Preaching class
This semester, I'll be taking my first preaching class. I hadn't planned on taking any preaching classes, so it's an interesting turn of events. It sounds like the class is going to be a blend of rhetoric, creative writing, and theological research, which isn't too far out of my usual wheelhouse. But the idea of actually preaching a sermon in front of a congregation feels a universe away.
When I think about teaching Bible stuff, I can’t help but think of my favorite Bible rhetoricians of all time: C. S. Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. I love Lewis because of his tendency to face the difficult realities of life and then connect them with the wonder of existence, resulting in a reality that is, at its core, a situation of necessary tension. But he didn’t stop there. He grappled with it to see what he could find, and what he tended to find was a God that is grace, empathy, wonder, and wisdom..
I love King because of his insistence on justice and peace not being at odds—another tension. He was so deeply skilled in rhetoric that you hardly notice it. The rhetorical tools came across as ease of communication; the weaving of social issues and recognizable popular references and common values came across like the creation of a master storyteller; and he was so passionate that sometimes he was almost singing his message. I don’t believe it was just that preacher way of singing and repeating a phrase either. I think it was because the reality of the message brought out the emotion of the human part of the man to where a regular vocal presentation simply would not do. It had to be sung.
There’s nothing in my words that will reach the level of magnitude that theirs reached, and I don’t care about that. I’m here in this space and time as myself, and I will do what I am meant to do, not what they were meant to do. But those two are for me, rhetorically and spiritually, voices that send the darkness into the far corners of the room. Sounding like them is not my goal. But sending the dark into the far corners is something we can all aspire to, and I hope to learn to do some of that.
There are a couple of other people that I'm particularly inspired by when it comes to preaching. They are the first female preachers I’ve had the privilege to know, learn from, and be lucky enough to call friends. They’ve been preaching at our church over the past year or so as part of a rotation of speakers while a new full-time pastor search takes place. To them, maybe the fact that they are women in the pulpit is not special. But it is to me. Growing up, a woman never led a Sunday service, but they secretly did the heavy-lifting of biblical teaching by telling the kids Bible stories in Sunday School and at VBS. Pulpit sermons were for salvation back then. But Sunday School was the meat and potatoes. And the women did that. They also held things together by being the community planners of the institution. They watched the babies so the young families could come, made the children’s Christmas plays happen, collected money for missionaries in big ol’ jars, cooked the covered dishes, planned the church picnics, started the meal trains, packed the shoeboxes at Christmas, took care of house and home, and did a million other things, not to mention modeling extreme humility whether they should have had to or not. They were the storytellers. They were the community keepers. Their jobs were…well important seems like a silly word, so I’ll use the word cement instead. Yes, I mean the kind that holds things together. This isn't actually a paragraph about diminishing the work of men who were servant-hearted, but it's just that right this second, I'm talking about the women.
So those ladies that are friends of mine walking up there on certain Sundays nowadays, standing behind the pulpit unapologetically telling those Bible stories to the whole darn congregation, not just the kids in the Sunday School rooms of the old days, well when they do that, it’s a little bit like a healing happens. They start to speak, and in my mind every overlooked lady in every ministry in every town and state in this good country for decades upon decades speaks through them. They walk right up there as an army of witnesses, and they talk about what’s happening in our world, and they talk about what Jesus had to say about it, and they talk in light of the wisdom that God has given them in particular. They’re smart as a whip, and they let God work the hard things of life out through their messages. They preach. They teach. God speaks, I believe. And people listen. It does me good--not just spiritually, but as a human body in a human world where I grew up as a girl.
While I’ve never done it on stage at a church, I’ve been preaching through my writing for quite a while. I've sorta been preaching in the classroom (about communication, but still) for almost 15 years. Just ask my kids and they'll tell you I’ve been preaching for 6 & 8 years—to Ewan about what to do when you’re born with a sensitive heart or how to let the emotion pass and then look for solutions, and to Lizzy about how to feel when you don’t fit the mold people think you should and about what being tough really means. During the coming term, I hope to shift some of these efforts to preaching formally and see what happens. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. I’m interested to find out. Whatever the case, I’ll soon learn what makes preaching different from teaching, what my wrong assumptions are, what kind of preparation goes into it compared to a regular classroom setting or a creative writing piece, how people's approaches vary, etc.
It's the whole truth to say that some of my regular old day-to-day sermons like those mentioned above have utterly sucked, whether they were written like this, lessons to my kids, or classroom chats. Some have been plain old wrong. Some have done harm, and I’ve apologized for the ones I could. A handful have been pretty solid. All have been the broken work of a regular human person. There is certainly a ton of room for improvement.
In spite of those shortcomings, there is something that compels me to speak through the written word, and then to take that word and teach it. Think about what compels you. What is it? You know that feeling? Well that’s the one I’ve got when I sit down here on my couch to write something out like this. Like if I don’t write it down, I’ll bust. I am forced by something inside of me to synthesize the information I hear and spit it back out in a new form. I have been for years and years.
