A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method return to religion-online 47 A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method by Richard L. Eslinger Richard L. Eslinger, at the writing of this book, was pastor of Wallingford United Methodist Church in Seattle. Prior to that he was associate professor of Christian worship at Duke University. This book was published in 1987 by Abingdon Press. This material prepared for Religion Online by Paul Mobley. (ENTIRE BOOK) The author proposes that preaching presentations are in crisis. He examines the methods of storytelling, black narrative, a bridge between narrative and inductive, and the inductive methods, while emphasizing the structure and movement of biblical material. In each section there is also an example of each method. Preachers, ministers, and laity can benefit from a reading. Introduction Preaching has always been done this way is in question by the demands of listeners. Attention and retention by listeners is always a problem, but new methods of presentation may be in order. Here Eslinger tells us why. Chapter 1: Preaching As Story The views of Charles Rice, professor of homiletics, Drew University TheologicaI School, Madison, New Jersey, are examined. Preaching has too often become a routine comfortable, unheard, exercise for the preacher. Biblical storytelling is here considered for its merits, and as a possibility for re-invigorating the listener. Chapter 2: Narrative in the Black Tradition: Henry Mitchell Eslinger continues his study of homiletics specifically applied to sermons. Here, narrative as commonly used by the black preacher is studied. Henry Mitchell is Dean of the School Of Theology, Virginia Union University, Richmond, Va. Chapter 3: Narrative and the Sermonic Plot: Eugene Lowry Eugene Lowry is professor of preaching and communication, Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri . The traditional "three points and a poem" as the structure for a sermon lacks "life" and tends to dull listeners. But Lowry contends that a sermon should be "an event in time", involving movement and direction. In this context sermons become more interesting without losing the capacity to teach a lesson. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showbook?item_id=796 (1 of 2) [2/4/03 2:18:42 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method Chapter 4: The Inductive Method In Preaching: Fred Craddock Fred Craddock was Professor of New Testament and homiletics, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Main stream preaching method has been deductive, and still is to large extent. Deductive preaching tends to lose the listener because intimate relevancy to the listener is not made, nor concluded. The inductive method has a starting point and proceeds to a conclusion, and can involve in the listener, capturing his or her attention. Chapter 5: A Phenomenological Method: David Buttrick David Buttrick was professor of homiletics, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee. Often today a preacher will mount the pulpit with a text for the day, and transform it into thematics developed propositionally. That preaching method ignores the affect that related verses have on the context of that one verse or passage. Hearers are apt to sense that preaching is synonymous with harmless, shallow declarations on virtues and feelings. The way out of this proposition is not by interjecting story illustrations presenting warm, fuzzy subjectivity. Buttrick proposes that phenomenological presentation which fails to move, have life, needs to include the performative intent of the language of the passage before a proper conclusion, or message, can be reached. Chapter 6: Postscript, Story and Storytelling Eslinger, with examples by John Vannorsdall and Deneise Deter-Rankin, suggests that narrative theology has returned to sermons, promoting better Bible understanding and listener involvement. Viewed 2340 times. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showbook?item_id=796 (2 of 2) [2/4/03 2:18:42 PM] religion online religion-online.org Full texts by recognized religious scholars More than 4,500 articles and chapters. Topics include Old and New Testament, Theology, Ethics, History and Sociology of Religion, Communication and Cultural Studies, Pastoral Care, Counseling, Homiletics, Worship, Missions and Religious Education. Click on a Category. Or Search Religion Online. 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Eslinger Richard L. Eslinger, at the writing of this book, was pastor of Wallingford United Methodist Church in Seattle. Prior to that he was associate professor of Christian worship at Duke University. This book was published in 1987 by Abingdon Press. This material prepared for Religion Online by Paul Mobley. Introduction Preaching is in crisis. This awareness has been with us for some time now, reducing pastoral morale and congregational fervor. But the way out, toward new effectiveness in preaching, is not yet clear. What is quite evident, though, is that the old topical/conceptual approach to preaching is critically, if not terminally ill. No longer buttressed by scriptural interpretation or the cultural ethos, this old orthodoxy of a discursive homiletic method persists in many pulpits simply for lack of a clear-cut alternative. Preachers gather together in workshops on their craft and chuckle when the leader refers to "three points and a poem." Yet many pastors return from such events and continue to preach the propositions and illustrations mainly because for them "it's always been done this way," and it has become a familiar and seemingly harmless habit. The inertia is aided and abetted in some situations by the persistence of a preaching service in which Scripture is minimally in evidence and is separated from preaching by all sorts of other liturgical "preliminaries." As the great, last act of the preaching service, the sermon is not embarrassed either by proximity to the Word or by ritual acts of response which would imply that there has been some call. But for whatever reason, the old homiletic persists well past its prime and on into its decline. It is not as if preachers are oblivious to the crisis, though. The blank stares and congregational inattention can be sensed by pastors who preach week