How Much Does The Preaching Matter?

By NANCY GIBBS

The word that keeps coming back is hunger. Scholars talk about it, but so do preachers and parishioners. The reason that preaching is enjoying a revival in churches where it was a dying art, say religion scholars, has to do with appetites that are harder to satisfy outside church, as the culture grows noisier and more coarse. "People will come to church if they know they will be fed there--fed with the experience of an encounter with Christ," argues Robert Klonowski, a Lutheran minister in Chicago. "Billy Graham is no different than the weekly preacher. The job is the same."

The same, and yet very different. There are preachers like Graham whose gift is to grab hold of the hearts of the unchurched and launch them on a journey into faith. But it is one thing to inspire a moment of conversion; it is another to escort you, week after week, all the way home. The vast majority of preachers do their work in sanctuaries, not stadiums, before hundreds of listeners every week, not tens of thousands once a year. And for them, who are judged not only in the pulpit but also at the bedside, in the classroom, at the meeting, in the soup kitchen, how much does the preaching really matter?

"The world's a ship on its passage out," Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, "and the pulpit is its prow." That may have been true at one time--but times have changed, moral authority has dispersed, the 1960s and '70s toppled many a preacher from his rostrum, along with other symbols of authority. "That created a trauma in the churches," argues William Schweiker, professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago. "The first reaction was to encourage a therapeutic emphasis on pastoral care." When it came to preaching, as opposed to social activism and counseling, the mainline churches lost their faith, lost a whole generation. The Bible became just one more sourcebook, like the daily paper. Even in the megachurches, with thousands of members and vast resources, the sermon sometimes seemed like one more offering in the Christian cafeteria, wedged between the 12-step programs and the music and Sunday school and countless fellowship activities.

But strong preaching--biblically based, artfully crafted--is a tradition that is being reclaimed and transformed at the same time. Like any romance, the courtship between a church and a preacher can take a long time and some divine intervention to get right. Pastoral search committees often spend years looking for their perfect mate, a Shepherd in Chief who can somehow tend to both the budget and the soul. But as important as administrative skill and pastoral experience may be, many churches admit that right now, there's one gift that matters most. Says Duain Claiborne, who chaired the call committee for his Lutheran church in Northfield, Ill.: "The only thing people want to know is, 'Can he preach?'"

Many congregations found that maintaining a vibrant education and outreach program depended on getting people to come to church in the first place. And that in turn depended on the message delivered each Sunday. "Cultural competition" is part of the challenge, argues Paige Patterson, president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. "People are highly stimulated by entertainment of a thousand different varieties, so if they go to church and are bored or at least not challenged, they're thinking, 'Why go to church?'"

That competition has led preachers to stretch and experiment and borrow at will. "There's a recovery of the Bible out there," says the renowned Walter Brueggemann of Columbia Seminary, "but there's also a need to re-create the art of preaching for a different time." In place of a standard sermon formula--the light introduction, the three-point argument, the summary and coda--comes a growing acceptance of different preaching styles. The latest evolution, according to David Howell, editor of three journals on preaching, is the "narrative sermon," typically a simple story designed to teach a moral lesson, as opposed to a traditional dissection of a biblical text. Often it is a very personal tale of the preacher's trials and triumphs, with lots of emotional content and little thorny theology. "Some people find it 'dumbing down,'" says Howell, "but today's congregations are not well acquainted with the Bible. There's a need felt to get back to basics."

Traditionalists don't have much use for preaching that is all about the self. But even this new style is already evolving, to include not just modern-day parables but the original biblical narratives in all their layers. Many seminaries look for someone to teach preaching who, in addition to rhetoric and delivery, has degrees in Scripture and theology, notes Fred Craddock, distinguished professor of preaching and New Testament emeritus at Emory. "It's not just being a toastmaster."

But the greatest changes in the spirit and style of the mainline churches may reflect their debt to the black churches, where preaching has always flourished. "They remind us that the sermon is not a verbal essay but an oral performance of Scripture that includes the whole congregation," says Richard Lischer, Cleland professor of preaching at Duke Divinity School. "I know a number of white preachers who have either moved the pulpit from their sanctuaries or ignore it and stand freely in the center of the chancel or on the steps, microphone in hand, without manuscript, speaking from the heart. We're learning about the importance of language, intonation, the proper use of voice, rhythm." As preaching styles become more fluid and traditions blend, those who are hungry for a fresh experience of faith may find the choices richer than ever.

--Reported by David Van Biema and Nadia Mustafa/New York and Marguerite Michaels/Chicago

With reporting by David Van Biema and Nadia Mustafa/New York and Marguerite Michaels/Chicago