Sermon Help for Every Preacher: New resource available
A preacher needs the Word...and the words...to reach people with the gospel. Through its substantive website and continuing education events, the Center for Excellence in Preaching can help every preacher improve. A feature story exploring the resources at the Center for Excellence in Preaching.
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The sanctuary grows quiet. No one coughs. People really listen. Few, other than perhaps the preacher’s spouse, realize the preacher struggled all week and began today’s message feeling like the sermon was weak, unfinished.
And yet, the Spirit goes to work, winging the preacher’s words into hearts and minds so that lives change. Other Sundays the preacher heads into the pulpit with confidence but gets little response.
“There’s one thing that a preacher learns quickly and that is confirmed often. Preaching is, finally, a very mysterious process,” muses Scott Hoezee, a Christian Reformed pastor since 1990.
He says that preachers and those who listen to them understand that preaching is an event directed by God. Nevertheless, he adds, “The Spirit works through the preacher’s hard work all week.”
The hard work of preaching is now easier, thanks to online resources and continuing education offered by the new Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hoezee is the new center’s director.
Recognize the Word’s power and beauty
“One of the great adventures of the Christian life is preaching and hearing good preaching. Reformed people have the Bible at their center and the preached Bible at the center of their worship. And yet, not nearly enough preaching has the power, beauty, and deep simplicity that make God audible,” says Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga Jr., seminary president.
Plantinga explains that the power and beauty are already there in the gospel. When blessed by the Spirit, the message of the Bible has power to save, bless, rebuke, and warn. The preacher makes this power available to listeners by simply letting Scripture have its way.
He recalls the late Henry J. Stob telling him and other Calvin seminarians that a sermon is twenty-four minutes of saying, after reading the text, “in other words…”
Hoezee says preachers can’t proclaim the Word of God unless they base their sermons on the Bible. “Whether you sit on a bar stool wearing an open collar or stand in a high pulpit wearing a robe, your sermon needs a text at its core. The message of that text forms the sermon. And everyone needs interpretative help to do this.”
Each week Hoezee posts new interpretive helps on the Center for Excellence in Preaching website. These include observations, key questions, textual points, and illustrations on the lectionary gospel reading and Heidelberg Catechism. For preachers who don’t follow the lectionary, he offers other ways to plan the preaching calendar.
After all, he explains, preachers are already busy. Preparing and following a preaching schedule lets you avoid constant questions on what to preach about next. Instead, you can get right to mining God’s Word for the next sermon.
“I look forward to reading Scott’s insights each week. He’s also woven in prayers for learning and reading and other tasks. Quite often on a Monday or Tuesday, I’ll punch up one of these prayers and offer it to God,” says Doug Bratt, pastor of Silver Spring Christian Reformed Church in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Put yourself in another’s shoes
The Center for Excellence in Preaching has a message for pastors who feel guilty about reading novels or other literature when they could be studying theology. That message is to relax…and keep reading…because reading widely inspires great preaching.
“Everyone needs good insights into culture. Good literature provides those windows into other souls and other cultures,” Hoezee explains. His posted lists of recommended reading include novels, biographies, memoirs, sermons, and theology.
Plantinga acknowledges that some preachers are such keen observers of human nature that they can grow wiser through watching the world around them. Most preachers, however, need good books to help them “become knowing people of substance and savvy, people who can speak to the world about how sin and grace intersect and intertwine.”
That makes sense to Doug Bratt, who was in Plantinga’s Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching seminar a few summers ago. “It was a major milestone in my ministry. That emphasis on reading good literature, not just theology, would have been so helpful when I was a young pastor. I work in a tightly-focused setting, so books give me a broader view of what different people are like in different settings,” he says.
He says a common interest in reading sparks conversations with church members and adds perspective when his church fellowships with congregations from other denominations and cultures, such as a Baptist church in downtown Washington, D.C.
Reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time, a sprawling biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, yielded an illustration for Bratt’s sermon on what to expect of God.
“I referred to Franklin’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who was so protective that, even after her son was president, she regularly asked, ‘Did you wear your galoshes?’ She once told reporters to leave a press conference because ‘Franklin has too much work to do and doesn’t have time to talk with you.’ By contrast, God is very protective of us but also gives us more freedom,” Bratt says.
Rich Tiggelaar uses the preaching center’s reading recommendations to find audio books. As pastor of a rural parish that includes three small congregations (two United Methodist, one Presbyterian), he spends many hours on the road.
“I read at home a lot, too. Being a better reader makes me a better preacher. The good folks of Craig, Nebraska, deserve a good sermon each Sunday or at least they deserve my best effort,” he says.
