The difference between a pond and a stream is mobility. Streams are ever more fascinating than ponds, and nearly everyone I know prefers white water to stagnant pools. This principle holds in the pulpit as well. Preachers who move are more interesting than those who don't. I realize that such a preacher's principle of pedagogy is widely debated. More formal and liturgical congregations may want their preachers to stay "behind the pulpit," and in older church buildings, which have wineglass pulpits, they actually prefer the preacher to climb in and out of "the barrel" for all godly pronouncements.

The first time I ever heard Norman Peale preach (and indeed, every time I heard Peale preach) he left the divided lectern and lit out for the center of a chancel and stood there, unseparated from his audience by the pulpit barrier of eighty pounds of wood. Only oxygen came between us as he preached to us. I was a young pastor the first time I heard him, and I made a decision that if he could get by with that at Marble Collegiate Church, I could also get by with it in the church I was attempting to plant in Nebraska.

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The best thing to be said of a pulpit is that (in spite of the fact it hides the speaker) it does locate the preacher to one place. Some preachers need that. Without the pulpit they become meandering messengers who pace back and forth like a caged lion while they shout out the words of their sermons. Pacing is bad, and it betrays the preacher's nerves, setting all insecurities right out in the open for all to see. But pulpits do not necessarily prevent the preacher from becoming a roaming reverend. In fact, many preachers have developed a peripatetic pedagogy just trying to abandon the pulpit. The trustees will not allow these preachers to take the pulpit out of the sanctuary, so they are forced to spend their years walking around it in an attempt to get away from having it come between them and their audiences.

This axiom champions the notion, that while movement is commanding, pacing is not. So move deliberately. Take a few paces at planned intervals, moving deliberately. Plant yourself in that position for a few minutes of your sermon before you move easily to the next point from which you deliver more of the message.

Above all, remember this: a chancel is to church what a stage is to the theater. In the theater movements from upstage center to downstage center is the most powerful kind of movements in terms of making the playwright's words come alive. The same is true in the chancel. Walking toward an audience when you are making a point has far more effect than walking away from them toward the rear of the chancel. In either the theater or the church, the weakest kind of communication movement comes in moving from one side of the stage to the other.

But either actors or preachers should not wander about the stage. Actors work at "blocking" or planning their movements. They realize their position on the stage is part of their interpretation of the role they play. I have never seen either King Lear or Hamlet do their soliloquies from anywhere other than center stage. There is a reason for that. The best of preachers know what the reason is and behave accordingly during the delivery of their sermons. Always move deliberately on the stage or platform.