How Intra-Dynamic Preaching Helps Worshipers Encounter God

Traditional preaching follows a “someone talks, we listen” model, but what if congregations went to church to experience preaching or encounter the Holy Spirit through the preached word?

That’s the question that Sunggu Yang has pursued since 2014. He teaches homiletics at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, and is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He cofounded the e-journal Asian American Theological Forum and writes books and academic articles.

Research and experience have convinced him that contemporary preaching needs to change. It must “resonate with today’s spiritually hungry yet digitally and aesthetically savvy generations who find themselves estranged from church traditions,” Yang writes in the prologue to Arts and Preaching: A Handbook for Practice, Volume 1. A 2023 Teacher-Scholar Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s Vital Grants, Vital Preaching Grants program helped him gather a cohort of preachers and preaching professors to contribute chapters to the handbook.

Yang explains that many church sermons, messages, and teachings lean heavily on the printed word. Preaching often speaks more to the mind than to the soul or senses. But “audiences today—especially younger generations—are shaped more by visual, emotional, and experiential media than by print culture,” he says. That’s why he suggests a preaching method that engages and transforms people by including “the visual, artistic, and a celebration of the corporeal.”

“It seems that my own little daughter, now age eight, emerged from her mother’s womb ready to use an iPad,” he says. “Younger generations have grown up exposed to visual and emotional culture. And older generations have adapted to this aesthetic exposure. My mom uses her smartphone almost every single hour.”

Yang acknowledges that his university students still read textbooks, take notes when he lectures, and write essays, but says he tries to “use multimedia and make classes more participatory” and encourage his students to “find ways to help others hear, see, touch, smell, and taste God’s word. To express a biblical text, they can write music, draw a picture based on their imagination of a text, create a drama, choreograph a dance, literally perform or practice what the text literally states, bake bread, prepare a meal,” among other options.

To feel the multisensory and emotional experience of biblical events—what philosopher Rudolf Otto called mysterium tremendum et fascinans—often requires something beyond expository or narrative preaching.

Yang coined the term “intra-dynamic preaching” to describe how preachers must revive the biblical experience, leading to holistic-aesthetic and immersive engagement with scripture for both preacher and congregation.

Expository, narrative, and intra-dynamic preaching methods

In a 2024 Acta Theologica interview, South African scholar Martin Laubscher asks Yang what makes a good sermon. Yang replies, “A good sermon is one that bridges the divine with the daily experiences of its audience, making theological concepts tangible and actionable. It should engage listeners intellectually and emotionally, prompting reflection and action that align with biblical teachings.”

Yang acknowledges that some Bible passages, such as doctrinally-based pericopes from Leviticus or Romans, are especially well suited for expository sermons. These often follow a standard format: introduction of the main proposition, three supporting points, and a conclusion. These deductive sermons systematically unfold and exegete scripture to arrive at a specific application. Expository sermons emphasize the “what” of the sermon text.

In 1971, preacher and professor Fred B. Craddock popularized narrative preaching through his book As One Without Authority. As Yang explains in his 2021 textbook Arts and Preaching: An Aesthetic Homiletic for the Twenty-first Century and his 2025 handbook Arts and Preaching: A Handbook for Practice, Volume 1, Craddock noticed that watching television had changed how people received sermons. Many felt less open to an authoritative preacher “who alone purportedly knows and delivers the truth.”

Craddock’s inductive method changed the “how” of sermon delivery. Yang explains that Craddock’s use of images and storytelling helped him “easily identify with the lives of listeners.” This method leads listeners toward what the preacher has discovered, yet leaves the conclusion somewhat open-ended, trusting the Holy Spirit to invite each person to the transformation they need.

As more and more preachers tried to use narrative preaching, influential preachers such as William H. Willimon and Thomas G. Long cautioned against choosing entertainment over exposition. They said narrative preachers sometimes get so caught up in the “how” that they ignore the historical-critical work necessary to understand the “what.”

Yang proposes intra-dynamic preaching as something that “incorporates historical-critical work 100 percent” as well as storytelling but also considers the “who” and “why” of preaching.

John S. McClure, one of Yang’s longtime mentors at Vanderbilt Divinity School, was part of one of the first research projects to listen to listeners. The team interviewed laypeople to gather their thoughts about preachers and preaching. “The project team was surprised to discover that 90 percent of interviewees cited the preacher’s moral and ethical integrity as the deciding factor in whether they would trust and live out what the preacher says,” Yang explains. He suggests that homiletic education should “prompt (student) preachers to think about who really they are (or should be) as the preacher and as the model of congregational life, and why they are to preach after their encounter with and in the presence of the divine.”

The word coming to the preacher

Preparing to preach intra-dynamically requires experiencing God’s living word as coming to the preacher rather than the preacher going to the word to dig into it. Yang cites Isaiah 6:1–8 as an example of God calling a prophet in ways the prophet could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. “This is so overwhelming for him [Isaiah],” Yang says, “yet at the same time allows him to actively respond to and participate in what is mysteriously happening.”

Being spiritually formed by encountering the living word leads the preacher (“who”) to engage in the preaching activity (the “why” of preaching) so that congregations have “a holistic-aesthetic and multisensory exposition and engagement with Holy Scripture,” Yang says.

“There is a difference between being part of the exodus from Egypt and hearing a preacher read a sermon about it,” he explains. “People experienced the original exodus firsthand, then passed on the story orally for over two hundred years before it was written down. When preachers approach an exodus text, they need to help congregations revive or rediscover the experience of exodus.”

