This past decade has witnessed a great and noteworthy development—the rediscovery of the preacher. Seminaries are full, theologians are once again great men in the world, and churches are bursting at the seams. With this rediscovery of religion and the preacher as a pastor has come the rediscovery of the preacher as a speaker. Much of the preaching of today is good; the average is perhaps higher than at any time in the past. There are many outstanding preachers and a few great ones.
Several factors are involved in this resurgence. Certainly the development of movies, radio, and, most important, television, has played an important part in raising standards of preaching. The preacher must compete whether he wishes to or not. But there has also been a gradual awakening to the fact that preaching is not yet what it should be. Every preacher who doubts this should read the dispassionate, scholarly indictment of preaching in Henry Steele Commager's The American Mind (Yale University Press, 1950). As church leaders have become aware of the shortcomings of their pulpits, they have concentrated on raising the standards of preaching. We must be alert or we shall be left behind in this movement to higher standards and greater efficiency!
Among the divergent teachings of the leaders of the "new preaching" certain fundamentals stand out. They are as old as the art of speaking itself, but they are receiving new polish and new emphasis today. They have as much appeal and application to the Seventh-day Adventist pulpit as to any other. As suggestions for improving the art of sermonizing, in its external aspects, they are offered for your consideration.
Be Persuasive
Preaching is one form of public address; it involves techniques of delivery, content, and arrangement. These skills are acquired only with considerable effort.
There is a feeling abroad that natural ability may obviate training. On the contrary, it may only make training more effective. It is true that anyone can talk, but there are levels of talking. Anyone can paint, too, but there is a difference between a barn and a landscape! Anyone can cut, but it is a far cry from a fingernail to an appendix. No surgeon will tamper with me, if I know it, who has not developed his technique! Henry Ward Beecher said at Yale on February 21, 1872, "No knowledge is really knowledge unless one can use it without knowing it." So it is with good technique of any kind. No surgeon worries about technique as he operates; no good musician worries about technique as he plays; no good preacher should be concerned about technique as he preaches—but each one should have it!
How are your techniques? Or are you developing your talents at the expense of the audience? Preaching does not necessarily make you a better preacher; practice does not necessarily make perfect—it may only make permanent. There is no substitute for good technique.
When this necessity for technique is advanced, someone always points out that technique never won a soul. True. A preacher cannot get by with nothing but technique. He must also have a message, and deep conviction about that message. No mastery of external techniques alone will make a preacher; there must be a blend of message and technique.
Nowhere does the deficiency of technique show more than in the voice of the preacher. The "holy tone" is devastating. You can tune in your radio anytime, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you can tell a religious program before you understand a word—simply by the tone of voice. It may be a pounding monotony; it may be a sanctimonious holiness; it may be staccato, hell-fire preaching. There are several varieties, but in every case the vocal pattern betrays the preacher. Everyone today hears good speech patterns and instinctively recognizes them. The preacher must compete and conform. If he expects to be persuasive, he must make his vocal approach accordingly.
There is a second problem in achieving persuasion from the pulpit—that of arranging ideas in a sermon. Sermon arrangement, it is sometimes called. Much has been done in recent years to determine maximum effectiveness of the order of ideas within a talk. There is space here to mention only three results of study and experimentation, all of which disturb long-cherished stereotypes of sermon organization.
First of all, from the suggestion of the practices of advertising has come the idea of the anticlimactic order. Based upon the psychologically sound principle that firsts have primacy of impact and retention, sermons are started with the main and most important idea, with the purpose of destroying all opposition to an idea by overwhelming assault. All advertisements are built on this principle, and many successful speeches.
Another sermon order based on this principle is found in the practice of Harry Emerson Fosdick. Not only does he put his most important point first, but he allots the time devoted to each point on the principle of physical fatigue. Point one gets 55 to 60 per cent of the time of the sermon, with point three receiving only 6 or 8 per cent. This is the idea of initial impact, but welded to it is recognition of the fact that the longer we sit, the more tired we become and the less able to be attentive. Fosdick's tremendous success as a preacher is to some degree the result of his sermon order.
A third psychological discovery is that the negative is stronger than the positive. If you speak on prayer and present three arguments for and three against, the negative will invariably be remembered longer. Many demonstrations have proved this. Negation attracts attention and invites trouble. So in sermon arrangement you damage your sermon by inclusion of much negative, no matter where you place it in the sermon. Positivity at the end will not wipe out the memory of the negative.
If you would be persuasive, develop techniques of delivery that are unobtrusive, and study arrangement of ideas for maximum impact. Persuasion is an art, and every good preacher studies it.
Be Positive
Being positive means more than arrangement of positives and negatives. It means to have conviction without .being afraid to show it. Know what you believe; have a message—don't merely deliver a lecture. Reinhold Niebuhr has said, "Religious conservatism has ossified the gospel, and religious liberalism has vaporized it." Formulate your own personal faith, then present it as a conviction.
A former church member charged recently, "No one ever urged me to be good, or told me why I should be." Can that be said of any of us? The great cardinal doctrines of Christianity are partly belief and partly practice. As Peter Marshall prayed, "God, help us to stand for something, lest we fall for anything."
Be positive. Think of the great speakers of our day within and without the church. They are all men with a message of burning conviction, delivered humbly, but with power. Our preaching should be like that.
Be Personal
This is the day of the extempore sermon, when the preacher speaks directly to his congregation. His vocabulary is liberally sprinkled with "I's" and "we's" and "you's." He knows that his sermon is a pastoral call on his church; it is the only time he may reach many who need solutions to their problems. So he will touch on their hopes, their aspirations, fears, faith, and failures.
But more than this, he will be personally involved himself The pastor will feel what he speaks. He will be enthusiastic. He will not be like the preacher who dreamed he was preaching and woke up to find that he was! You cannot put on feeling, however. Artificiality is apparent and defeats its own purpose. People need to be moved, to feel deeply, but you can only move people if you are deeply moved yourself. To be moved yourself, you must be personally involved. An appeal to reason may convince of truth, but only emotion will move people to act upon that truth. Be personal with yourself and your audience. Share your feelings as well as your thoughts.
Be Real
Reality means more than sincerity without sham or artifice. It means reality on such a large scale that it surpasses commonality. Let me illustrate what I mean: Here is a preacher with eyes aglow, face radiant, body alert and flexible. He is alive from crown to finger tips. His speech bursts from him. The audience sits motionless, eyes following every movement, ears deaf to every sound except his voice. When he brightens, they brighten; when he is sad, their faces cloud. And when he finishes, they go away and ponder. His presentation is real!
Probably none of us has seen a crucifixion nor a young man slain by his father for a sacrifice. None of us has offered himself as a bondsman for his younger brother. But we can grasp and appreciate all of these, vicariously, by the power of our imagination, and make them real to our listeners.
Be real! This quality of reliving in retelling can be achieved, trained, and cultivated. Meditate, contemplate; but as you do so, plan to bring to life and reality these great events. If you would preach effectively, you must achieve this form of reality.
Our parishioners call for living water; they cry to be fed the bread of life. We must bring it to them in the most appealing fashion possible. We must be persuasive, with unobtrusive technique and careful organization. We must be positive, personal, and real. Most of all, if we are to achieve that goal of all preachers—the "Well done" of our Lord—there must be a depth of consecration and conviction, and a dependence at all times upon Him who alone can touch hearts!
