Pastor’s Blog

It’s been a while since I updated, so this blog will just summarize some of what I did during the seventh week of my sabbatical.

The end of the D. Min course went well. In addition to finishing up the good content of the course, I also got to talk to Dr. John Reed and a few others about my ideas for a thesis project. It’s still too early to put anything in concrete, but they seemed intrigued by my thoughts about communicating on the visual channel. I also got to use the library a couple of afternoons to see what, if any, research has been done. It’s too early to tell for sure, but it looks like not much right on topic, but quite a bit on learning modalities and design of graphics and other related subjects.

On Saturday after the course I drove with Bethany out to Amarillo and then flew back. That went well and I got to see the home where she is living for this clinical rotation and the outside of the clinic where she is working. I refer you to her blogs for more information (at the Chronicle and on Xanga).

On Sunday, while Gail and I drove back, I asked myself ‘what are my priorities for the rest of the sabbatical?’ Conclusions: (1) run – Between back pain, travel and rain, I just haven’t gotten a lot of running in on the sabbatical so far. But this week I did 25 miles, and I hope that’s the minimum between now and the end.

(2) D. Min course project – 90% of the grade for this course is tied up in two sermons which I have to submit by August 6^th and September 6^th. Naturally I’ve chosen two sermons from the early part of my fall series in Genesis. I’ve done a draft of the first one and hope to finish it in the coming week.

(3) 3dBibleScenes. I’m working on a few pictures that fit with the sermon I’ve been writing and will also make good scenes for the commercial web site. I hope to really focus on that later in the coming week.

(4) Everything else. I’ve come to the unsurprising conclusion that I’m not going to be able to do everything I hoped on this sabbatical. Oh well. I’m still hoping (and trying) to get some relaxation and refreshment. One thing that has been good is a personal Bible study on contentment. No real conclusions yet, and (surprise) no sermon series yet, but a lot of good time spent in the word pursuing the teaching of words related to contentment, like ‘satisfied’ and antonyms like ‘covet’ and ‘fret’

My first Doctor of Ministry Course runs from Monday to Friday, July 9^th to 16^th, at Dallas Theological Seminary. I’m going to blog a paragraph or so each day.

 

First Day, Monday: I was more tense about the logistics of being in the right place at the right time than I needed to be. I drove up to Dallas Sunday afternoon and got settled in at Abbie and Tim’s in Crandall. Then on Monday I drove up to the seminary near downtown Dallas. It’s only about a half an hour drive, but I left myself an hour and a half, because I was worried about finding the seminary, getting a parking permit, finding the classroom, etc. Didn’t need it. Everything went well, logistically. Furthermore there was good internet access in the classroom (unlike Abbie’s house) so I’ll be able to post this first thing in the morning.

The class is going to be good. It’s called ‘Communication Relevance in Preaching’ and it’s taught by Dr. Donald Sunukian, who teaches at Talbot Seminary, and on the D. Min level at ten other seminaries. There are only nine students, and we sit at a round table with our laptops, taking notes and talking (and in my case, multi-tasking a little bit on some 3d Bible Scenes stuff). The quality of the students is quite exceptional. There is one Bible School prof from Russia, a musician and denominational leader from the Faroe islands, and others from all across the U.S. I’ve got seventeen years in ministry at this point, and that’s about typical for the group. This makes the discussions of preaching lively and interesting, coming as they do from people who have devoted much time and thought to what they are doing every week. It’s good stuff.

Second Day, Tuesday: We’ve been working through the process of creating a sermon from a given text. Dr. Sunukjian’s approach is very similar to what preachers such as Haddon Robinson and Ramesh Richard teach, but with a few worthwhile differences in approach and emphasis. But his ‘big thing’ is what I’ll call ‘exemplary applications’. From the very start of the message, Sunukjian will develop two or three stories, mostly fictitious, but about people very much like the people in his congregation. In these stories the people will encounter a vivid instance of the problem the text addresses in their own contemporary lives. For example, if Abraham and Sarah are called to leave from Ur and go to the promised land, then Bill and Wanda will be called to leave Houston by a job transfer and go to another state where just to be a Christian is to be a missionary. The Biblical text of what happened to Abraham has a great deal of contemporary relevance for them under that circumstance, and for others who identify with them. Sunukian will develop Bill and Wanda’s story, along with one or two others, in two or three episodes as he moves through the outline of the text, and bring his understanding of the Bible’s message to apply to these contemporary examples. It’s a powerful technique; I’ve done something similar on occasion, but being in this class, listening to Dr. Sunukjian do it has clarified it in my mind. Thoughts anyone?

Wednesday and Thursday: Sorry, didn’t get a chance to blog earlier, being busy. Wednesday evening Abbie, Tim and I went out to dinner at their favorite restaurant, Napoli’s in Crandall. It’s (obviously) an Italian place, a real good one; their stuffed mushrooms with crab meat are to die for (and of).

Wednesday was the middle day of the course, and of the sermonic preparation process. I’ve decided that one of the key values of a course like this is putting terminology to things that I’ve done without knowing (or remembering) what to call it. One of the big ideas for Wednesday was that every sermon is either inductive or deductive. Do you know the difference? Dr. Sunukjian’s distinction between the two is simple and memorable. If you approach a sermon by stating up front the central idea of the text, it’s going to be a deductive sermon. If you only state the question that the text raises in our minds, and answer it by developing the text, it’s an inductive sermon. Those of you who listen to me often know that I usually use the deductive approach, but occasionally the ‘big idea’ sentence that you see in the bulletin is a question – those are weeks I’m going inductive on you.

