After teaching courses on biblical preaching for ten years, I returned to the pastorate, where I preached more than 100 sermons per year. I discovered, to my surprise, that it is a lot easier to teach preaching than it is to preach well. Preaching is hard work and challenging, especially in an age of distraction.
J. Ellsworth Kalas, senior professor of homiletics at Asbury Theological Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky, United States, addresses this challenge in his latest book, Preaching in an Age of Distraction. Before I began to read, the following comment caught my attention on the back cover: “Preaching is difficult enough under the best of times. But what are we to do when it seems that all of us—hearers and preachers alike—are constantly distracted.”
The author notes that there have always been distractions both for the speaker and the listener. He recalls a time when a bat visited their worship service one Sunday morning, swooping down time and time again while Kalas tried in vain to keep the attention of his dodging hearers! We have all had to contend with crying babies, rustling papers, and blaring sirens. Distractions are not a new invention.
But Kalas maintains that things are different in the second decade of the twenty-first century. While there have always been distractions, we live in an age of distraction. We are part of the “always-on, always-connected digital world” (10). For preachers, the author maintains, this age of distraction is a double problem. We not only speak to distracted listeners but are distracted ourselves. He notes, “Some of the most creative and imaginative minds in our culture have a full-time assignment to get our attention and to move it away from other matters” (17). He also states explicitly something that we already know intuitively: “The greatest source of interruptive distraction in our time is not the telephone or the friendly drop-in but the various forms of the Internet” (45).
So, how is it possible to preach in an age of constant, organized, intentional distraction? Kalas challenges us “to winnow and sift our distractions so that we invest our time in matters that are good and productive yet not eliminate those distractions that stimulate creativity” (66). If positive distractions can be what Kalas refers to as “the growing edge of life” (76), “we need therefore to have some general guidelines to help us avoid distractions that deter us and use those that will bless us” (76).
- “Does this distraction incline me toward Christ or away from him?” (77)
- “Will this distraction bless me so that I will bless others or will it diminish me so that I will enjoy diminishing others?” (77)
The author maintains that two of the greatest assets for a preacher in an age of distraction are excellence and creativity. Excellence never becomes obsolete, and a fresh creative approach will always demand a hearing. And through it all, the secret resource of dedicated Christian preachers is the enabling presence of the Holy Spirit who “knows the human mind and soul most intimately” (159). Think about it. Our task of preaching in an age of distraction has become a most challenging one. But then think about the resources at our disposal. Kalas concludes with this thought-provoking statement: “The secular experts would sell their souls to get the resources that come to us with our calling” (159).
This book touched my heart and mind. I suggest you get a copy and read it for yourself.
—Reviewed by Derek J. Morris, DMin, editor, Ministry.