in and week out. For most of us, the realization has long http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=977 (1 of 5) [2/4/03 2:19:00 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method since occurred that the old conceptual preaching simply is not heard by most of those in attendance. It has ceased to be a "Word-event"; the words go out from the pulpit, but never even find their way into the consciousness of the hearers. Some of the stories may stick in the mind of the congregation, particularly the first-person kind, and maybe an idea or two gets hammered in. But what has been retained does not connect together, and even the remembered illustrations rarely "illustrate" the unremembered conceptual material. We know these things, recognize the symptomology, and feel the impotence of it all — and we look for a new way, a new way which will grant a new hearing to God's Word. Those ministers who are seeking a new approach to biblical preaching, however, will not find one clear-cut methodological alternative. Instead, they will be greeted by a bewildering field of homiletical contenders. There is talk of inductive approaches, and storytelling, life-situational, and various liberation models, though there seem to be as many books written out of the old orthodoxy as there are books exploring some new perspective. Any church publisher's series on preaching will reflect this wild diversity of the recognizable old and the unfamiliar new in preaching Sermon commentaries provide the same situation, with unpredictable swings in homiletic method occurring as each new commentator tries his or her hand at biblical interpretation and sermonic approach. Congregations, too, experience these methodological and stylistic shifts in slow motion, as preachers come and go. "Points" give way to stories which are displaced by subjective pulpit musings with perhaps further recurrences of "points" or outbreaks of stories. This confusion, in fact, may be occasioned not only by ministerial changes, but by ministerial experimentation as well. We are not sure where we are, and while some of us have taken to this kind of exploration, most of us have tinkered only a bit with the old method. The numbering of the "points" may be jettisoned, the outline loosened up a bit, and more stories are used now. But the crisis continues, and the new directions seem unclear. In order to deal effectively with this crisis, two kinds of insight would seem to be needed by those who preach. On the one hand, there is a need for some quite precise analysis as to the nature of the pathology afflicting the old homiletic. We would like to have specific reasons for rejecting an approach to preaching that many of us worked laboriously to learn in seminary! On the other, clarity is needed in the midst of all the new approaches to the ministry of preaching. The field needs to be http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=977 (2 of 5) [2/4/03 2:19:00 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method mapped, the terrain surveyed, before we can engage either in experiments with new approaches or in evaluations of them. So, the twin homiletical questions at the present time in the life of the church are, What is really the problem with the old conceptual method? and, Where do we go from here? This mapping of the confusing terrain of homiletics today was greatly assisted when Wellford Hobbie noted that there seemed to be three major homiletical approaches which have moved significantly beyond the old topical preaching orthodoxy.(1) He saw emerging on the horizon first an inductive approach to preaching, then the narrative or story form, and finally a method based on the movement and structure of the biblical text. In all these new approaches, there is a keen attentiveness to sermonic form out of a new respect for the variety of shapes Scripture takes and out of a concern that the form of the sermon will capture the interest and attention of the congregation. "Our challenge," Hobbie observes, "is how to get the truth, the gospel, heard among the varieties of listeners before us."(2) Based on this initial mapping of the new homiletics, the present volume proposes to explore in some detail these three major movements as represented in the specific methods of five contemporary homileticians. Charles Rice will be examined with reference to his homiletics of storytelling, which he shares to a great extent with his mentor, Edmund Steimle. The black narrative tradition in preaching will be examined through the interpretative services of Henry Mitchell. An inductive approach to preaching will be developed through considering the writing of that movement's primary advocate, Fred Craddock. The interesting work of Eugene Lowry will be explored as a sort of bridge between the narrative and inductive forms. The homiletic method of David Buttrick represents the third alternative, which seeks to find the indicators for sermonic shape within the structure, movement, and intention of the biblical pericope. Finally, a postscript to our survey of homiletic methods will explore uncharted, but revealing intersections between hermeneutics and homiletic method. Also, the preaching of Deneise Deter-Rankin and John Vannorsdall will be analyzed with reference to a further possible homiletic method. The intent of this volume on homiletic method will be to allow, as much as possible, each homiletician to have a new hearing. I consider all these colleagues to be offering living options in homiletic method, and the primary purpose here is accuracy in reporting and clarity in explication. The method within this book on method is first to explicate the respective homiletician's critique of the liabilities pertaining to the old http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=977 (3 of 5) [2/4/03 2:19:00 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method homiletic. Then, the development of their work typically will involve considerations of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics, and the present situation in church and culture. Finally, the specific method presented by each of these advocates of a new homiletic will be developed in some detail followed by a section of evaluation. However, a crucial aspect of this uncovering of each approach is the addition of a sermon that was both written and preached by each of our homileticians.