This past week I attended the first session of my First Parish Project group. It was a great experience and one that I will reflecting on a lot over the next year or so. One of the highlights of the session was a three day workshop and discussion on preaching led by Fred Craddock. Craddock is considered one of the best preachers in the country–he had a spellbinding presence–and I think I learned a lot about preaching from my nine contact hours with him. In case anyone out there is interested below are my notes from his workshop.

Redacted Notes from Fred Craddock’s First Parish Project Preaching Workshop

What is Preaching?

Definition: Preaching is putting into words what we and the church believe.

Preaching has two fundamental tasks:
    A. Passing along the tradition;
    B. Creating the experience.

Definition: A sermon is the interpretation of the scripture for the people in front of you. (3rd century)

Definition: A sermon is an event in the world of sound.

Theory of Preaching

You inherit different styles of preaching from your tradition.

There’s something narrative in the religious story that is able to be condensed into a single sentence or sermon.

Sermons can serve a multiplicity of purposes. Some are self-consuming objects. The point of the thing is the thing itself. The goal was to create an experience in the listener and what matters is that they have that experience not that they remember the sermon.

Preaching is a religious act. If the preacher does not respect the listener then the listener will not respect what I have to say. Sermons should never include emotional blackmail. There is no excuse for being cruel in a sermon (or elsewhere) to anyone.

Unless the holy spirit of love is operative in your sermon you can’t expect it to be effective.

Praying and preaching are twins. Both are ways of speaking with God (or the universe or the human spirit or the spark within). Ask yourself the question: What would your sermon look like as a pastoral prayer? This will remind you that the primary audience of the sermon is God and help you to pull whatever vengeance and poison that might be hiding in the sermon from it.

Preaching is a pastoral matter. Really effective preaching will lead people to suggest that you are reading their mail.

A sermon will perform both the exegesis of the text and the exegesis of the people. Because of this the best preacher in the country is always the pastor.

There are always three conversations in the sermon:
    1. Between pastor and congregation;
    2. Between pastor and text;
    3. Between text and congregation.

When a preacher preaches he or she makes exegetical decisions based upon the congregation in front of him or her–their social, economic, cultural location, etc.

With sermons movement is more important than structure.

A sermon is a creative act. First you get something to say and then you say it. Study is what gives you something to say.

In literary form there is no such thing as a sermon.

Advice for Preaching

1. No one preaches well enough for you to imitate. Develop your own style.
    – We pick up habits from ministers we admire. However, it is no good trying to be like them. You don’t want to look in the mirror and not know who you are. Be true to yourself. There’s no sense in trying to be a bass when you’re a flute.

2. You can learn from everyone.
    – Sometimes great preachers are reluctant preachers. They don’t make a lot of gestures or shout and scream.

3. The key to effective preaching is discipline.
    – In order to develop into a strong preacher you must have an effective habit for study and work. Craddock studies the Bible and Biblical commentaries for 1.5 hours everyday.

4. Read widely to keep yourself literate.
    – There are three kinds of reading:
        A. study reading — theology, sacred texts, biblical commentary, philosophy and the like
        B. pleasure reading — by which he means literature and possibly some lightish non-fiction
        C. news

5. Do not expect everything to be confirmed by your pulse of the congregation.
    – Sometimes the more masterful the sermon the less effective it is. People like to be able to complete your sentences. They do not need a well crafted essay. They need something they can wrestle with. Put a refrain in your sermon.

6. Preaching is serious business. Take it seriously. However, seriousness of purpose does not require humorlessness. Things are funny if they’re important.

7. Genuine emotion in preaching arises out of the truth. It is not added to the truth. If passion does not arise you do not what to add it. The more restraint in the speaker the more release in the listener.

8. Confidence in preaching arises from:
    A. Knowing what you’re talking about
    B. Knowing that it is important

9. What people want in a sermon (and in a minister) is someone/something to help them experience God.

10. There are two kinds of preaching that people will avoid: good and bad. Most people will avoid good preaching by only coming once a month or so…

11. Ultimately, you have no idea what you are doing or what effect you are having. All you can do is put the word into the air.

12. The menu of your sermons should be broad enough to feed everyone.

13. It is helpful to develop faith formulas and use them in your sermons. Faith formulas are statements that condense the faith. They can help people spread the faith.

14. Be specific and concrete rather than general and universal. "Only the concrete is really universal." — Paul Tillich

15. Populate your sermon w/ people with names. Good sermons have characters.

16. Be sure to have conversations in your sermons.

17. You can have both direct and indirect communication in your sermons.     – Direct communication is just saying something. Stories are indirect conversation. Paul used direct conversation and Jesus used indirect. Craddock prefers indirect communication.

18. Develop your own parables.

19. You should preach the theological portion of your sermon with the same level of excitement and interest that you preach the rest of your sermon.
    – assume that everyone in the congregation is interested in what you are talking about

20. A good sermon has anticipation in it. That is to say it has a sense of ending. People can tell that it is going somewhere.

21. Remember that the last thing you say is the most important.

22. Appreciate the difficulty the congregation has in listening to you. Remember that half of the folk almost didn’t come.

23. When you preach to a congregation you are not preaching to blank slates.
    – You are preaching to palimpsests–documents that have previously been written on–and pentimentos–canvases that have been previously painted on and the earlier colors are bleeding through. Many people think that they are listening to you when they’re actually remembering.

24. People latch on to one account of something. If you want to tell a version of a story that’s different than the one that people usually hear you need to:
    A. Tell the common story.
    B. Tell them your story.

