Preaching and Adjectives by David Buttrick

 
Years back, I heard a sermon that was loaded with adjectives; the adjectives were something like “sermon bling.”  Afterwards, an old-school elder came up to me and said something like this: “Too many adjectives in a sermon is a sin.”  Then he walked away.  (I’ll never forget it!)  That was his way of saying what Buttrick says here.

“Orally, he weakest word we use is an adjective.  If you could tape-record a day’s conversation, you would discover that you converse in verbs and nouns and that you employ few adjectives.  You will use adjectives only when you must use them; you will almost never use them for effect.  The rule holds for preaching: unnecessary adjectives will cloy language, while an occasional necessary or ‘right’ adjective will help.  …If we use adjectives, they must be either necessary (to define or distinguish) or well chosen.  For the most part, however, we will speak without adjectives.  Many preachers add too many adjectives which do little but cloy. …Emotional force in preaching is produced by syntax and metaphor, but seldom by adjectival elaboration.”

“So, the rule can be stated: If you must use an adjective, find the right one, otherwise avoid adjectives in public address.  Verbs and nouns are strong; adverbs have some power; but orally, adjectives are weak words.”

David Buttrick, Homiletic, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 218-19.  I may have mentioned it here before, but serious “homileticians” really should read this book, even if they don’t fully agree with all that Buttrick says.  It is a serious and well-written book for preachers. 

shane lems

sunnyside wa

On Preaching (To Women)

This post is a sort of public critique of myself based on books I’m reading: I need to preach to the women in the congregation too!

This just hit me as I studied the Exodus sections where it says that Yahweh gave both men and women hakam(wisdom) to construct the tabernacle.  It is easy for me to focus on Moses, Aaron, the Priests, Bezalel, and such but to forget the midwives, Miriam, and the Spirit-filled-wise women who helped build the tabernacle.  It is easy for me to preach about Timothy, but I forget about his grandmother and mother.  It is easy for me to preach about Stephen, but I often forget Phoebe.  I preach on Lazarus, but forget Mary Magdalene.  In other words, I can preach about Christ’s work from Moses, Aaron, Bezalel, Timothy, and Lazarus, but due to my insufficiency/ignorance I haven’t done the same with the Miriam’s and Deborah’s and Phoebe’s of the Bible.

This also hit me when skimming through Jeram Barrs’ Through His Eyes (about which I posted earlier) and Lydia Brownback’s Legacy of Faith: From Women of the Bible to Women of Today, which have been great investments for me.  I need a few more of these types of books to use in reference for sermon prep (and teaching prep).  Here are a few that I’m looking into.  I also have enjoyed the stuff CCEF puts out by/for/about women.

Anyway, in summary, this Exodus reading along with Barrs and Brownback’s contributions have reminded me to address the women directly in preaching and teaching (and perhaps more on this blog).  Let me also encourage women to write and assist pastors like me who need tons of help preaching to and teaching women!  Feel free, anyone, to email or comment about blogs or websites along these lines that you’ve found helpful.  (Thanks again to Stephen for pointing out Tara Barthel a few days back.)

EDIT: let me clarify here – I’m mostly talking about application in the sermon, in case you were wondering.

shane lems

sunnyside, wa

Conversations with Barth on Preaching

“Preaching is utterly dependent upon a God who raises the dead and who calls some people to tell about it.  If there is no God to make the preacher’s sermon ‘work,’ then the preacher is the greatest of fools.  The messenger is disposable by, dispensable to, and derivative of the message.  We have this treasure in earthen vessels.  The treasure is more interesting and powerful than the vessel.  Today’s preachers find themselves in a vulnerable, dangerous situation when a pleasing personality is more important to a congregation than a truthful one, when charm and wit, warmth and ‘love’ become more valued in a preacher than being a person who is willing to stand up and speak the truth as God has given it.  The truth that is communicated through personality (Phillips Brooks’s definition of preaching) is so much more important than the personality.”  [William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 243-4.]

Amen.  It is a “dangerous situation” for the preacher and his congregation: he may be tempted to preach what they want to hear and they may be tempted to judge him according to his personality rather than the message he brings.  Willimon knocks it out: the vessel is a bunch of dirty clay compared to the treasure that comes from his mouth.  Mess this up and the gospel gets shoved off to the side.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Reading, Literature, and Preaching

I recently finished T. D. Gordon’s fine little booklet, Why Johnny Can’t Preach (which I’ll blog on as soon as I’m out of my deep homiletic depression!) and found myself reading Leland Ryken’s chapter in Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching In Honor of R. Kent Hughes ed. Ryken & Wilson (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007).  Ryken’s chapter is on – as you may have guessed – the literary aspect of the Bible.  The title of the chapter is “The Bible as Literature and Expository Preaching;” it opened with this awesome Luther quote.

