Preaching as Oral-Aural Event

One of the delights of research, and indeed life, is finding someone else who agrees with you. At least it is for me. Especially when they express themselves well. And also when they carry a degree of authority. Not sure just how authoritative Bruce E. Shields is but he certainly fulfils the other two criteria.

I have become quite attached to the bee in my bonnet that is the importance of the Oral-Aural nature of the preaching event. That happens when a bee has been buzzing around your bonce for a long time. Clyde Fant set me off with his Preaching For Today back in the early 80’s and Bruce Shields has just had me shouting “Amen” as I type. Here’s a couple of snippets from his, From The Housetops: Preaching in the Early Church and Today

… we preachers … at the end of the twentieth century find ourselves in many cases conceiving of the sermon as a document, that is, as a set of written symbols on a page, which will then be read, with more or less directness, either off the page or from memory, to a silent audience. Thus we “finish” a sermon one day in a given week and deliver it to a congregation on Sunday. “Preparation and delivery,” seems to be a commodity-orientated way of thinking about preaching, and it is hard to imagine a first-century Christian thinking in these terms.

Perhaps the single biggest failure in the teaching of preaching is that young ministers are not fully impressed with the difference between textuality and orality. Shaped by mountains of books, called upon to write scores of papers, and graded largely by what they commit to the page, aspiring preachers train the eye but neglect the ear. Yet it is to the world of sound that they will go, plying their wares acoustically. The major moments of public ministry (the sermon, the funeral eulogy, the marriage ceremony) are all rhetorical [oratorical to be more accurate] moments.

If we try to hear the preacher producing the epistle as we study the text, then some of the passion in the original setting should begin to bleed through into our preaching. Our contemporary hearers are not, of course, first-century Roman believers, but that is no excuse for presenting cadavers instead of breathing organisms as sermons.

We preachers need to break out of our literate ways of thinking and prepare for effective communication in this borderland between the older culture of primary literacy and the coming culture of secondary orality.

Preach it brother!

The British National Party and The North

British National Party
Originally uploaded by Hannah Lucy Jones

Today I am saddened. My problem is I’m a northerner and I have just heard that last Thursday my part of
The North decided that it would like to send two racists to represent it in the wider world. Both Yorkshire, where I was born and brought up, and the North West, where I now live, have voted in BNP MEP’s.

How do I cope when people whom I love embrace something that I hate? This is the part of the world where the co-operative movement was born and flourished; it was here that The Labour Party (in the days when it was genuinely the party of the people) had its heartland. And now this.

Full-Time Tutor in Biblical Studies

NORTHERN BAPTIST LEARNING COMMUNITY
(on behalf of ‘Northern Baptist College Ltd’)
www.northern.org.uk

(a member of the ecumenical Partnership for Theological Education, based at Luther King House in Manchester)

intends to appoint a

Full-Time Tutor in Biblical Studies

with a major focus in EITHER Old or New Testament

(Whilst not an essential requirement for appointment to this post, there is potential for the successful applicant to play a significant role in the development and delivery of the ecumenical Partnership’s post-graduate programme.)

Requests for information can be made to:

Revd Dr Richard Kidd (Co-Principal)

richard.kidd@northern.org.uk

(Completed applications must arrive by Monday 22nd June 2009, and interviews will be held on Wednesday 15th July 2009)

[Northern Baptist Learning Community has an Equal Opportunities Policy]

On the down side I'm a bit late with this; on the up side if you get the job then you get to work with me!

Pretentious Pentecost?

St Davids Cathedral
Originally uploaded by Pembroke Dave

I just heard a man describe balloons as pretentious. It was Pentecost Sunday and he was referring to the
way that some congregations dress up their building to add to the air of celebration as they mark The Church’s birthday. He didn’t approve of the practice.

The man made these observations from a pulpit box four feet above his congregation while wearing a get up comprising a white gown topped with a crimson cape featuring a front panel that can only be described as a riot of gothic green paisley. He was the preacher for the parish eucharist in St. David’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is a monumental building on the outskirts of an average sized village. It is truly imposing, ornate and no doubt eye-wateringly expensive to maintain.

The service tried to stay in keeping with its setting, it sought to be impressive. But no matter how poetic the liturgy, and no matter how accomplished the organ-playing, it’s hard to do impressive with a congregation of barely fifty, ninety percent of whom don’t seem to like singing. Shame really. If you attempt impressive, it’s best to pull it off, otherwise you end up looking silly and, even worse, pretentious.

Almost Inevitable

What did you expect?

Awkward Questions about Jesus

HT Andrew Sullivan

Writing

Type revisited
Originally uploaded by guioconnor

Thought I’d be blogging a lot more these days. I’m on sabbatical and enjoying getting stuck into reading, research and writing. Nothing much though has sparked what felt like bloggable ideas, so this is more of an “it’s about time” rather than a “hey, guess what struck me”.

Some thoughts on the writing process:

1. It is so tempting to act as if I’m supposed to turn each chapter into a PhD. First time in my life I’ve ever been remotely interested in patristics. Knowing how far to go and when to stop is a real challenge.

2. Finding the right voice is also a bit of a conundrum. The book’s meant to be based on academic standard research but it is not to be an academic text book. I really want to make it readable and I’ve already come up with loads of what seem to me to be nice turns of phrase, neat, catchy and down to earth - Gregory, Greg and Basil as a Byzantine boy band for bishops anyone? Now this would work well in a sermon or blog but …

3. Constantine and what he did to the church: seems to me both sides of the argument are wrong. He was neither an out and out angel nor an unspeakable demon. Yes of course he was hugely significant. Yes of course the lust for worldly power screwed up faithful witness, big time. But it really wasn’t all down to the emperor. So easy to hang it all on a particular individual. Easy, but wrong.

4. Which brings me back to finding the right approach. Not so much style this time, but argument. Let’s face it, it’s far easier to make a splash and get a reading if you have a clear point to make and if you make it with a flourish. You know, forget the nuances, just ram it home. On the other hand the evidence has a habit of getting in the way of a good point. But how to be subtle AND communicate with force? Is truth always the price we pay for effective rhetoric?

5. The best way to get something written is to avoid procrastination and resist distraction. So I’m going to stop.