A group of these interviewees say they tend to catch the preacher’s enthusiasm for the subject. As one says, “Try to find a way within your own personality to show some enthusiasm for your subject.” Another reinforces, “I don’t know how I get energy from someone that doesn’t radiate or emit some themselves.” Still another is more modest, but still revealing. “Act like you’re interested in the subject yourself. Just put a little zip into it.”
A positive tone to the sermon — a sense of receiving good news that empowers the congregation for change — is important to many. When reflecting on energizing qualities in preaching, one says, “I like to feel good coming out.” This feeling is particularly important if “There’s something in your life you need to work on.” Asking for “A simple message,” one interviewee goes on, “Stick to it as best you can and try to end on a positive note and give people something to think on.” An educator adds, “Be engaged in the material yourself. Just like I’m a teacher — if I’m not interested in what I’m teaching, you better believe I lose the whole class.” A number of listeners advise preachers to help the congregation recognize shortcomings and things the people need to change, but not to let the sermon become a morass of negativity.
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I am surprised that a bevy of interviewees stress that preachers should say what they truly believe. For instance, “You’re not just saying this. You’re saying something that you really believe. When our pastor preaches, it comes across as if the pastor really believes what the pastor is saying. It’s not just something the pastor has been programmed to say.” In a similar line, when asked the question powering this article, another listener responds with just two words: “Be authentic.”
One listener calls attention to a closely related quality of preaching. “I think a person preparing a sermon that’s going to inform and enlighten others must have an experience of being informed or enlightened himself or herself.” This listener wants to feel that each time ministers work with biblical texts and themes, they “learn something” afresh. Such sermons should “convey the experience of encountering and struggling with the lessons of this scripture.”
A few members of the local congregations in the project recognize that you need to keep deepening your powers as a preacher after you leave seminary. As one indicates, “Realize that seminary doesn’t do everything for you. You still want to realize your own weaknesses.” In this case, the prescription is simple. “I think one that that is significant about great ministers is that they recognize their deficiencies and take steps to get assistance, get support.”
A handful of the interviewees sound a note that is appropriate for bringing this article to a close. “I have to help energize myself,” says one. “I have to come with an open heart, open mind, just looking for something. Then, more than likely, I’ll get it.” An important task for ministers and other leaders of congregations, then, is to help people discover how to prepare to receive the sermon so that their experience of the message is enhanced when they hear it.
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Ron Allen directed the study on which this article is based. The study has generated four books so far: John McClure, Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, L. Susan Bond, Dan P. Moseley, and G. Lee Ramsey, Jr. Listening to Listeners: Homiletical Case Studies (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004); Ronald J. Allen, Hearing the Sermon: Relationship, Content, Feeling (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004); Mary Alice Mulligan, Diane Turner-Sharazz, Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, and Ronald J. Allen, Believing in Preaching: What Listeners Hear in Sermons (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2005), and Mary Alice Mulligan and Ronald J. Allen, Make the Word Come Alive: Lessons from Laity (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2005).
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Ronald J. Allen is Nettie Sweeney and Hugh Th. Miller Professor of Preaching and New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary, IN.