Stage 3: Design the Sermon
Once a preacher has sharpened a sermon's main impact, he or she must design its content into a sermon that will adequately carry its message. At this stage, preachers find themselves somewhere along the sermon spectrum between traditional deductive design and plotted inductive narrative design. The most difficult part of any communication is not what to say but how to say it, and preachers must work at both. This stage is called "homiletics" and involves designing a sermon that says and does the same things the biblical text says and does. Twenty-first-century hearers have to be engaged just as convincingly as the first hearers were.
Advertisement
Stage 4: Deliver the Sermon
Delivering the sermon requires yet another range of skills and disciplines. Incarnational preaching concerns the person of the preacher — spirituality, voice, and body. Authentic messages come from authentic messengers, represented by integrated circles of knowledge, skill, and character. Consider Francis of Assisi's startling advice: "Go and preach the gospel. If you have to, use words." Many other factors also weigh in alongside words for effective preaching. We have noted that technology invites new ways of combining word, image, and sound. Today, trinitarian preaching occurs within an electronic context, and twenty-first-century preachers have a responsibility to pursue new opportunities for delivering sermons — offering the timeless message in timely ways.
Stage 5: Experience the Outcomes
Figure 7 shows that 360-degree preaching involves action after the delivery as well as before. Preaching as a God-event moves individuals and communities forward in responsive living. God's Word will not return empty because it empowers both preacher and hearers to live differently. Sermons are not conversation pieces to tickle gray matter but God's springboards for action in kingdom life. Preachers and hearers should expect to be different. Hearers should say, "By the grace of God, what the preacher said to me is . . . and what he calls me to do is . . ."
Figure 8 provides a profile of the preaching swim. None of the five phases should be omitted from each weekly swim. Shortcuts are tempting for busy preachers, but they imperil genuine outcomes by disconnecting parts of the 360-degree model.
___________________________________
Michael Quicke is Koller Professor of Preaching at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL.
___________________________________
Notes
1. Eugene Lowry, The Sermon: Dancing the Edge of Mystery (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), 15.
2. Michael Quicke (E. Y. Mullins Lectures, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, 3 March 1995).
3. Charles W. Koller, How to Preach without Notes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 14.
4. YMCA of USA, Teaching Swimming Fundamentals (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1999), 10-11.
5. Quoted in John W. Doberstein, The Minister's Prayer Book (London: Collins, 1964), 428.
6. Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Marten Lloyd-Jones (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994), 2.
7. Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1989), 20.
8. William H. Willimon, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992).
9. See David J. Schlafer, Your Way with God's Word (Cambridge: Cowley, 1995), 28.
10. Ronald J. Allen and Gilbert L. Bartholomew, Preaching Verse by Verse (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), viii.