Who’s Testing Your Sermons?
This past weekend, I listened to an interview of Ian Knauer, author of The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food
As Knauer explains:
I had not been to culinary school, which is the reason I got the job. I was an avid home cook — I loved to cook from magazines and cookbooks — but I wasn’t trained. That was important to them because they wanted someone who would cook like a home cook.
The reason that I was hired to test those recipes is to basically be the fine-tooth comb to go through and make those mistakes that their readers at home would make. By the time it got published, the editors could come say, “Ian, the dummy in the kitchen, made these mistakes. Chances are people at home would make those mistakes too. Let’s make it so clear that they don’t make those mistakes.”
Which got me to thinking: if you’re a preacher, who’s testing your sermons? I ask because we are in the first weeks of preaching class, and I’m again struck by how quickly the technical jargon of theology becomes ingrained in our students. And it’s not just our students, of course; most of us preachers regularly reference topics or use words that have become for us second nature but are nearly indecipherable to most of our listeners.
So I wondered, might we preachers invite persons to listen to our sermons to insure they are as accessible and easy to follow as we assume? As part of the Doctor of Ministry in Biblical Preaching program in which I teach at Luther Seminary, we require participants to form a “parish response group” – that is, a group of listeners who will give honest feedback to the preachers as they move through their program. I usually encourage participants to include at least one person on the group that isn’t “your usual church-goer.” Some have asked friends that don’t go to church. Some ask youth to give them a young person’s perspective. One asked a friend who was an atheist to listen and react. In each case, preachers reported benefiting immensely from hearing how their sermons were received by “ordinary folks.”
So I’ll ask again, who’s testing your homiletical recipes before (or for that matter after) they’re cooked up and served on Sunday morning? (Or, if you’re a sermon listener rather than preacher, what should preachers know before giving their next sermon?)
Note: If you’re interested, you can read a transcript of the interview at The Splendid Table or listen to it below:
Great idea. Dr Jerry Schmallenberger, past president of PLTS recommended this idea 20 years ago in his advanced homiletics class. He also handed our a questionnaire for the team to fill in, or use as guidance. Dr S. may be willing to share that form.
My dear, sweet husband listens to them (almost) every week. He almost always asks a few questions, which shows where additional explanation must be. Only once did he send me back to the drawing board, but I was glad at that was proof he was listening and responding truthfully.
Welcome back, David. You were missed.
The first piece I have is something that our staff does. Every Tuesday morning at all-staff, we sit and have a bible study based on the text for the coming week. He who preaches leads the study and it is a great time to get some ideas and gauge where they are with the text in their lives. Since at that point we’re just ready to start solidifying our sermons, it’s a great time to do it.
But over and above that, for me:
I’m fortunate enough to have a cousin who has been my constant dialogue and philosophy companion for the last 20 years (which says something, since I’m only 29 and he’s 27).
However, growing up in a mixed Roman Catholic/Eastern tradition household in an avidly/rabidly Southern Baptist community, he was frequently pressured about his religion, even more than his faith.
As a result, as we got to know each other more those first years, I learned early on that to explain and engage with him and our shared Roman Catholic family, it was up to me to learn how to demystify some of the church mystics. Even Luther, who talked ‘plainly’ in his day, is difficult language for all of us now.
Once in seminary and beyond, I frequently submitted my sermons to him, and now have his dialogue and feedback with me during and after sermon preparation for not only an ‘outsider’ take, which I think is a horrible term, but a non-practicing Christian inquirer’s thoughts and wonderings balanced with my passion for educating in a way that isn’t stuffy, has helped me, I feel, make my sermons accessible. Sure, it takes me over 40 minutes to preach about Revelation, but if people walk out ready to engage in conversation about it more, I seem to be hitting the mark- usually!
On top of that, I have a person in the church who is my unofficial ‘armchair preacher’ to push and pull both before and after.