Work on your communication skills
Hoezee and Plantinga drew on a survey of Christian Reformed pastors as they designed the Center for Excellence in Preaching. “Preachers recognize that people have a hunger to get back into the Word. These preachers want to preach excellent sermons. But they struggle to fill the idea hopper and communicate effectively,” Hoezee says.
“Many pastors left seminary knowing how to do top-flight biblical work on eminently applicable texts. However they have gaps at the cultural insight and Speech 101 levels,” he adds.
That’s why the preaching center hosts and co-hosts expert preachers and speakers at continuing education events throughout North America. It invites preachers to speak at the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and bi-annual Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. Most of these events are available to seminarians and interested church members, not just preachers.
Richard Tiggelaar recommends checking out sermon and lecture archives on the preaching center’s website. “Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and listen,” he says.
Well-known for his preaching when he served congregations in Michigan, Hoezee still accepts preaching requests. Plantinga gives 150 sermons a year. “I almost never speak without a text. The difference between my Sunday sermons and conference speeches is in the heads of my listeners,” he says.
Hoezee consults with Calvin seminarians who ask for help, whether they are already great preachers or are having a hard time with sermons. He also recommends that pastors improve their communication skills by forming peer learning groups or seeking mentors.
Elders and other church leaders play a role in helping preachers engage the congregation. They can learn more themselves, become better listeners, and offer constructive sermon evaluations.
Encourage each other
“When I started out, I needed a friend who would ‘assist’ me in my preaching—someone I could trust, who would push me to think, light my imagination, and help me to take the weekly texts seriously,” says Tiggelaar, who, although he presently preaches to Methodists and Presbyterians, is ordained in the Reformed Church in America.
There’s a big difference between encouraging and criticizing. Plantinga advises congregations to “relentlessly encourage their preachers—because preaching is a weighty, serious business.”
Congregations can allocate funds for preachers to buy books, take retreats, and attend conferences and seminars. Some churches form small committees to meet with the preacher and brainstorm on upcoming sermon passages.
For instance, a preacher might learn from committee members that they think Mark 4:24 is all about money. “So the preacher can base the first third of the sermon on that assumption and then make a hard right T-turn—and explain the passage is really about Jesus teaching in parables. Those who believe will be given more understanding,” Plantinga says.
Any church member can encourage the preacher by specifically explaining how a sermon helped. “When you preached today on X, it helped me with Y.” “When you preached today, I felt the Holy Spirit move.” “Your sermon today reminded me again of how hard this work is.”
Plantinga has a promise for congregations that commit to be encouraging and preachers who commit to explore resources available through the Center for Excellence in Preaching. “We may not be able to create fabulous preachers—but we can help every preacher improve,” he says.
Learn More
Bookmark the Center for Excellence in Preaching website in your favorite places folder. Director Scott Hoezee plans to make the ever-expanding site a “clearinghouse of ideas for all kinds of congregations, whether their preachers always use video clips and projection technology or never use PowerPoint.”
Read books by Scott Hoezee and Neal Plantinga. Read sermons, or browse articles on the art of preaching.
Other sites aimed at preachers include Cathedral College of Preachers, Desperate Preacher, Sermon Central, and The Text This Week. Among other unique features, The Center for Excellence in Preaching provides sermon helps on the Heidelberg Catechism.
The 2006 Calvin Symposium on Worship will include preaching or preaching advice by Tod Bolsinger, Scott Hoezee, Mary Hulst, Duane Kelderman, Thomas G. Long, Michael J. Quicke, John Rottman, Quentin Schultze, and Laura Smit.
Preachers speaking at the 2006 Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing include Philip Gulley, Richard Lischer, and Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Browse related stories on African American preaching, pastoral renewal, and Sabbath rest. Get ideas on how to preach about apocalyptic texts, forgiveness, and what God is doing in the world today.
Start a Discussion
- How important is the sermon in your congregational or denominational tradition? What other worship elements does your tradition define as equally or more important than preaching?
- Have you asked your preachers whether they would like more resources to help them interpret the Bible, apply the text, gain culture insight, or connect with the congregation?
- What do you think of the idea that every sermon must be based on a text and that the text must form the core of the sermon?
- Neal Plantinga says preachers are so busy it takes them awhile to relax during his three-week seminar on imaginative reading. “By the fourth day, they look younger,” he says. In what ways do you encourage your preacher to seek genuine learning and relaxation?
Share Your Wisdom
What is the best way you’ve found to help encourage your preacher?
- If your pastor started reading more widely, what results did people notice in the sermons or other aspects of worship?
- If you wrote a curriculum on how to be better sermon listeners and evaluators, will you share that with us?
- What have been the most (or least) helpful ways your congregation has tried to improve preaching in your church?