sea Will Tell

An attorney’s summation for the jury is the most important part of his case presentation, says Bugliosi. And he discusses exactly the same questions of delivery (extemporaneous? outline? written out?) that preachers discuss. Same conclusion as the veteran Fosdick: “’In my opinion, a summation must be either written out or set down in a comprehensive...
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Roger’s Version

(Roger Lambert, a middle-aged divinity professor is speaking) ”I was much admired, actually, in my pulpit days. Raise the doubts, then do the reassurances. People have no idea what they’re hearing. They just want a certain kind of verbal music. The major, the minor, and back to the major, then Bless you and Keep you,...
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Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet

Fosdick wrote out his sermons in the early years, memorizing them and then bringing almost nothing with him into the pulpit. Then for a while he worked from an outline. Eventually he began to take a full manuscript with him again. He explains this last choice: “I have found that one can have the full...
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Between Two Worlds: the Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century

The world’s great literature addresses a lot of the same questions as Scripture does: “What is the purpose of our existence? Where did I come from and where am I going to? Why this thirst for transcendence? What is true freedom? Why does our reach exceed our grasp? Is it really possible to master oneself...
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“Colleagues in Worship”

“At a very large funeral for a very rich man, the rector was late, and the poor curate, thinking to help things along, began the service with the burial sentences, ‘I am the resurrection and the life . . . .’ when in rushed the harried rector, who jumped to the head of the procession...
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Rabbit Run

Eccles [a young episcopal minister ] ruminating about another, and quite liberal, minister: “With his white collar he forges God’s name on every word he speaks. He steals belief from the children he is supposed to be teaching. He murders faith in the minds of any who really listen to his babble. He commits fraud...
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The Winter of Our Discontent

Mrs. Baker speaks: “Hasn’t it been a glorious day? Did you enjoy the service? For a clergyman, I think he’s such an interesting man.”
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William Sloan Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience

Goldstein has written a clear and readable account of this remarkable figure–athlete, bon vivant, pianist, preacher, raconteur, CIA agent—who was one of the most important colleagues of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights struggle, and maybe the most important white colleague. Many believe that Coffin was influenced more by the social philosophy/theology of...
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“The Pulpit King: The Passion and Eloquence of Gardner Taylor, a Legend among Preachers”

p. 25 Gardner Taylor is characterized by Edward Gilbreath as being like the great Charles Spurgeon, who once said that a preacher has to be willing to put not just hard work, but “heart work” into preaching. “He must feel as if he could preach his very life away before the sermon is done.” P....
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Darker Than Amber

Travis McGee, the main character in the story, has a friend named Meyer, who is a champ at listening: Meyer is a listener: “He actually listens and actually cares, and can make you feel as if his day would have been worthless, an absolute nothing, had he not the miraculous good fortune of meeting you....
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Additional content related to Preaching

Commentary

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

God graced my father with a long and fruitful career as a professor of Germanic Languages. He was widely respected and appreciated by his students and colleagues. However, his teaching style was quite understated. My dad seldom raised his voice or made demonstrative gestures while he was lecturing. I sometimes wonder if that was the…

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Commentary

Mark 1:29-39

SO MUCH IS HAPPENING HERE! Welcome to the Gospel of Mark. Last week felt like it was quite the scene, but look what the rest of the day brought! Jesus and the disciples leave the synagogue and go to Peter (still being called Simon) and Andrew’s house, where Jesus performs a private healing of Peter’s…

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Commentary

Psalm 95:1-7a

This is another one of those lections that stops just short of the place in the psalm where there is a decisive—yet probably important—shift of tone and theme.  Yes, the first seven verses of Psalm 95 are a lovely doxological celebration and a call to worship this Creator and Redeemer God for all God is…

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Commentary

Psalm 103: (1-7), 8-13

In past sermon commentaries here on the CEP website I have relayed the anecdote involving the author John Donne.  A friend of mine who taught English once lent an acquaintance a book of collected writings by John Donne.  When the person returned the book, my friend asked him what he thought of Donne’s work.  “He’s…

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Commentary

Romans 10:5-15

Few passages of Scripture hit me harder and closer to home than this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. In fact, its verses 14-15a leave me figuratively squirming as I try to open myself to the Spirit’s prompting toward writing something meaningful about them. Eugene Peterson’s The Message’s paraphrases verse 13 as Paul’s profession that “Everyone who calls,…

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Commentary

Acts 2:1-21

It was an annual holiday and so people knew what to expect.  That’s how it goes with regularly occurring events.  Yes, there can be minor variations but when it’s Christmastime, we all have our typical ways of celebrating the occasion and the same goes for Easter or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July.  We…

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Commentary

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Our lectionary reading for this 22nd Sunday of The Growing Season (more commonly known as Ordinary Time) reminds us of one of the deepest darkest secrets of spiritual growth.  As we’ve followed the readings for Year C, we’ve been reminded of the importance of getting the basic gospel straight (Galatians), of staying Christ centered (Colossians),…

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Commentary

Jeremiah 1:4-10

It sometimes seems as though Jeremiah 1 means more to preachers than to average church-goers.  There is something about this pre-natal call to ministry—not to mention the lyric image of God’s filling the prophet’s mouth with his Word—that strikes a chord for lots of us who preach.  But since the church long ago began to…

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Commentary

Jeremiah 1:4-10

My wife mentions this semi-often as an item of some consternation.  The issue is vocation, “calling,” and it crops up in conversation between the two of us whenever someone asks me once again to tell my “call story” to be a minister or in case some other preacher—in the course of a sermon perhaps—tells her…

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Commentary

Luke 4:21-30

I described last week’s ending as a bit of a cliff hanger: Jesus preaches that he has fulfilled the Scriptures of hope and promise, of needs being met, of freedom from oppression and imprisonment. The lectionary helpfully repeats the summary of Jesus’ sermon by opening this week’s selection with the close of last week’s verses….

