Hello, yes, it's been a long time. Sorry about that. Life happened, and incidentally, is still happening.
Part of that whole business of life happening is that I am currently, against my will, taking a preaching class. Well, "Communication of Biblical Truth", but it's preaching. And homiletics. Which is kind of interesting, sure, but if you'd given me a choice between three credits of preaching and three credits of an elective class (which would have doubled my elective options), I would have chosen the LATTER. Emphatically.
However, being that I have to do this, I am taking what I can from it. A lot of it has to do with communication theory, which is fun enough, but then I do keep finding myself wanting to colour outside the box. In any case, tonight we all have to give the introduction to our sermons, a kind of warm up thing, to get us in the groove of standing up in front of each other and, well, preaching. And since I have to write out this introduction, which is feeling awkward, I thought I'd do it here, so that you can all share in my frantic attempts to be relevant, engaging, interesting, simple and challenging. And still remain somewhere in shouting distance of orthodox.
It's on James 3:13-18, and I'm kicking off with Peter Anspach's Evil Overlord List, and I just don't know how well that's going to fly. But here's what I've hammered out:
Having posted it on the internet, he received more suggestions from other insightful people, and the list grew to over 200 items. For example:
– My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealling ones.
– My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
– One of my advisors will be a five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
– I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
– Whenever plans are drawn up that include a time-table, I'll post-date the completion 3 days after it's actually scheduled to occur and not worry too much if they get stolen.
– My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
I love this list. It's funny, and it shows a fair amount of insight and wisdom on the part of this evil-overlord-in-the-making. He has made an effort to learn how this whole system works, and he's applying his understanding by acting accordingly. Success is clearly guaranteed.
But as I was looking over it again, it struck me that there is still a problem with all of this. Every evil overlord faces the same one: no matter how clever they are about avoiding the pitfalls and protecting themselves, the author is going to make sure that the hero wins. So even though the evil overlord has mastered the world system he is in, his lack of understanding of the one who created it means all of his cleverness will ultimately be wasted – and most likely turned against him, which will be even more humiliating.
So much for fictional megalomaniacs. They had it coming anyway. Here's where it gets a bit more worrying: we all have a list like this. Not in so many words, probably, and certainly not in a numbered format. But we use them anyway. A classic one would be:
– I'm going to agree with my boss even though I think he's doing the wrong thing, because I can't risk endangering my job.
Or perhaps:
– If that's Mum on the phone, tell her I'm not home!
Or:
– I will repeat that rumour I heard about the guy who is in competition with me for this promotion.
– Next time my wife nags me about a chore I haven't done, I'm going to remind her about this and how she let me down.
– That person is really annoying me, and I know exactly what sarcastic thing to say to make people laugh at him and notice that I'm more clever.
What about:
– Although I should preach this passage boldly, it will offend some of the biggest contributers to the church, and I can't afford to lose their support.
– Until that person attending my church starts behaving in a more Christian way, I'm going to make my disapproval clear so that everyone knows I don't agree with what they're doing. I don't want to threaten my credibility with the congregation.
It's understandable, and let's not pretend that it isn't. Life isn't easy, and the world works in a certain way, and we have all learned to act accordingly. If we go along with some things, it makes life less difficult. And then we can save our strength for the things that are really important.
Although James doesn't mention the specific circumstances of the people he was writing to, he tells us enough to know that the Christians were not that well off, and didn't have much clout in their communities. The rich people, on the other hand, were using their influence against the Christians and taking advantage of them. Looking around at the world, seeing how it works, it's not surprising that the Christians might do what they could to appease the rich people, even if it meant turning their backs on fellow Christians. If a rich person happened to come along to church, or was even a Christian himself, wouldn't it make sense to treat that person as well as possible, in the hope that he could use his own worldly influence on your behalf? Wouldn't it make sense to use your resources wisely to make the right friends with the right people, and create some security, rather than spending it helping the poor who can't do anything for you and the church anyway? Wouldn't it make sense to act accordingly?
James doesn't tell them, or us, to be ignorant of the way the world works. If anything, he encourages us to understand it. But that's not the main point of this letter. James tells us that no matter how clever we become about how the world works, and how good we are at working with it, any security it gives will not last. Real wisdom lies in knowing the Author, understanding what He considers important and how He is going to make things turn out. And once we understand that, acting accordingly will look very different.
So what are the unmistakeable signs of true wisdom in our lives? How can we tell if what we're doing is really wise, or just clever?
Let's look at what James says about it, in James 3:13-18....
... So that's the introduction. Thumbs up? Down? Does it do all the things an introduction should do, whatever those are?
Illustration-wise, it's about knowing your audience. If your audience is a bunch of bible college students of around our age group or general generation, the content of the illustration is spot-on, I think.