“I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists….  Certainly it is my desire that  there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily” (p. 38).

Certainly T. D. Gordon would say a strong Yes! Amen! to that quote (as Gordon well laments that so many preachers are “literarily” illiterate, so to speak – but again, more on that later).  Ryken goes on in this chapter to explain the literary basics of the Bible and how they relate to preaching Scripture.  He exhorts the preacher not to skip over the narrative (characters, tension, foils, story-line, climax, etc) to get to the doctrine, for the Bible is not simply divinely deposited propositional dogma.  Even the “literary forms of the Bible have been inspired by God and need to be granted an importance congruent with that inspiration” (p. 53).  Of course there are doctrinal truths in Scripture, but sometimes they are conveyed in story form, so the stories can’t be shucked to find the “kernel” of doctrine.  Both are inspired and should be preached!

I’ll say more on this some other day, but first, a note on the book, Preach the Word.  I’m only half way through it, but so far so good.  Other contributors include Paul House, J. I. Packer, Philip Ryken, Don Carson, along with other pastors and scholars.  The topics range from interpretation, homiletical methods, biblical/historical paradigms, contemporary challenges, and homiletical training.  This would be a good gift for a graduating seminarian – or, of course, your pastor.  We pastors need ongoing training in homiletics!

shane lems

sunnyside wa

On the Humorous Side: Pastor, Want a Beer?

Dr. Richard Lischer is Duke Divinity School’s homiletics professor and a pastor in the ELCA.  Several years back, he wrote an autobiographical account of his first pastorate and parishioners in a small, conservative Illinois town.  He was fresh out of school with seminary training, a PhD, and a progressive liberal outlook which didn’t mesh with this old-school church and town.  Here are a few examples.

One episode find Lischer (who has been at his new pastorate for only a few days) in the house of some older parishioners.  A lull came in the conversation that he and the older men were having.

“Bertie fixed me with his cagey blue eyes and asked offhandedly, ‘Pastor, will you have a beer?’ Everyone looked at me, and with only an extra second’s hesitation – just enough to make it an unnatural response – I said, ‘Sure.’”

“Bertie went to the refrigerator filled with Budweisers.  He selected exactly one bottle, opened it, and brought it to me.  The seven old men watched me intently as I drank it.  ‘You’re not having one?’ I asked.

“‘Naw,’ Bertie replied in a tone that seemed to ask, ‘What kind of man would drink a beer at two in the afternoon?’  His eyes almost smiled as he said it.  The point of the exercise?  The new pastor is either one of the boys or a moral slacker.  I left knowing I had been tested, but unsure of my grade” (p. 56).

I can relate!  Here’s another when he reflects back on seminary.

“Some of my classmates didn’t like Greek and refused to learn it.  When called to translate in class, they kept and English Bible open at their feet and read off their translations as if producing them on the spot.  One boy translated with great, stammering concentration, “The wind bloweth where it,’ hmm, let me see, ‘where it listeth,’ I believe it is, sir, ‘and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth….’“

“How dumb is it to use the King James Version as a pony?  Professor Henrichs just laughed with the rest of the class at

the boys who cheated, as if he felt sorry for them.  He probably did” (p. 29).

I can relate again – though I enjoy(ed) Greek, I didn’t always come to class 100% prepared, nor did my seminary classmates (some of whom are reading this chuckling because of deja vu!  Though we were at least smart enough to use the Good News Bible or some paraphrase like that, filled with our ummms.).

If you’re interested in a more liberal side of Lutheran pastoral life in a rural Midwestern town, you’ll want to read this book.  It is a fun read.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

A Small Church: Maybe Not So Bad After All!

Though this book was penned in 1980, it still speaks volumes to our present “church” situation.  William Willimon and Robert Wilson wrote it: Preaching and Worship in the Small Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980).  Here are a few helpful quotes/comments.

Some people “have a gnawing feeling that the small church is somehow second-rate and does not quite measure up to what it ought to be in today’s world.  Other persons…view the small church as an anachronism, kept alive by stubborn people who are holding on to an institution that should be allowed or even encouraged to die.  They see such churches as impediments to the development of the kind of congregation needed today.  In the meantime the small congregation continues to exist, doing what it and the Christian Church have always done, albeit imperfectly: winning adherents, nurturing them in the Christian way of life, gathering them each week for worship and preaching, and in many rural communities, finally burying them in the adjacent cemetery, confident that they have successfully run the race and received the reward of the faithful” (p. 14).

