Self-Disclosure In Preaching : An Interview With Bob Russell, John Claypool, Barry Black, And Dieter Zander
Russell: I guess the most glaring example of that was once when I was talking about somebody in the Bible who had a lot of children. I think it was Jacob. I said, “I always wanted to have a lot of kids.” But off the cuff in this sermon, I said that if I was going to do that I would have to have a concubine. I was trying to be funny.
After the first service I was standing at the door shaking hands and my wife came up and stood beside me, which she doesn’t normally do. And she said, simply, “I wouldn’t use that illustration in the second service.” Needless to say, I decided that I wouldn’t.
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Claypool: I can give a specific example of when I did this. I had a really powerful, complex relationship with my mother. My father traveled and was the lesser influential parent in our family. And so my mother was very, very strong and very opinionated and was the shaping influence in my childhood. So she and I struggled because her tendency was to take over and control those things that mattered to her. I really had to struggle to get separate from her, and to establish my own identity.
I mentioned this one Sunday in a Mother’s Day sermon, and it so happened that my wife-to-be’s mother was there. She took great offense at the way I was speaking negatively about my mother, because I think it made her fearful that I might some day be critical of her. And looking back, it would have been just as well not to have done that. Here is where St. Paul’s speech about speaking the truth in love is so important. That it is true is only one of the factors. It can sometimes be true but — out of love — it needn’t be said.
Black: I used an illustration about a funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. There were some horses at the funeral that relieved themselves. Here was this beautiful caisson with the horse-drawn casket and all the pomp and pageantry. And then all of a sudden the beauty and the music were interrupted by these Clydesdale-type horses relieving themselves with great force. This was a funeral of a very high-ranking military person.
I talked a little bit about my reaction to this embarrassing occurrence: how temporal is this whole thing called life. And no matter who you are, you are not guaranteed a decent funeral. After having delivered the sermon, I started second-guessing. In retrospect, I found myself realizing that I could have probably come up with a better illustration.
Zander: There used to be times that I was tempted to exaggerate my struggle in an effort to really connect with the seeker out there. I would say things like “I sometimes wonder if there really is a God myself.” And that isn’t really accurate, because I know there is a God. I would paint a darker picture of myself than is generally true in order to involve more people, to embrace more people who might be going through the same thing. But I was not accurate. I was not truthful. I exaggerated the story in the wrong way.