Attentive Preaching

Some notes on the practice of preaching

Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash

This exercise, if you will indulge me, is a reflection on what I think I am doing when I preach. Like almost all practitioners of a literary form, my method has developed only partly through explicit training. What I do is a combination of preachers that I’ve enjoyed (and reacting to preachers that I haven’t enjoyed!), finding my way intuitively week by week into the task at hand, and adapting from other literary forms - novels, poems, films, history, and even films.

To this I’d add: preaching necessarily comes out of the preacher’s own active relationship with God and also from the preacher’s pastoral conversation with his or her congregation.

Above all, preaching is an act of paying deep attention. It begins with a deep attention to the Word of God, above all. It then must be attentive to the intended audience - the congregation, and those not yet in the congregation. This is both a) the pastoral act of sitting with individuals - not just those in crisis, but those who are not; and b) being attentive to the many cultures in which individuals are nested.

My core convictions about preaching are:

• Preaching is an act of pastoral presence before it is public communication.

See above. In preaching, we address (sinful) people in all their diversity. People are not the same. I’ve heard it said that a poor preacher is ‘invisible during the week and unintelligible on Sunday’. Quite so.

• Scripture shapes imagination before it delivers information.

Calling preaching ‘bible teaching’ encourages us to think of preaching as information transference rather than formation. But reading the Bible spiritually needs the vision that comes from faith. Preaching is an invitation to see the world and ourselves with Biblical eyes. Yes, you might need to know some information in order to see in this new way. But preaching is never merely teaching, if it is to be edifying.

• The preacher stands under the text, not above it.

The preacher is not a critic or a pundit. The job of the preacher is to serve God and the people of God as a servant of the text. As Colin Gunton once said, Scripture is a book that reads you - if you are reading it right. The preacher must first be read by Scripture.

• Clarity is a moral virtue.

Clarity is not the opposite of complexity or nuance. Scripture is both: multi-faceted, rich, complex, and also clear. So it is for good preaching. The preacher doesn’t insult the intelligence of his or her congregation by dumbing the message down. But he or she provides clarification.

• Beauty serves truth; it never replaces it.

Sermons are aesthetic acts. But not merely aesthetic… they are not there to make us gasp at their beauty but wonder what they are actually about.

• Preaching aims at wisdom and endurance, not just persuasion or decision.

Through preaching, God equips his church for the long haul. The people of God gather to be built up - to be bathed in messages that they will need to counter all the messages of the world. They ought to be reminded regularly of the moment of decision for Christ. They ought to be persuaded, again and again, of the goodness, beauty, and truth of Jesus Christ. But the Christian life is lifelong, not momentary.

Perhaps a congregation will not remember particular sermons that a preacher has preached. But they will be wise and equipped for patient endurance.