On Thursday we began to focus on details, especially those that make oral delivery effective. The big one Dr. Sunukjian promotes is restatement (which I keep accidently calling ‘recapitulaiton’). Actually the parentheses is an example of restatement – saying the same thing in other words. If the central idea of the sermon was ‘God’s grace toward me is awesome proof of how much I am loved’, I could restate it as ‘God convincingly proves how much he loves me by the greatness of his grace’ or some such. I don’t do this as much as Dr. Sunukjian would, though some who listen to me have remarked on the way I always have two or three synonyms for key words – that’s restatement too, and it is especially effective in oral communication.

The following is one of a dozen or so book reviews that I am doing for the Doctor of Ministry course.  I’ve done four so far.  I decided to post this one because I had a strong reaction to the book.  Tell me if you’d like to see the others.

Note that the review starts out with general overview and reaction and moves on to specific topics of interest to the reader (me).

McDill, Wayne V. The Moment of Truth. Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1999. 197 pages. ISBN: 0-8054-1827-X.

The Moment of Truth is about the act of preaching – standing in front of a congregation at a moment in time and communicating God’s truth. McDill says “We are dealing, of course, with sermon delivery, but we must not think of it as the mere presentation of a persuasive speech on a religious theme. Preaching is much more than that. God has ordained to use man as His agent of revelation. He has sent His agent forth to preach. This is His method. It is His way of keeping the original vision alive. It is His method of teaching and renewing his people. . . of communicating the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. On every occasion preaching has this potential. It is the moment of truth.” The burden of the book is to help the preacher to prepare for this moment. Thus McDill addresses God’s plan for preaching and emphasizes that preaching is oral communication, and that it requires a communicator. He tells pastors that like-it-or-not, they are a model and an example, and that the effectiveness of their preaching does depend on the quality of their character. The remaining chapters develop details of the oral communication process: a model for communication; the use of voice and body language; preaching style; preaching method (memorized, text, notes, extemporaneous); designing a sermon to fit the method and finally, some thoughts on what is happening as the preacher preaches.

McDill’s thesis that preaching is oral communication dominated my interaction with this book. Under the rubric of that thesis, McDill does present some information that I appreciated. For example, his various lists of ways to think about the audience were good, especially the types of audiences. His model of communication, while not original, was well developed. However, it seemed to me he spent an inordinate amount of time on voice and articulation without really being able to communicate how these things can be changed or improved (a limitation of the written medium he’s using to promote oral communication). He then goes on, again in conventional fashion, to emphasize that most communication takes place non-verbally. In this chapter he argues both for and against the use of a pulpit, and even addresses issues of clothing, grooming, and personal space, with a level of detail probably suitable for a Baptist seminary but not necessarily for a wider audience of preachers.

On the other hand I really liked his chapter on preaching style, and found the chart in which he rates such characteristics as ‘stiff . . . informal’ and ‘obscure . . . clear’ to be helpful.  What I really tripped over was chapter 8, in which he makes an extended argument for preaching extemporaneously, which he does not, fortunately, define as ‘without preparation’, but does define as ‘a well prepared sermon delivered with few notes or none at all’. The chapter argues for this position by arbitrarily dismissing the other options (memorized, manuscript, notes) and poorly supporting his idea from history. McDill spends seven pages listing the advantages of preaching without notes and two pages on the risks. He spends almost no time on the advantages of preaching from a manuscript.

Why does this bother me?  You can probably guess that I preach from a manuscript, and have done so on most occasions for 17 years of ministry. I find the other options unsatisfactory for various reasons.  I do consistently preach with no notes when doing first person messages: I still write out a manuscript, but by repetition I get very familiar with the material and with the flow of scenes, emotions, etc. so that when I stand to deliver it, I can do it ‘from memory’ without having memorized most of the words.  I get the impression this is what McDill wants me to do every week, but the simple truth is that the investment of an extra 12 hours to accomplish this is unworkable, and in my case the advantage is minimal.  Though the manuscript does mostly tie me to the pulpit, I can pick up sentences and whole paragraphs so effectively that most people do not know I’m using a manuscript.  It does not interfere with eye contact, gesture, facial expression or verbal style.

But there is a more important reason why I take exception to McDill’s advocacy of ‘no notes’, and it is related to his definition of preaching as oral communication.  While I agree that oral communication is vitally important to preaching, and that in past ages it was the only method of communication available for the preacher, I don’t think that’s true anymore.  For the past five or more years I have been experimenting with supporting oral communication on the visual channel.  Primarily this has meant some very sophisticated Powerpoint to go along with the sermon.  My thesis, which I hope to pursue in this D. Min experience, is that in a culture that has been exposed from birth to television, movies and other integrated forms of communication (sound and picture), we will reach our peers not by making them come in and close their eyes while they listen to a lecture, but by communicating on both the audio and visual channels.  As a model, consider The Civil War as chronicled by Ken Burns.  Burns pioneered the use of archival images with narration and music to communicate in-depth the history of that conflict.  I’m trying to do the same thing for exegetical preaching, putting on the screen not just any image, but images that communicate exegetical facts, by words and pictures, on the visual channel.  The result is that my sermon manuscript becomes much more like a script that I can share with those who help me create Powerpoint and those who operate the computers during worship.  If I was to preach without notes the cues which cause the visuals to progress in support with the words would almost certainly be forgotten (by me), missed (by the Powerpoint operator) or obscured.  Thus I reject all of McDill’s fine arguments for not working from a script and affirm that in our culture preaching needs to be not less but more than merely oral communication.  Scripting is the norm for all of the media to which we are constantly exposed; scripting is what makes it work; scripting is necessary for communicating with this culture.