Preaching: One of the examples I have referred to in training events is the service with the food: the aromas, the use of the food commercials. I have described that to pastors as a way to appeal to other senses, getting people experientially engaged in whatever is done. Even pieces of something like that can be used in a traditional sermonic setting.
Martoia: That is a good example of one that is easily scalable, not expensive – a few bucks but not expensive. That particular encounter what we were referring to was “Hungry?” Some people might instantly make the spiritual connection, but it is not long after you start smelling food that people shift back to physically thinking “am I hungry?” Three minutes into the experience you are salivating, your stomach is roaring.
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We are looking at video clips of these scrolling food commercials and we have a poetic reading that allows people to realize that at eleven o’clock at night when you see a Burger King commercial, you’re thinking, “I could go for a Whopper right now. I know it is eleven but I could eat.” The world does things like that to provoke hunger. What do we do to provoke hunger in each other to spiritual things? That was the secular/back to spiritual tie in.
Those sorts of tie-ins cause people to go, “I go throughout my day and the world is trying everything it can to get me to go buy its Big Mac. What do we do to each other to get us to press into God?” I think the other genius thing about Encounter is the team was able to make what appeared to be obtuse connections that ended up being very powerful and memorable.
Preaching: What do you think preaching is going to look like in the next generation, as we go through the kind of cultural changes now underway?
Martoia: I think my guess is as good as anybody’s! Homiletics was once three points and a poem. Now I think great preaching is going to do a couple of things. One is move away from giving pat answers. We’ll ask more profound, probing questions so that the hearer is able to engage the learning experience themselves, even though it is still dominantly rational and linear, deductive.
When my child comes asking for me to help them with algebra problem number eight and says, “Dad, can you give me the answer?” I say, “Yeah, here it is,” which is often what we do in preaching. But instead we can ask some really good questions, so that when it comes to number nine on the algebra worksheet they are not asking for the answer again, but applying the questions that I asked so they can come to some conclusions themselves. I think that is already becoming something that is highly valued.