Willimon and Wilson lament the fact that the capitalistic notion that “bigger is better” has made its way into the church’s thinking.  “If the figures are going up, the congregation and its pastor are presumed to be succeeding.  If they are remaining the same or decreasing, something is obviously wrong” (p. 30).  Pastors of small churches are less important than pastor’s of big churches; a pastor has not “arrived” until he’s the senior pastor of a huge church.

They praise the small local church that has simply (i.e. w/o parades, programs, politics and pet issues) preached the word and administered the sacraments.  “Congregational worship is a reliable barometer of the life of the small church.  Here the church family will celebrate its victories, lament its defeats, act out its deepest needs” (p. 45).

“To the pastor who is serving or who may serve a church of small membership, we have a final word.  If you measure the success of your ministry by the size of the crowd, the prestige of the church you serve, or the praise of denominational authorities, you are in deep trouble in the small church.”

“But if you sense that you are called of God – if you know that your ultimate authority and final validation of your ministry come from the faithful service and celebration of the Word and its confrontation by God’s people, your servant hood will continue to be blessed.  You will have the joy of knowing that you are faithfully proclaiming the Word, and that you are an instrument of God’s grace for the people who worship in a church of small membership” (p.123).

This is advice for myself, a pastor of a small church!  The blessings of a pastoring small church quite possibly outweigh the blessings of pastoring a larger church.  May the capitalism be knocked out of my church thinking.

For an earlier post from this book, see “Willmon on the Busy Church.”

shane lems

sunnyside, wa

Fokkelman on Hebrew Poetry

In seminary, we read parts of J. P. Fokkelman on biblical narrative and biblical poetry.  Recently, while studying the Shirat ha-Yam (the Song at the Sea) in Ex 15, I read parts of Fokkelman on poetry again to review several aspects.  I realize there are several different approaches to biblical poetry; I need to read some of M. O’Connor’s Hebrew Verse Structure sooner than later, but Fokkelman should be on your shelf if you’re studying Hebrew poetry.  Even if you disagree with some of his conclusions, there are good insights there.

Here’s what he says about poetry, which he later applies to biblical poetry.

“What a poet undertakes does have a lot to do with creating ‘density.’  Poetry is the most compact and concentrated form of speech possible.  By making the most of his or her linguistic tools, the poet creates an immense richness of meaning, and this richness becomes available if we as readers know how to handle the density: how we can cautiously tackle complexity, probe the various layers one by one, and unfold them.  The poet creates this abundance of meanings by visiting all the nooks and crannies of the language, and by being an expert at it” (p. 14).

This is true – I counted around 160 Hebrew words in the Song of the Sea in Ex 15; most English translations have around 430 or so.  Also, there are “layers” in the Song of the Sea – we have to recognize metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, anthropomorphism, and so on.  In the Song of the Sea Yahweh is over the forces of creation, anti-creation, enemies, the sea-monster, false gods, yet in all this he is for the people he covenantally owns.  I like Fokkelman’s “nooks and crannies” and “abundance of meanings” – it is not a flat text, but a “3-D” one, if you will.  Not surprisingly, many scholars disagree on the divisions of the song in Ex 15.  Perhaps it is anachronistic to want to split up Hebrew poetry like we do our poems.

Fokkelman defines Hebrew poetry this way:

“A poem is the result of (on the one hand) an artistic handling of language, style, and structure and (on the other hand) applying prescribed proportions to all levels of the text, so that a controlled combination of language and number is created” (p. 35).

Sasson, from a different perspective, gave an alternative yet parallel explanation: the essence of Hebrew poetry is a departure from the constraints of prose (unfortunately, I cannot find the reference to this phrase, since I wrote it in the margins of Fokkelman’s book.  Any help here?).

In summary, Hebrew poetry is a different world than Hebrew prose.  It takes somewhat different interpretive rules and translating techniques, which of course affect the homiletical act of preaching poetry.  Fokkelman doesn’t talk about preaching a poem, but in my opinion, biblical poems scream out “preach me!”   Understanding that a poem is “thick” demands a different pulpit approach than does a narrative.  Consequently, preaching a poem is difficult – often like describing Van Gogh to a mathematician.

A final note: one way to think about biblical poetry couched in narrative (like Ex 15) is comparing it to a picture in the middle of a story book.  Pictures create a world synonymous to the text, adding depth – Ricoeur should be consulted here as well.  Poetry-pictures  are meant for both sides of the brain, and it needs to come out in homiletics.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Problem With Kids in Worship?

