I am currently in Waco, TX attending a theological conference attended by many of the pastors who serve the three ELCA Synods in Texas and Louisiana. This year's topic is preaching, and the planners have brought in homiletics (fancy word for preaching) professors from various seminaries. These folks are giving out advice based upon the things they have learned in their time preaching and teaching.
Our first presenter offered up many good things:
He spoke of making sure one's prayer life was robust and alive. When one is spiritually drained from taking care of the spiritual needs of others, soon, one has nothing more to give in preaching. I believe he was absolutely correct in his assessment of this.
He also encouraged us to spend quite a bit of time in study and preparation for our sermons. He advised us to read not only theological material but poetry as well. And, I might add, he advised us to work with the biblical text first and "play" with it many hours before we even contemplate looking at any commentaries. Since this is what I have done for quite some time, I felt quite affirmed.
One of the other main points he made was to be ourselves when we preach. There is a temptation for many to watch a really good preacher and then try to ape that preacher. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily have those gifts to be that type of preacher. When we try to imitate instead of being ourselves, we come across as false, and in the long term, we become exhausted by trying to be something we are not. My own personal experience resonated deeply with this. Been there. Done that, and I would say our presenter was absolutely correct.
If I have one quibble, and it is a bit minor because I think I know what our presenter was trying to say, I just wish he would have phrased it differently. While discussing the need for us to be ourselves, he admonished us to "Find our own voice." Again, I believe his intention is to tell us to be ourselves and not someone else, but the hackles on my neck rose slightly. I wished he would have said something to the effect of, "Find God's voice speaking through you."
It is a contention that I have learned that folks do not come to church to hear a word from the pastor. It is my contention--and many others--that folks come to church to hear a word from God. Preaching is essentially trying to bring God's Word into our context of today. The challenge of preaching is getting one's self out of the way as much as possible and allow God to preach through you. As one who has striven to do so, I can firmly state, it's darn near impossible. When I'm dealing with a text, I always want to bring my stuff to the text and interpret it in a way that makes me comfortable. I always want to take any challenges in the text to the way I am viewing the world or the way I am acting and minimize them. I always want to emphasize the things I agree with. But if I do so, I'm not being true to Christ; I'm not being true to the Biblical text; I'm not being helpful to my own spiritual growth; and I am certainly doing no favors to my congregation.
It's work to try and do such a thing. And I know it does happen. I know it when I sit down to type out my sermon and all of a sudden, I finish and say to myself, "That one went a direction I totally didn't expect." Or I say to myself, "This sermon bites," and on Sunday morning, it ends up touching more than a few sitting in the pews. Such things are important reminders that it is God who is using those of us to preach to convey His word and not our own.
I have a very strong feeling our presenter agrees with such sentiments wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, because we easily fumble in our language and say things without perfect clarity, he didn't come across that way. Luckily, I don't think it detracted from his presentation too much.
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