Richard L. Eslinger
A New Hearing, Living Options in Homiletic Method
***************
Author's notes:
Richard L. Eslinger, at the writing of this book, was pastor of Wallingford
United Methodist Church in Seattle. Prior to that he was associate professor of
Christian worship at Duke University.
***********
The author proposes that preaching presentations are in crisis. He examines the
methods of storytelling, black narrative, a bridge between narrative and
inductive, and the inductive methods, while emphasizing the structure and
movement of biblical material. In each section there is also an example of each
method. Preachers, ministers, and laity can benefit from a reading.
Introduction
Preaching has always been done this way is in question by the demands of
listeners. Attention and retention by listeners is always a problem, but new
methods of presentation may be in order. Here Eslinger tells us why.
Chapter 1: Preaching As Story
The views of Charles Rice, professor of homiletics, Drew University TheologicaI
School, Madison, New Jersey, are examined. Preaching has too often become a
routine comfortable, unheard, exercise for the preacher. Biblical storytelling
is here considered for its merits, and as a possibility for re-invigorating the
listener.
Chapter 2: Narrative in the Black Tradition: Henry Mitchell
Eslinger continues his study of homiletics specifically applied to sermons.
Here, narrative as commonly used by the black preacher is studied. Henry
Mitchell is Dean of the School Of Theology, Virginia Union University, Richmond,
Va.
Chapter 3: Narrative and the Sermonic Plot: Eugene Lowry
Eugene Lowry is professor of preaching and communication, Saint Paul School of
Theology, Kansas City, Missouri . The traditional "three points and a poem" as
the structure for a sermon lacks "life" and tends to dull listeners. But Lowry
contends that a sermon should be "an event in time", involving movement and
direction. In this context sermons become more interesting without losing the
capacity to teach a lesson.
Chapter 4: The Inductive Method In Preaching: Fred Craddock
Fred Craddock was Professor of New Testament and homiletics, Candler School of
Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Main stream preaching method has
been deductive, and still is to large extent. Deductive preaching tends to lose
the listener because intimate relevancy to the listener is not made, nor
concluded. The inductive method has a starting point and proceeds to a
conclusion, and can involve in the listener, capturing his or her attention.
Chapter 5: A Phenomenological Method: David Buttrick
David Buttrick was professor of homiletics, Vanderbilt University Divinity
School, Nashville, Tennessee. Often today a preacher will mount the pulpit with
a text for the day, and transform it into thematics developed propositionally.
That preaching method ignores the affect that related verses have on the context
of that one verse or passage. Hearers are apt to sense that preaching is
synonymous with harmless, shallow declarations on virtues and feelings. The way
out of this proposition is not by interjecting story illustrations presenting
warm, fuzzy subjectivity. Buttrick proposes that phenomenological presentation
which fails to move, have life, needs to include the performative intent of the
language of the passage before a proper conclusion, or message, can be reached.
Chapter 6: Postscript, Story and Storytelling
Eslinger, with examples by John Vannorsdall and Deneise Deter-Rankin, suggests
that narrative theology has returned to sermons, promoting better Bible
understanding and listener involvement.
Introduction
Preaching is in crisis. This awareness has been with us for some time now,
reducing pastoral morale and congregational fervor. But the way out, toward new
effectiveness in preaching, is not yet clear. What is quite evident, though, is
that the old topical/conceptual approach to preaching is critically, if not
terminally ill. No longer buttressed by scriptural interpretation or the
cultural ethos, this old orthodoxy of a discursive homiletic method persists in
many pulpits simply for lack of a clear-cut alternative. Preachers gather
together in workshops on their craft and chuckle when the leader refers to
"three points and a poem." Yet many pastors return from such events and continue
to preach the propositions and illustrations mainly because for them "it's
always been done this way," and it has become a familiar and seemingly harmless
habit. The inertia is aided and abetted in some situations by the persistence of
a preaching service in which Scripture is minimally in evidence and is separated
from preaching by all sorts of other liturgical "preliminaries." As the great,
last act of the preaching service, the sermon is not embarrassed either by
proximity to the Word or by ritual acts of response which would imply that there
has been some call. But for whatever reason, the old homiletic persists well
past its prime and on into its decline.
It is not as if preachers are oblivious to the crisis, though. The blank stares
and congregational inattention can be sensed by pastors who preach week in and
week out. For most of us, the realization has long since occurred that the old
conceptual preaching simply is not heard by most of those in attendance. It has
ceased to be a "Word-event"; the words go out from the pulpit, but never even
find their way into the consciousness of the hearers. Some of the stories may
stick in the mind of the congregation, particularly the first-person kind, and
maybe an idea or two gets hammered in. But what has been retained does not
connect together, and even the remembered illustrations rarely "illustrate" the
unremembered conceptual material. We know these things, recognize the
symptomology, and feel the impotence of it all - and we look for a new way, a
new way which will grant a new hearing to God's Word.
Those ministers who are seeking a new approach to biblical preaching, however,
will not find one clear-cut methodological alternative. Instead, they will be
greeted by a bewildering field of homiletical contenders. There is talk of
inductive approaches, and storytelling, life-situational, and various liberation
models, though there seem to be as many books written out of the old orthodoxy
as there are books exploring some new perspective. Any church publisher's series
on preaching will reflect this wild diversity of the recognizable old and the
unfamiliar new in preaching Sermon commentaries provide the same situation, with
unpredictable swings in homiletic method occurring as each new commentator tries
his or her hand at biblical interpretation and sermonic approach. Congregations,
too, experience these methodological and stylistic shifts in slow motion, as
preachers come and go. "Points" give way to stories which are displaced by
subjective pulpit musings with perhaps further recurrences of "points" or
outbreaks of stories. This confusion, in fact, may be occasioned not only by
ministerial changes, but by ministerial experimentation as well. We are not sure
where we are, and while some of us have taken to this kind of exploration, most
of us have tinkered only a bit with the old method. The numbering of the
"points" may be jettisoned, the outline loosened up a bit, and more stories are
used now. But the crisis continues, and the new directions seem unclear.
In order to deal effectively with this crisis, two kinds of insight would seem
to be needed by those who preach. On the one hand, there is a need for some
quite precise analysis as to the nature of the pathology afflicting the old
homiletic. We would like to have specific reasons for rejecting an approach to
preaching that many of us worked laboriously to learn in seminary! On the other,
clarity is needed in the midst of all the new approaches to the ministry of
preaching. The field needs to be mapped, the terrain surveyed, before we can
engage either in experiments with new approaches or in evaluations of them. So,
the twin homiletical questions at the present time in the life of the church
are, What is really the problem with the old conceptual method? and, Where do we
go from here?
This mapping of the confusing terrain of homiletics today was greatly assisted
when Wellford Hobbie noted that there seemed to be three major homiletical
approaches which have moved significantly beyond the old topical preaching
orthodoxy.(1) He saw emerging on the horizon first an inductive approach to
preaching, then the narrative or story form, and finally a method based on the
movement and structure of the biblical text. In all these new approaches, there
is a keen attentiveness to sermonic form out of a new respect for the variety of
shapes Scripture takes and out of a concern that the form of the sermon will
capture the interest and attention of the congregation. "Our challenge," Hobbie
observes, "is how to get the truth, the gospel, heard among the varieties of
listeners before us."(2) Based on this initial mapping of the new homiletics,
the present volume proposes to explore in some detail these three major
movements as represented in the specific methods of five contemporary
homileticians. Charles Rice will be examined with reference to his homiletics of
storytelling, which he shares to a great extent ...
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