(3) The methods surveyed are aptly modeled by the respective sermons, and each sermon stands as both an example of that preacher's approach and as a test case of that homiletic method. The crisis in preaching will ease, to be replaced by a renewed pulpit in the churches, when proclamation again involves a hearing of God's Word. Each of the homileticians whose work we are surveying would agree with Paul that "faith comes from hearing" (Rom. 10:17 TEV). In a time when the old forms are no longer heard, the development of new expressions of homiletical form and method is an urgent agenda of reform. And the time is now full for those of us who preach to grant these expressions of a new homiletic a new hearing, for ourselves, for the people to whom we preach, and for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. NOTES: 1. F. Wellford Hobbie, "The Play is the thing: New Forms for the Sermon," Journal For Preachers 5, no. 4 (1982), pp. 17-23 2. Ibid., p. 17 3. Each of the homileticians surveyed in this volume would caution that the essential orality of the rhetoric of preaching works against putting sermons into print. Conversely, a highly polished literary sermon is much less effective as a vehicle of oral communication. http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=977 (4 of 5) [2/4/03 2:19:00 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method 15 http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=977 (5 of 5) [2/4/03 2:19:00 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method return to religion-online A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method by Richard L. Eslinger Richard L. Eslinger, at the writing of this book, was pastor of Wallingford United Methodist Church in Seattle. Prior to that he was associate professor of Christian worship at Duke University. This book was published in 1987 by Abingdon Press. This material prepared for Religion Online by Paul Mobley. Chapter 1: Preaching As Story "Let us consider the storyteller," Charles Rice suggests.(1) The way towards renewal of preaching is to be found in the recovery of storytelling. But before this venture can be undertaken, a consideration of preaching's recent history is necessary to clearly identify the issues related to this renewal. Whatever else, the recent homiletical tradition has been marked by a scarcity of story and of storytellers. Rice is fond of telling the story of Duke University emeritus professor W. D. Davies, who, when asked his opinion of the revival of interest in preaching, described sermons as "just church bells." The sermon is "an easily recognized sound which is comforting for its familiarity and will be tolerated so long as it does not disturb early-morning sleep or some other important activity."(2) The image suggests an expectation that preaching will be dull and lifeless, though vaguely religious in its perceived message. Moreover, preaching has become highly stereotyped in its cultural expressions and typically manifests a predictable dualism. There are sermons that comfort, disperse community morals, and in general reflect the status quo. On the other hand, there are sermons in which the preacher fulfills the role of the issue-oriented disquieter within a controlled frame of reference. The preacher, then, adopts most often the alternative roles of "moral arbiter" of a community's values, "the scrupulous social puppet," or the community's "alter ego" functioning to http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=978 (1 of 20) [2/4/03 2:19:18 PM] A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method disquiet within predictable parameters.(3) In both cases, however, the pulpit is the captive of a deadening intellectualism. Preaching is an impersonal affair, utilizing a discursive style and language which keeps the preacher from disclosing his or her humanity. The dominating image of the preacher is that of an academic ideal and the language of preaching is that of the seminary classroom and the theological lecture hall.(4) A second form of dualism is observed by Rice when preachers reach for subjectivity in the midst of this intellectualistic enterprise. Too often, this "personal" content becomes cheaply emotional, especially when the predictable illustration is employed to "humanize" the otherwise impersonal sermon. The discursive style evades human experience, and superficial emotionalism parodies the human situation. The delivery is likely to be stereotyped, which is another evasion. The preacher is apt to rely on canned illustrations; slices of human life are seen as lines for a performance rather than as the very locus of the incarnation — as if the purpose of living were to make sermons ! And the result is pat, glib, and dead (PTS, p. 32). That deadness, moreover, can be seen across an incredible span of culture and ideology. Liberalism, of course, is most clearly beholden to this positivist and propositional approach to the faith but Rice also correctly observes that this impersonalism has its fundamentalist expressions as well. In both of these children of the Enlightenment, preaching embodies a kind of methodological schizophrenia. The dominant mode of communication is rationalistic discourse, which appeals to only a narrow segment within the range of human personality. On the other hand, when liberalism and fundamentalism typically seek a more affective response, the result is likewise divorced from life by virtue of its dependence on emotionalism. "Both make for homiletical docetism; the "the word does not become flesh" (JCB, p.22). The sclerotic state of the traditional pulpit relates not only to this predictable dualism of rationalism and emotionalism, however. There is a controlled frame of reference for the styles of preaching as well as for its content. Rice observes that the preacher, "in what he or she says, and in the way in which it is said, is closely identified in the minds of many church goers with the way it was or the way it ought to be" (RPC, p. 19). Given this pressure for the sermon to invoke nostalgia and/or a pietistic utopia, the style of preaching becomes as controlled as the http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=978 (2 of 20) [2/4/03 2:19:18 PM]