Saturday, January 24, 1998

Crafting sermon job ministers take pride in

By LORETTA FULTON / Abilene Reporter-News

Some sermons are uplifting, some are scholarly, some will set your soul on fire, and some are real snoozers.

In some churches, the sermon is the centerpiece of the service, in others it is but a small part.

No matter the place of importance or the effect, the sermon didn't just happen overnight. Even if the sermon is a small part of an overall service, it's something a minister takes pride in and hopes will have a lasting, and favorable, impression.

Dr. Scott Black Johnston is a professor of homiletics, or sermon preparation, at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. His job is to "help students find their own preaching voice. We don't want to create cookie cutter preachers," he said.

At the Presbyterian seminary students start their preparation by learning about the "theology of the Word," Johnston said. They learn that the three-fold Word of God is Jesus Christ, scripture, and preaching.

One of the toughest jobs for a seminary professor is to teach students that sermon preparation is different from reading the Bible in order to write a scholarly paper.

"That's one of the hardest things for students -- to learn how to read the Bible with an eye toward preaching it," Johnston said.

As a form of practice, Johnston has his students retell the parables of Jesus in contemporary terms. THE RIGHT TOOLS

There is no one correct way to prepare for or deliver a sermon, Johnston said, but the topic is one of the most lively in seminaries today.

A favorite sermon form since the 1950s has been "three points and a poem," he said, but since the 1970s a new method has become popular.

The "homiletical plot" uses the logic of a novel's plot. The sermon will begin with a question such as "How can we believe in a loving God when so many bad things happen in the world?"

Using the homiletical plot form, the sermon will have an "ah-ha" moment just like a novel. In the sermon that moment will come from the gospel text of the day. From there the minister will move into considering the implications of the gospel in today's society.

Seminary professors don't teach students just one way to prepare sermons but try to equip them to develop their own style.

"My job is to put a lot of stuff in their toolbox," Johnston said. "Sometimes they want to get a hammer out, sometimes a crescent wrench."

Different pastors use different tools and take different approaches to sermon preparation, sometimes depending on their denomination.

"Pretty much we go it alone," said the Rev. Mike Shirle, pastor of Abilene's Heritage Baptist Church.

Shirle said an outline for a year is available from the Southern Baptist Convention but that he doesn't use it.

"To set up a year's worth of preaching, you are detaching yourself from the needs of the people," he said.

Instead, Shirle tries to preach on a topic that's relevant to his congregation today.

Jimmy Jividen, a longtime Church of Christ minister in Abilene and currently at Oldham Lane, follows the same path.

"Usually there's a situation in the congregation or the community that calls out a certain need," he said.

Jividen focuses on that need and then finds scriptures to fit the situation. It's a method he calls "practicality" and it has served him well.

"This has pretty well met my needs throughout the years," said Jividen, who entered Abilene Christian University as a freshman in 1947 and earned two degrees there, returning to Abilene in 1967 to preach.

BRAINSTORMING

Ministers of other denominations follow a different routine. Some use a common lectionary with an Old Testament, gospel and epistle reading each week. Their sermon usually is based on one of those readings, with illustrations to make it relevant to today's world.

Sometimes they work together, brainstorming over the scriptures to see what thoughts emerge. A group of Methodist ministers meets each Tuesday morning at the Abilene Coffee Company to go over the following Sunday's scriptures.

On a recent Tuesday nine of them reviewed John 2:1-11, in which Jesus performed his first sign by changing water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, a treatise on spiritual gifts; and Isaiah 62:1-5, in which Jerusalem is promised a new day and a new name.

The weekly meetings are part scholarly, part social, and always lively. Steve Cox, minister of Eula United Methodist Church, chooses the Corinthians passage and mentions that some people don't know how to prepare food that is given to them. He believes the folks in his rural congregation can help by sharing their gifts.

"The gifts of the spirit our congregation has been given include gardening and canning, things to make ends meet," he said.

Dixie Robertson, minister at the Clyde Methodist church, adds that perhaps the county agent could be contacted to help with teaching and to take the message outside the church walls.

"I think it's important to make those connections," she said.

DIFFICULT TEXTS

he conversation shifts to the Gospel of John, and the discussion gets complicated. Bob Ford, retired Aldersgate minister, notes that the wine at the wedding feast wasn't just any wine, but the best wine served.

"Jesus brings out what's much better" in people, Ford said.

"He makes the uncommon out of the common," said Curtis Cadenhead, pastor at St. James UMC.

The question turns to the "why" of the passage.

"Did we ever answer why he did this?" asks Jo Gay, minister at Epworth UMC.

Ford supplies an answer.

"This was the beginning of his ministry to meet people's needs," he said.

By meeting's end, some know which passage they will preach on; others don't.

"None of these really fit yet," Robertson said.

Ford and Cadenhead like the Isaiah text.

"Probably people don't find the gospel in the Old Testament, but it's there," Ford said.

Cadenhead likes the restoration theme of Isaiah.

"The restoration of the kingdom was something that had to happen from within," he said. Likewise, "the restoration of personhood has to come from within."

By Sunday, everyone's plan may change. The brainstorming session is merely a seed planting venture. The sermon is always on the minister's mind. Driving around town, cooking dinner, watching TV, the good preacher will always be alert to a good sermon story.

Most of the ministers at the Tuesday meeting won't write their sermon immediately. But by Thursday they will have at least an outline.

Some, like Gay, won't finalize the sermon until early Sunday morning. Gay gets to her church about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday and types the sermon from her outline, "so it's right there fresh," she said.

TIME TO DELIVER

So, what transpired between Tuesday and the Sunday morning sermon? A member of Cadenhead's church, Charlie Stephens, took notes and reported that Cadenhead was true to his word. He stuck to his original plan to use the Isaiah text.

He titled his sermon, "A New Day, A New Name" and talked about how lonely and desserted the Israelites were in their Babylonian captivity, Stephens said. He punched it up with an anecdote about his mother, who was mugged while visiting her old neighborhood and told not to go back there.

"She said she felt a loss of something that had formerly belonged to her," Stephens reported.

Isaiah speaks out and says "we still have a great God" despite the circumstances. He proclaims that "We will be renewed and others will see that renewal in us. We will be called by a new name."

Cadenhead expounded on the "name" theme. He noted that "your name is your bond" and pointed out that Jesus changed the names of both Peter and Paul from their original names.

After the meeting with fellow pastors and five days to work on it, how did the sermon rate with the congregation?

"It was real good," Stephens said. "It was short."