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Commentary

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Quick!  What is your favorite verse from the Book of Nehemiah? Ask that of most churchgoing Christians and the answer is likely to be, “Ummm . . . Not sure.”  Although some people may be familiar with the overall storyline of Nehemiah, mostly the specifics are not widely known.  So if you said to someone,…

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Commentary

Luke 4:14-21

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit’s presence with Jesus is described in various ways. In verse 14, Jesus has just returned from his post-baptism time of temptation in the desert. Upon his return, Jesus takes up the mantle of teacher, filled with the Spirit for the work of sharing God’s truth in synagogues….

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Commentary

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

We preachers need to be careful.  When someone catches us at the church door to disagree with our sermon some Sunday, it is tempting to say “Hey, your quarrel is not with me but with God.  I was just preaching God’s Word so . . .”  Of course, sometimes that really may be the case. …

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Commentary

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

I’m sure they had their reasons.  I refer to the folks who put together the readings for the Revised Common Lectionary.  I’m sure they had their reasons to leap-frog over verses 20-24 but in so doing, they created something of an irony (if not something of an exegetical faux pas). Granted, Jesus’ rant against various…

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Commentary

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

For those who follow the RCL, Easter is not just a one off event.  The RCL devotes 7 Sundays to the Easter season, so that the church has ample opportunity to reflect on the most earthshaking event in history.  As a relative newcomer to the Lectionary, I think that is a superb idea.  But it…

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Commentary

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Our text marks what may feel like a rather abrupt change in tone.  After all, in the Epistolary Lesson the RCL appoints for this week, Paul portrays the Corinthian Christians quite differently than he did at the beginning of his first letter to them. In chapter 1:4-9 the apostle refers to them as graced by…

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Commentary

Acts 16:9-15

This first reading for the Sixth Sunday of Easter continues to trace the progress of the Gospel to the ends of the earth, as it focuses on an abridged section of Paul’s Second Missionary Journey.  I say “abridged” because the Lectionary starts our reading in mid-paragraph leaving out some crucial historical and theological details found…

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Commentary

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)

As I said last week in my comments on Acts 5, during the season of Easter the Lectionary switches from its customary focus on the Old Testament in the first reading, in order to follow the effects of Easter on the early church in the book of Acts.  It is an ingenious way to show…

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Commentary

Acts 5:27-32

To my great surprise and delight, the RCL moves to the book of Acts on this Second Sunday of Eastertide and stays there until Pentecost.  Clearly the intent is to follow the trajectory of Easter.  What happened to the church and the world after Jesus rose from the dead?  Did that single historical act have…

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Commentary

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

In the Epistolary Lesson the Lectionary appoints for this Sunday Paul describes his theology of the resurrection.  Yet he insists that the Corinthians’ confusion about it isn’t just one among many problems that he’s already addressed.  Lack of clarity about the resurrection isn’t like confusion about, for example, sexuality, food offered to idols and lawsuits…

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Commentary

Jeremiah 1:4-10

As encouraging and upbeat as Nehemiah 8 was for preachers last week, Jeremiah 1 is more than a bit intimidating and negative.  Nehemiah 8 depicted a preacher’s dream: a willing congregation that invited Ezra to open the Word of God, visibly demonstrated their ready hearts, listened intently to the Word and its interpretation, and responded…

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Commentary

Psalm 34:1-8 (19-22)

Digging Into the Text: 1). The first thing to notice about this Psalm is that it is an acrostic. The poet/Psalmist not only takes on the usual formal patterns of Hebrew poetry such as parallelism, but adds the even more demanding form of the acrostic. It is analogous to the modern poet adopting the form…

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Commentary

Exodus 14:19-31

Its narrator so packs Exodus 14 with pyrotechnics that it almost begs for an update to Cecil B. DeMille’s classic, The Ten Commandments.  Yet it’s easy to focus so much on all of its light, sound and fury that even its preachers and teachers may lose sight of its ultimate author. The text the Lectionary…

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Commentary

Romans 10:5-15

It is easy to carve out these verses from Romans 10, sheering them off from their original context and making them only about the importance of preaching just generally.  Don’t do that. We are still in this tortured section of Romans 9-11 wherein Paul’s overriding concern is to figure out what will become of God’s…

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Commentary

Exodus 5

Ten Seconds. I once read that this is the amount of time the CEOs of large corporations are encouraged to spend ignoring any subordinate who has the nerve to enter into his boss’s office and request a moment of her time.  How those ten seconds are spent does not matter.  A savvy CEO might shuffle…

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