His textbook and handbook on the arts and preaching introduce the theory and practice of intra-dynamic preaching that draws on artistic forms to shape a sermon. The preacher doesn’t need to be able to paint, design clothes, make films, or compose music to create an intra-dynamic sermon. It’s not even necessary to include images, special garments, film clips, or songs in an intra-dynamic sermon.

Instead, the sermon’s “form and language are artistically shaped by the very art form that inspires it, rather than merely referencing or illustrating that art. Listeners don’t need to intellectually identify the art form used to intuitively experience its impact,” Yang says.

Consider the differences

Consider the difference between expository, narrative, and intra-dynamic sermons on Luke 10:30–37, often described as the parable of the Good Samaritan.

R. C. Sproul’s expository sermon expands the pericope to begin at Luke 10:25 instead of at verse 30, allowing Sproul to focus on the lawyer who tested Jesus by asking what he should to do inherit eternal life. Jesus asks what the law requires. The lawyer quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, then, to justify himself, asks, “And who is my neighbor?” Sproul masterfully explains how “the law of God reveals our sin and our hopeless inability to justify ourselves” and how God calls us to show the Samaritan’s compassion so others will see Jesus working through us.

Sproul also disagrees with those who reduce Christianity to the universal fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man. Sproul sums up his sermon by explaining that only those who have been adopted by God through Jesus can claim God as Father. However, he says, the Bible does teach the universal neighborhood of God, which means we must be loving with everybody—even if we don’t like them.

In his commentary on Luke, Fred Craddock emphasizes that Jesus shifts the lawyer’s original question—basically, “Who must I consider my neighbor?”—to a more personal and ethical one: “To whom can I be a neighbor?” This reframing moves the focus from defining boundaries to embodying compassion.

Narrative sermons based on Craddock’s interpretation invite listeners to consider whether they are open to showing compassion to the people God puts in their way. When George Wirth preached on the Good Samaritan, his titled his sermon “Who Cares?” and told a Craddock story about a church choir member who wondered whether anyone really cared about her.

Yang writes about using many art forms, including cubist painting, to shape intra-dynamic sermons. He explains that Renaissance painters used techniques of perspective and foreshortening to create an illusion of three-dimensionality, realistically depicting people and nature. In these artworks, time and space are fixed. Likewise preachers, whether they choose deductive or inductive delivery, will often try to create a sermon as “a complete whole with a solid literary structure, . . . an underlying message, . . . and a desired outcome.”

By contrast, cubist painters wanted to convey that humans exist within, not apart from, a world that is constantly changing through time and space. Just as the Bible “helps us to see many facets of dimensions of God, but not all of them,” Yang says that a cubist painting offers many perspectives while preserving a sense of open-endedness and fluidity. While acknowledging the “strong merits” of expository and narrative preaching, Yang writes, “The cubist way of preaching accepts the sermon’s open-endedness and even ‘incompleteness’ as a finest reflection of the ongoing and surprising revelation of the Divine.”

Mónica Ibarra, an assistant worship director who preaches often at Village Church in Beaverton, Oregon, wrote the chapter in Yang’s handbook about cubism. She describes several ways to design a cubist sermon. In writing a cubist Good Samaritan sermon from six perspectives, Ibarra created space for listeners to share their impressions of the Bible passage, ponder where they see themselves in the story, consider the story’s historical and cultural context, hear it again in another Bible version, and notice how Luke uses the story to picture God’s upside-down kingdom.

Throughout, Ibarra asks provocative questions to keep listeners engaged, ending with “So, looking at the parable of the Samaritan, what have you heard God speak to you today?” She leaves room to pause for reflection before closing the sermon in prayer.

Engaging congregations with the divine

While developing his concept of intra-dynamic preaching, Yang has variously used the terms numen, ubi-ductive, aesthetic, holistic-artistic, holistic-aesthetic, artistic-performative, existential resonance, aesthetico-holistic, and mysterium tremendum et fascinans to describe getting in touch with the mystery of how God works in and through scripture and preaching.

“The ‘sense of mysterium’ in preaching and worship refers to the encounter with the holy that evokes both awe and intimacy—what German Lutheran philosopher Rudolf Otto called mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Preaching, from this view, is not just interpretation or application of Scripture but a sacred event that draws people into mystery and transformation,” Yang says.

In encountering God through scripture, the called preacher joyfully learns to “feel, embody, and actually perform not only the central message of the text,” but also the holy nature and emotions of God revealed in the text. God can reach listeners at any time of the intra-dynamic sermon through any aspect of aesthetics, emotions, mind, soul, heart, or sense.

Yang notes that famous early church preachers like John Chrysostom, known centuries later as “Golden Mouth,” recognized the aesthetic character of the Bible. Chrysostom used metaphors and images to inspire his people to pursue holiness, not power. Ambrose of Milan was renowned for his mystagogical preaching. This ancient form of preaching moves beyond mere explanation to foster an experiential encounter with faith.

Yang recommends watching this brief sermon clip by Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church (UCC) in Chicago. “He embodies the aesthetics of musicality—blues, jazz, and hip-hop—to reveal how God helps people find hope in despair,” Yang says.

Every chapter of the handbook Yang edited includes a sample sermon designed to be immersive and multisensory. “Some sermons in this book were indeed preached, and the responses were generally positive—engagement, tears, reawakened faith, and deeper conversation followed,” Yang says. “Intra-dynamic sermons can help all of God’s people become comfortable with asking more questions than receiving answers, finding God in awe and curiosity, and embracing the multifaceted, unexplainable beauty of our creator.”