Preachers listen to preachers. They model their preaching on other preachers. They read books about preaching by other preachers.
This is of course perfectly understandable but can lead to an unbroken circle of advice that fails to consider the perspective of the listener.
I was reminded of this recently while reading Helen Thorne-Allenson’s excellent book A Church that Cares: A Biblical Guide to Loving One Another Well. (See my book review in the August edition of Evangelicals Now).
The book has a very good chapter on listening, which included the following headings:
Listen like God (which relates to how Jesus listened carefully to those he encountered)
Listen to God
Listen to one another
Listen without presuppositions
“The more we assume, the worse we will listen”
Listen with humility
Listen with a desire to see the person flourish
Thorne-Allenson suggests that we pray, “Lord, let me want what you want for the person in front of me.”
Listen with good questions
Listen to behaviour and emotions as well as words
She writes, “Sometimes actions speak louder than words. When someone says they’re fine, but a tear is rolling down their cheek, it is likely that the tear is where the true story lies.”
Listen out for what is good, what is hard and what is ugly
Preachers do need to learn to be listeners.
Being a good listener is half the way to being a good speaker. Preachers need to be alive to God, the world and their congregations. In this way their sermons will be less like a scattergun and more like a precision bomb that explodes with nuanced meaning in the understanding of the congregation.
I was also delighted to see a chapter on preaching in this book. It might not be immediately obvious to address preaching in a book on being a caring church. Yet when preaching is at its most thoughtful it can be one of the best ways a preacher can show care for the congregation.
Invite, don’t just introduce
“One of the most important parts of any preaching and teaching is the start.”
I have written about this in my book God is in the House. I like the idea of an introduction being an invitation to enter the message.
Explore, don’t just explain
Here Thorne-Allenson reminds the preacher that the sermon slot is not like a classroom but a journey of discovery. It is not primarily about filling up the notebook but opening the imagination.
Personalise, don’t just point out
Feel, don’t just fact-find
“To be faithful to the text requires us to be faithful to the emotion of the passage.”
Abide, don’t just apply
Sermon endings should not consist of to-do-lists. Sometimes the implication of a sermon is something we must appreciate in a new way, feel or learn to remember.
Converse, don’t just conclude
“A sermon … is a staging post in someone’s journey of engaging with the passage under consideration — it is not the totality.”
In conclusion, it is often good to leave a few loose ends in a sermon as an invitation for the hearers to join the conversation.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash