The Onus

For going on forty years now, I’ve been listening to the call for better preaching in the LCMS. I’ve heard it at various conferences, at the Symposia, in casual conversation, and lately on the Internet. It seems to be a given that preaching in general is not as good as it should be, and there have been entire books written to raise that lament. Many lament, but few do anything about it.

Some recent lamentation came across my screen the other day. There I was, minding my own beeswax when something on FB caught my eye. My click took me to a blog both run and frequented by some Lutheran Pastors. It was an “Addendum” to a podcast on the renewal of good preaching – it probably contained lamenting – and the host (Braaten) of the podcast said,

“But after the recording, I raised the question to Petersen, what role, if any, the congregation had in fostering this renewal. What could the people in the pew, the hearers, do help the pastor in the pulpit and study get some traction on how to become a better preaching.” I read “Petersen’s” response. It did not surprise me because I’ve heard the same thing a hundred times from preachers.

To quote Petersen, “because it could be that part of the problem is in the pew.” In what fantasy world do you even consider that the people listening to a sermon have a role in the quality of that sermon? It would be like asking the author of a book what his readers could do to help the author write a better book. Maybe the reader could give him strokes. Or take notes, a favorite of pastors.

In the non-fantasy world, no hearer has ever asked me what he can do to improve my preaching. My answer to the question of what role the congregation has in fostering preaching renewal – come to church, sit there, and I will take it from there. And I don’t make my Confirmation students take notes, but I do see them sitting in the pew ramrod straight hanging on every word of the sermon.

I get it. Preaching is the rawest of all nerves among our clergy. It’s important. It’s personal. And the body language does not lie. Nor do the books lie. The problem is as real as the lament. So, I responded, “People don't have to be taught how to listen to the sermon. Preachers have to be taught how to preach sermons that people want to listen to. The onus is on the Shepherd, not the sheep.”

I knew the nerve was raw, but it’s more raw on some than on others. One guy went berserker, taking “sermons that people want to listen to” to mean movie clips, musical instruments not the organ, a non-monotone voice, facial expressions, walking around, speaking casually, dancing girls and skits, and I couldn’t finish it, but if you want to see examples of the Straw Man Fallacy…

However poor or good preaching is, there are remarkably few components to it. You have the preacher (the sender), the hearer (the receiver), and the words that communicate thoughts from the one to the other. In preaching, the words are God’s Words. The Bible is very good, very interesting material. What could be more interesting that God, especially as made manifest in Jesus? Yet…

It ought to be a given that the Bible is not the problem, and that leaves two other possibilities for the other given. I did not have to be taught to listen to the interesting teachers I have learned from in my many years of schooling. I did not have to be taught how to read a book so that I would get more out of it. I read good fiction and well-written non-fiction, and it’s not a chore, but a joy.

If it’s a chore, not a joy, then I take it back to the library and find one that is. The problem is, many people who are leaving LCMS these days are going to places where the material is sub-par, but at least they can understand what the guy or girl is saying. We like going to church. We go to church every Sunday, even on vacation, but preaching once made me not want to go to church.

Nor is writing sermons that people want to listen to very complicated. Aristotle and the Ancients knew how to write well, and so does God, and so does Jesus, our Leader. Tell stories, like Jesus tells stories. Use figures of speech, like Jesus uses figures of speech. There’s more, but that’s a good start. So, stop lamenting, stop listening to lamenters, and start doing something about it!