25. Craddock does not recommend the method of writing, memorizing and reciting.

26. The first law of good communication is appropriateness.

27. You should approach scripture as if everyone knows it and as if no one knows it.

28. When preaching a sermon always go from the negative to the positive.

29. End your sermon w/:
    A. Story
    B. A poem
    C. Reading your text again
    D. Prayer
    E. Time of Silence
    – imagine that you have an exhorter (in the old days an exhorter would follow the preacher by saying, "In light of what we’ve just heard it is clear that we need to xyz…" What would your exhorter say?

30. Personal experiences are always appropriate. However, it is better to be holding the camera than to be on the camera.

Advice for Ministry

1. Carry every impulse you have to its conclusion.
    – An impulse is connected to your intuition. It may be your onto something. It may be you’re inspired.

2. Attention to the struggles of other people does not exclude you from your own.
    – knowing that we all participate in "the sin of the world" (or to put it in my own words are responsible for causing suffering) should take some of the strut out of the minister and the ego out of preaching. As David Bumbaugh would remind us one of the primary audiences for the sermon is myself.

3. There are very few keys to measure the success of preaching and ministry.

4. You’re not obligated to be everywhere and say everything.
    – If you’re always available people will lose respect for you. Let your presence proceed from your absence. Absence is important for respect.

5. Biggest struggle in the parish is in the routine.
    – The real test of the ministry comes when there is no crisis. Most people live lives without crisis. They live lives of "quiet desperation."

6. Tasks both consume and generate energy. Those who burn energy also create energy.

7. People are slow to tell you what they think.

8. There will be times when you lose your faith. If you lose your faith keep preaching and working until you get it back. Your congregation will carry you.

9. Pray or meditate when you feel distant from God or the divine. It’s better to be true than false. Generous than selfish. Kind than cruel.

10. Habit and routine are essential to success. However, they also can become your enemy. Don’t become a sloth and develop the "been there done that" attitude. Beware that people who are regular at the altar can lose respect for the altar.

Advice for Sermon Preparation

[Note: How does one recast this for Unitarian Universalist sermons?]

1. Begin w/ the text. Take a tablet and scribble notes about the text. Don’t be in a hurry to collapse the distance between yourself. Write down everything that comes to mind when you think of the text.

2. Read commentaries on the text. Commentaries are a 2nd opinion. Six kinds of commentary:
    A. Monday commentary is necessary but uninteresting. It is heavy theology like Schleiermacher, Dorrien or German commentary on the Bible.
    B. Tuesday commentary is not quite so heavy. An example would be International Critical Commentary.
    C. Wednesday is academically responsible but pulpit friendly. The New Interpreters Bible.
    D. Thursday will suggest how you can preach it.
    E. Friday will provide you with an outline.
    F. Saturday is a book of sermons.

3. Make yourself put the main thrust of your sermon into one statement. The sermon needs to say this one thing and say it well.

4. Write your statement at the bottom of the page. At the top left hand corner write "for instance." At the top right hand corner write "so what?" Then write down sentences, thoughts and images that come to mind about the statement in the appropriate two columns.

5. On a new sheet of paper list out the sentences, thoughts and images from the first sheet of paper. Scratch out the ones that don’t seem relevant. Then take a new sheet of paper and re-write the sentences, thoughts and images in an order you think you might want to say them. Then scratch out the ones that don’t seem to relevant. Go through this process five or six times. By the time you have done that you have the basic movement of your sermon.

6. You should now have a sermon that contains elements of scripture, theology, news, history and personal experience. Craddock does not write out his sermons further than this. He just delivers them from the outline he has created.

7. Create a loose leaf binder with six months of pages for sermons–one page per sermon–ahead of time. Write the text, theme, etc. at the top of each page. As you encounter things that you think might be useful for the sermon write them in the loose leaf notebook.

8. When working always quit when you’re ahead. If you stop on a high note you’ll have something to look forward to coming back to.

9. Remember that the vacuum of unpreparedness sucks everything into it. Or as our friends the Spanish anarchists used to say "Study, solider."

10. Keep a journal of things that happen and that you observe. There are things that happen in life that you might want to use in your sermons.

Useful Dictums and Observations

There are no good talkers when it comes to the kingdom of God (in other words sharing the good news of one’s faith tradition is difficult).

Some really huge crowds go to hear nothing at all.

If you can’t explain something another way then God had nothing to do with it.

"A word is an event in the world of sound by which I relate to reality." — direct quote from Craddock

Take pleasure in words. If you lose respect for and pleasure in words you will find your preaching capacity plummets. Also, note that words have characteristics. They can be masculine, feminine, soft, hard, etc.

Notes on Craddock’s Presentation

Craddock began by establishing a relationship with his audience. He acknowledge who we were and asked us a few questions. He then shared his message. After his message he offered a personal story or anecdote and then moved on to the next point. Each point was followed by an anecdote or personal story. He used a lot of pauses, made frequent eye contact and spoken in an even tone. His hand gestures were few and far between. He took his time with everything. Craddock did not use a manuscript.

Suggested Resources

    Preachers to Study
        – William Sloane Coffin
        – James Forbes
        – Barbara Brown Taylor
        – William Jones

    Stand-up Comedians
        – George Carlin
        – Lenny Bruce and other Jewish comedians because they use the parable, an essentially biblical form.
        – Wally Cox’s Speech for All Occasions

    Workshops
        – Festival of Homiletics
        – Craddock gives two preaching workshops in Cherrylog (where he lives) a year.

    Texts
        – "The Philosophy of Composition" by Edgar Allen Poe
        – "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" by Albert Schweitzer
        – "Commentary on Romans" by Karl Barth
        – "Jesus of Nazareth" by Borkamen
        – "The Christian Faith" by Jans Kung