So preaching class, here I come. And in a few months when the term is over and Christmas bells are ringing, maybe I'll know if my path is bound up the stairs, behind a pulpit, microphone on with all eyes looking, folks waiting to see if I've got anything to say that's worth hearing. I pray I do, if I get there.
When I think about teaching Bible stuff, I can’t help but think of my favorite Bible rhetoricians of all time: C. S. Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. I love Lewis because of his tendency to face the difficult realities of life and then connect them with the wonder of existence, resulting in a reality that is, at its core, a situation of necessary tension. But he didn’t stop there. He grappled with it to see what he could find, and what he tended to find was a God that is grace, empathy, wonder, and wisdom..
I love King because of his insistence on justice and peace not being at odds—another tension. He was so deeply skilled in rhetoric that you hardly notice it. The rhetorical tools came across as ease of communication; the weaving of social issues and recognizable popular references and common values came across like the creation of a master storyteller; and he was so passionate that sometimes he was almost singing his message. I don’t believe it was just that preacher way of singing and repeating a phrase either. I think it was because the reality of the message brought out the emotion of the human part of the man to where a regular vocal presentation simply would not do. It had to be sung.
There’s nothing in my words that will reach the level of magnitude that theirs reached, and I don’t care about that. I’m here in this space and time as myself, and I will do what I am meant to do, not what they were meant to do. But those two are for me, rhetorically and spiritually, voices that send the darkness into the far corners of the room. Sounding like them is not my goal. But sending the dark into the far corners is something we can all aspire to, and I hope to learn to do some of that.
There are a couple of other people that I'm particularly inspired by when it comes to preaching. They are the first female preachers I’ve had the privilege to know, learn from, and be lucky enough to call friends. They’ve been preaching at our church over the past year or so as part of a rotation of speakers while a new full-time pastor search takes place. To them, maybe the fact that they are women in the pulpit is not special. But it is to me. Growing up, a woman never led a Sunday service, but they secretly did the heavy-lifting of biblical teaching by telling the kids Bible stories in Sunday School and at VBS. Pulpit sermons were for salvation back then. But Sunday School was the meat and potatoes. And the women did that. They also held things together by being the community planners of the institution. They watched the babies so the young families could come, made the children’s Christmas plays happen, collected money for missionaries in big ol’ jars, cooked the covered dishes, planned the church picnics, started the meal trains, packed the shoeboxes at Christmas, took care of house and home, and did a million other things, not to mention modeling extreme humility whether they should have had to or not. They were the storytellers. They were the community keepers. Their jobs were…well important seems like a silly word, so I’ll use the word cement instead. Yes, I mean the kind that holds things together. This isn't actually a paragraph about diminishing the work of men who were servant-hearted, but it's just that right this second, I'm talking about the women.
So those ladies that are friends of mine walking up there on certain Sundays nowadays, standing behind the pulpit unapologetically telling those Bible stories to the whole darn congregation, not just the kids in the Sunday School rooms of the old days, well when they do that, it’s a little bit like a healing happens. They start to speak, and in my mind every overlooked lady in every ministry in every town and state in this good country for decades upon decades speaks through them. They walk right up there as an army of witnesses, and they talk about what’s happening in our world, and they talk about what Jesus had to say about it, and they talk in light of the wisdom that God has given them in particular. They’re smart as a whip, and they let God work the hard things of life out through their messages. They preach. They teach. God speaks, I believe. And people listen. It does me good--not just spiritually, but as a human body in a human world where I grew up as a girl.
While I’ve never done it on stage at a church, I’ve been preaching through my writing for quite a while. I've sorta been preaching in the classroom (about communication, but still) for almost 15 years. Just ask my kids and they'll tell you I’ve been preaching for 6 & 8 years—to Ewan about what to do when you’re born with a sensitive heart or how to let the emotion pass and then look for solutions, and to Lizzy about how to feel when you don’t fit the mold people think you should and about what being tough really means. During the coming term, I hope to shift some of these efforts to preaching formally and see what happens. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. I’m interested to find out. Whatever the case, I’ll soon learn what makes preaching different from teaching, what my wrong assumptions are, what kind of preparation goes into it compared to a regular classroom setting or a creative writing piece, how people's approaches vary, etc.
It's the whole truth to say that some of my regular old day-to-day sermons like those mentioned above have utterly sucked, whether they were written like this, lessons to my kids, or classroom chats. Some have been plain old wrong. Some have done harm, and I’ve apologized for the ones I could. A handful have been pretty solid. All have been the broken work of a regular human person. There is certainly a ton of room for improvement.
In spite of those shortcomings, there is something that compels me to speak through the written word, and then to take that word and teach it. Think about what compels you. What is it? You know that feeling? Well that’s the one I’ve got when I sit down here on my couch to write something out like this. Like if I don’t write it down, I’ll bust. I am forced by something inside of me to synthesize the information I hear and spit it back out in a new form. I have been for years and years.
So preaching class, here I come. And in a few months when the term is over and Christmas bells are ringing, maybe I'll know if my path is bound up the stairs, behind a pulpit, microphone on with all eyes looking, folks waiting to see if I've got anything to say that's worth hearing. I pray I do, if I get there.
