By Timothy S. Warren
I propose, therefore, to return to the basics of preaching, in light of its persisting necessity. I will review eight statements that constitute a common understanding of our task. I will also recall stories that, I trust, capture the passion of our preaching. During the course of this week we will develop these concepts in greater detail. The purpose of this address is to give us a common ground from which to provoke one another to faithful preaching. The first thing I want you to see is that . . .
Preaching is Communicational.
Great preaching presumes communication knowledge and skill. We work diligently so that our preaching might be heard. One of the great ironies of God's plan is that He entrusted to feeble mouths the glorious Gospel message.
Advertisement
With our missionary age in mind, I want to emphasize just three strategies for communication: argument, image, and identification.
Communication means argument. Preaching always has, and always will, provided reasons for believing. Through good reasons the communicator seeks to convince, to persuade, to win over. Christian preaching should not coerce or manipulate, but it should argue.
We are told that since postmodernity has dethroned reason, we must repudiate the intellectual, the logical, the rational (Veith, 1994, 27-29; Hinkson & Ganssle, 2000, 68-89).
Reason, which modernity improperly defied as rationalism, has been, or is being properly dethroned. But we would be mistaken to eliminate thinking from our quest to know God. He made us rational beings; and the Spirit works through our minds. We must continue to argue.
Communication also means image. Much has been made of our moving from a word to an image culture. Newspapers affirm that trend. Formats have changed significantly; more color, larger print, graphs, and pictures. Not only that, most people no longer get their news from a newspaper, but from the television and the computer. The news is image (Johnston, 2001, 47-50; Henderson, 1998, 70-82).
Back before the printing press, the church used physical images to communicate the Christian message. With Bibles inaccessible, pictures carved into the doors, woven into the tapestries, and stained into the glass of church buildings told the story of redemption. Today, mental images communicated in words — illustrations, stories, and emotional word pictures — help us reach not only the minds of our listeners, but also their hearts and wills (Smalley & Trent, 1991, 17; Chapell, 2001, 39). Since our missionary age craves images, we must offer them alongside our arguments.
Communication also means Identification. People attend to speakers with whom they identify. If we stand off from our listeners in such a way that they believe we do not know them, do not understand them, do not care about their joys or struggles, they will not hear our preaching.