I had an e-mail this morning from a graduate student who wants me to send him bibliographical material on the history of inductive preaching and what caused the change. It's hard to recover all that. But it grew out of that personal agony and my struggle to teach preaching, which really started out being an exegetical exercise: the text says, the text says, the text says, we may stand for the benediction. I was actually afraid, I think, that I would put too much water in the wine if I left the text to talk about what was happening in the world. So I went through exposition, with a little application at the end. It was kind of artificial. So every sermon was really two or three little sermons.

Advertisement

I really decided that the normal flow of conversation — if preaching, if theology, if Christology comes out of the conversation between the community of faith and the book that called it into being, then the conversation should be a conversation. Now I don't mean sitting on the end of the table saying, "Well, what do you all want to talk about today?" There's some authority there, there's responsibility there. But how can I get people in the congregation to participate? That's what I still struggle with.

I imagine that if somebody came here and listened to me for four or five Sundays who had read my books, they'd say, "You're not even doing what you said in the book!" I'm trying to get people to hear the word of God, and if I have to bend myself into some strange shape, I don't care.

Preaching: What are the sermons like which you are preaching today at Cherry Log Church?

Craddock: I think they are still, in a sense, inductive. I spend longer in the text than I did in the 70's and 80's. I felt like mine were true to the text then, but I stay in there longer because the audience hasn't been there at all. I stay longer in the text, but I think the general shape of it is the same. I tease them, I joke with them. Thinks like, "You know, I told you what Paul said to this church. I think it was about five years ago, but in case you've forgotten let me remind you . . ." Of course, most of them weren't here five years ago.

We had a young man read the text (1 Cor. 9:24-27) Sunday morning. And I started off by saying, "I suppose Allen wants us to think he was reading from the Bible, but he was actually reading from the sports page. Would you people get your Bibles out and check and see if that's what it really says?" I think if you analyzed that sermon, the general movement would be inductive in the sense of arriving at a conclusion. I think the big difference is that I come at the scripture in an inductive way; now I stay in there longer, with more detail, than I did.

Preaching: That really speaks to one of the criticisms of your work. Your approach to preaching has been described as leading people on a process of discovery, but that you can't take people on the same journey if they don't have the same experience or knowledge — the fact that people are increasingly less knowledgeable about the Bible.