ReplyDeleteContent-wise, the points you make are good - solid, relevant, challenging. But remember that people need to listen to this stuff for , and constant challenge is tiring. The intro should leave them begging you to finish the sermon (in an ideal world). It should raise the questions that your sermon will answer. Yours does that, but I wonder if it's not just a mite too potent. Again, a lot of that is a matter of audience. Bible college students want to be challenged and stretched. A congregation also wants that, but they don't live that 24/7 in an environment geared towards it. To use a driving illustration, college students are already driving in top gear, whereas your average Sunday pewsitter needs to have the engine turned on, warmed up, and then taken through all the gears to get up to speed. (Hmmm, how relevant is a driving illustration to you? I should know my audience better!)
My main concern is length. How long is this sermon supposed to be? Because at 1012 words, I would call this a long introduction. I'll give comparisons.
I've just written two sermons in the last few weeks. One is for tonight, is meant to be no longer than 20 minutes (I've timed it at about 14, so it should hopefully be about 16 minutes). The introduction to that sermon is 113 words.
The other is for a different church, so it can go for 30 minutes. The intro to that sermon is 535 words.
Having said that, another 30 minute sermon I did on Ecclesiastes had an 848 word intro (out of 4178 words), because my job in that talk was not only to identify and address a theme, but also to bring people up-to-date with the rest of the book to that point (chapters 1-8).
Your intro is more like that last one, in more ways than one - because not only do you describe the context of the passage (and probably responsibly, since I don't know if this talk is part of a 10 part series on James, or if this is the only talk on James your listeners will ever hear) - but also because it contains those banes to shortness in talks: lists.
The problem with good lists is that you end up with a huge amount of material, and it's hard to cut it down.
You have two lists - the overlord list, and then your example of real life list. Lists aren't just wordy, they are also slower to speak - because you need to give each one time to sink in on its own before moving to the next one. Short pauses, perhaps, but they add up.
Anyoo, that's just some quick feedback. Here's Ben's personal list of things an intro should do:
* Let people know what your One Big Point is (or at least your First Big Point if you have more than one).
* Give people as much context as necessary (and necessary is the key word).
* Make people want to listen to the rest of the talk (you can lose people for the whole thing if you don't hook them here).
Thanks for the thoughts and feedback. I'm working out how to tweak it some. To be perfectly honest, I'm mostly just, you know, doing the thing. There's nothing about architecting and delivering a sermon that gets me at all interested. While I appreciate the role they play in church life, it's not the way I communicate, in either direction. I try to be attentive, to the message and to what the Holy Spirit might be trying to say, but it's certainly not in the top five of ways I learn.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder if we haven't over-weighted sermons in church life. I mean, that's a cultural thing – the lecture format for the handing down of authoritative information being a relic of, what, the Enlightenment period? And not so terribly suited to contemporary ways of assimilating information. I mean, we kind of treat the format as though it's authoritative, because there are those who would freak out at the idea of discussing God's truth in any less structured and supervised ways, much like they freak out about the "unsupervised" nature of wikipedia and such. But the format isn't inspired truth. It wasn't always done this way, it just feels like it.
And I think it might be worth having a look at how people learn, whether that many people really learn best that way, and see if there could be things to vary a church service with. Like sermons every three or four weeks, and other times ... I don't know, something else. It'd take more effort, and probably be a bit disruptive to schedules, but I think it would be really fun to research the ways Christians have done church throughout history and different cultures, and recreate that as much as possible. Do a different one every week, or every other week if you're worried about the congregation getting too unsettled by all the change. I don't know. Something.
I know that small groups cover other ways of learning too. I just think people might be more interested and alert if it's not the same format over and over again, so that your brain always goes in the same patterns – sing, pray, sit, listen, wander, pray, coffee!
Okay, I'll stop ranting now. A few more months, and I most likely will never have to give a sermon again. \o/
I think you should read through the rest of Peter's list.
ReplyDeleteThat would pretty much take care of the whole sermon! I'm sold.
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog, Nina. Your opening gambit lost me, for the reasons Ben gave!! However, after a few weeks of getting used to it, I think it’s a good way into your talk. I agree with fizban re. length of intro. Talking for 20 mins. would invite an intro. of say 3 – 4 minutes max. Also, target audience is key here. I am not one for listening to women’s sermons in church (as you may know) so would think the context of your exercise would be an imagined small group - especially talks to women young or old - (maybe large audience like women’s mission conference) , or young people in a less ‘churchy’ context, or giving a radio talk on WMBI !! The BIG IDEA Ben mentioned is a helpful way to build a talk, where everything you say can be summarised in a sentence of, say, 17 words. So what you say, overall, is filling out those 17 words. The specific way you used the Evil Overlord list was very good, as it made the point that we easily overlook wisdom comes partly from recognising the real evil spiritual forces we all face, and that God is in control, whatever we may think about our ability to influence what others think or how they behave. So, yeh! Give us some more of your pearls of wisdom, even if there’s a needed delay, sometimes, in response!
ReplyDelete