This is one of those Willimon quotes worth a grand.

“Some churches tried to solve the problem of children in worship by concocting ‘children’s sermons,’ ‘children’s church’ and other devices to interest the children.  I feel that most of these efforts are misguided.  Many so-called children’s sermons are neither sermons nor are they for children.  They are usually petty, unscriptural, moralistic object lessons that children find difficult to follow because they cannot make the connection between the object and the lesson.  The children’s sermon is often for the parents – the preacher telling the children what Mommy and Daddy believe the children ought to hear.  Younger children cannot understand the moralisms put forth in the children’s sermon, and older children refuse to come forward for  the children’s sermon because they feel that they are being put on display and made to look foolish – which they often are.  By having a children’s sermon the church says, in effect, ‘Children, you are incapable of worshiping with the church.  The service is incomprehensible or irrelevant to you.”

William H. Willimon, A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship (Louisville: WJK, 2008), 11-12.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Barth: Shut Up, Preacher!

Warning: more furniture is about to be thrown around!

“Preaching that is in conformity with scripture will be modest.  Scripture itself enjoins us to be modest, and preachers ought to behave modestly and not to push themselves into the limelight with their more or less good qualities.  …The [preacher] must step back with any personal views or spirituality.  Much might be made of strength of of the power of speech or thought.  ….But these things are not the gospel.  The gospel is not in our thoughts or hearts; it is in scripture.”  [I take Barth there - in the context of this book and others - to mean this: "Our warm, fuzzy, cute little sentiments about life by which we try to 'connect' with people on the pulpit are not good news."]

“The dearest habits and best insights that I have – I must give them all up before listening.  I must not use them to protect myself against the breakthrough of a knowledge that derives from Scripture.  Again and again I must let myself be contradicted.  I must let myself be loosened up.  I must be able to surrender everything.”

In other words, if I may add, the preacher can quickly get in the way of the text when he studies and preaches.  In Luther’s terms, the preacher cannot master the text; the text masters him.  This is the war that happens in the pastor’s study!  Barth says in the above context: “Even after the most arduous study, we still do not really know what to say.”

Perhaps we’re running right into one of those quaking barthian paradoxes: sometimes preachers just have to shut up and preach – when they’re preaching!

Quotes taken from Karl Barth, Homiletics, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 77-8.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Willimon on Barth II

This should be in the library of everyone interested in homiletics, Willimon, or Barth: William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006).  Even if you’re not a Barthian, this book will “get” you; I’m not, and it did.  Or, as Flannery O’ Conner put it, “I like old Barth: he throws the furniture around.”  This book will throw your furniture around!

Here are two of Willimon’s points that summarize Barth’s theological preaching:

“Preaching is the proclamation of the Word of God.  It is neither moral exhortation (the gospel is demeaned and our human situation is denied by reducing preaching to moral exhortation), nor a heartfelt expression of the preacher’s personal piety (who cares?).  Preaching is not a skillful representation of God’s word (the task of theology).  Preaching is not, despite the history of rhetoric, primarily a matter of persuasive speaking.  Persuasive speaking is God’s problem, not ours.  A sower goes out to sow and, without careful preparation or planning, just begins slinging seed.  Of course, in such effusive sowing, there is much waste, for this sower seems determined to overwhelm the world with words.  In fact, most of the seed falls onto infertile ground.  It is up to God to give the growth, not us preachers.”

“The hearing of God’s word is not an example of democracy in action, with the hearers making savvy choices in what they will accept or reject.  Preaching is dramatic, effusive presentation of God’s word, so that God’s word is heard through it, if God wills.  ‘Proclamation is human speech in and by which God himself speaks like a king through the mouth of his herald’ (CD, I.1 p 52).  Whether God speaks through preaching is God’s free choice: ‘When and where it pleases God, it is God’s own Word,’ but preaching is nevertheless that dangerous, confident adventure of letting God be God in the church” (Ibid., 72).

Another point Willimon deduces from Barth’s theological homiletics is “that to be a Christian communicator is to be engaged in a struggle, a conflict, a kind of war.”  We are not preaching to a Christian culture.  “Every Sunday we are issuing a declaration of war against some of the most cherished idols of our culture.  The world in which we live is adamantly set against the gospel – and always has been.”  “The Bible is full of violence and war, for there was something about Jesus that brought out the worst in the world” (Willimon, p. 111-112).

shane lems

sunnyside wa