I was born and bred on three-point sermons. They were the kind my father preached in his small mission church in southern Alabama, and the style I heard echoed at conferences, youth rallies, and revivals. Three points, a poem, and a couple of stories thrown in for good measure -- that pretty well captured my socialization into the world of preaching.

Theological education further refined my methods, for I was now told that the familiar three points should be tied to a main idea or proposition, balanced in emphasis, and consistent with each other. My natural instincts toward logic (after all I was a Philosophy-Religion major in college) resonated with the method and so did many of the parishioners in my first church. I felt rather secure in the affirmation that "your sermons are clear and so easy to follow."

Then I decided to preach on a story from the Old Testament -- the entire story of Job, all in one fell swoop. I began with the time-worn formula and groped to find three or four points related to Job's suffering and God's response. Nothing seemed to work. I finally decided to try something new; I'd simply tell the story. In one sermon I told the entire story of Job with his sufferings, rounds of debate with his friends, and God's final word to Job at the end of the book.

As I greeted people after the service the affirmations were forthcoming, but something was different this time. The commendations came from an entirely different group of people, and those who normally appreciated my three-pointers seemed a bit less vocal. That event sent my homiletical sensitivities into a tailspin.

As I pondered the responses to my sermon on Job, the obvious (or what should have been obvious) dawned: not everyone thinks alike and not everyone receives sermons in quite the same manner. My mind drifted back to a psychology class I'd taken and to a discussion on the two spheres of the brain. The left brain (or really the left hemisphere) is responsible for logical and linear thought. We learn languages, math, and sequential thinking with the left side of our brains. The right brain (the right hemisphere) is more sense-oriented and is responsible for our orientation in space, artistic endeavors, body image, and recognition of faces. The right brain is relational, intuitive, and feeling-oriented.

Of course, no one is ever totally left-brained or right-brained despite the occasional protestations of some people. As a seminary professor, I had a student who complained that he'd done abysmally on one of my ethics exams because he was right-brained and couldn't think in the analytical categories of a left-brained test! I hope I was kind in my response when I tried to acquaint him with the view that no individual is completely incapable of using their less-dominant sphere. Yet, the reality is that some people do think, assimilate ideas, and experience the world more through the right brain and others through the left brain. As psychologist Robert Ornstein put it: