Liven Up Your Preaching

By Robert Warren Cromey

Voicing the Vision by Linda L. Clader

Morehouse Publishing, 2004, $16.95, ISBN 0-8192-1932-0

Linda Clader's book Voicing the Vision is a call for preachers to use their bodies and senses as well as brains, minds and intellect when preparing and delivering sermons. Lighten up, loosen up, have fun and use your imagination and humor in your sermons, she says.

I add my voice to the many who hear pretty poor sermons as I go to different churches now that I am retired. Preachers seem tied to the text, dour in spirit and frightened at heart. Clader doesn't agree with that assessment as she hears many good sermons as a teacher of preaching and going to chapel at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., where she is Professor of Homiletics and Dean of Academic Affairs.

The myth of clergy burnout is one of my pet peeves. Rectors and vicars manage their own time. They have to show up for Sunday and attend a vestry meeting once a month, and the rest of the time is theirs to manage. Wouldn't our brothers and sisters in the corporate world love to have that freedom?

Professor Clader makes many good suggestions for the preacher, and one of the best is keeping the Sabbath, taking a day off, time off, vacation time, and a sabbatical when its time comes around. The myth of clergy burnout is one of my pet peeves. Rectors and vicars manage their own time. They have to show up for Sunday and attend a vestry meeting once a month, and the rest of the time is theirs to manage. Wouldn't our brothers and sisters in the corporate world love to have that freedom? Clergy who burn out are not managing their time efficiently nor taking their Sabbath and days off. “But on the (Sabbath) day itself, you let go of your compulsion to control nature. You relax into God; you bask in your knowledge that you are God's creature.” Slow down and listen.

Pay attention to breath, the word for God and Holy Spirit in our biblical tradition. Breath can mean hot air from the pulpit or the essence of our being that enlivens us, inspires us. Clader suggests we notice our breath and breathing, urges us to talk to ourselves and to trees and to read the scriptures out loud when preparing for sermons. She quotes Harry Truman, who walked by trees telling them they are doing a good job. Sing a lot and use the breath used in voice to sense the essence of God.

Singing goes along with playfulness, loosening us and preparing us to preach. Singing in the car, the shower or when alone is suggested if the preacher is sing-shy. John Wesley prepared his audience for preaching by having the crowds, and he had crowds, lustily sing some hymns so they would be ready to hear the word of God.

Also along the way, I like to point out the simple fact that the only place in our society to sing, except the “The Star Spangled Banner” at baseball games, is in church. A few bars have Karaoke and people sang along with The Grateful Dead at their concerts, but singing is not really part of the larger culture, sadly, in the United States any longer. Singing is playful and opens our hearts to God.

Who ever thought of scent and smell as sermon preparation? Linda Clader does. There it is in Chapter 5, “Listening in the Language of the Spirit: Scent.” The Bible is full of images of smell, pleasing odors of burnt offering, fragrant oils and incense. Bishop James Pike used to say the church is the only place you can be IN/censed or in/CENS/ed at the same time.

Helping listeners hear the sermon better, the preacher can encourage them to remember the smell of the Christmas tree, the log fire, crisp fresh air and of course aromas from the kitchen, and the smell of baking bread, which may help them smell the bread of Eucharist. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit through scent.

Words and pictures conjured up in people's mind helps them hear the spirit of God in sermons. Seeing nature in watercolor painting and watching birds especially help our author see the creation in detail. How colors move and change in painting on a gourd or in the feathers of a bird can be moments of revelation, wonder and awe at God's creation. Sharing those details brings life and pictures to the hearer's mind.

Ernest Campbell, the noted Presbyterian preacher, urges his students to carry a small notebook to immediately jot down sights, sounds and impressions that can be used in sermons. They may include a joke, a bumper sticker, an ad on TV, or a saying that succinctly expresses a point in a sermon. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me – of course they do.” Name-calling hurts plenty.

Clader is steeped in the Christian faith and Bible and these are basic resources for preaching, but she urges preachers to use our imaginations to hold the gift of preaching loosely wrapped. This book is a fine energetic spur to exciting preaching.

I'll confess to having a very flat, direct way of preaching that could benefit from her loosening-up ideas. But I want to come away from a sermon with a sense of call to action, a sense of urgency and more direct connection to the world I live in. Clader is a gentler preacher than I, and that is a difference in style and temperament.

I personally want sermons with more structure and clearer points than Professor Clader demonstrates in her sermons she shares with readers of the book. I'll confess to having a very flat, direct way of preaching that could benefit from her loosening-up ideas. But I want to come away from a sermon with a sense of call to action, a sense of urgency and more direct connection to the world I live in. Clader is a gentler preacher than I, and that is a difference in style and temperament. She suggests a strong justice dimension to preaching tempered by presentations that will be heard and not automatically rejected.

In this era of spirituality and helping people connect to God's presence and reality, preachers tend to err on the side of spirit and not the side of the flesh. Clader gives us refreshing ways to tell our story better and be more convincing, and for that we preachers can be grateful.

I urge not only preachers to read this book, but also informed lay people. They will get a really good idea of what it is that the preacher faces in preparing and presenting sermons that connect us to God and the world we live in.

The Rev. Robert Warren Cromey is a retired Episcopal Church priest living in San Francisco, Calif. He frequently writes on issues of peace and justice. Robert may be reached by email at twocromeys@earthlink.net .