Preaching is art.
It is a bold attempt to communicate the impossible with seemingly little effort and incredible range. A true attempt to be all things to all people.
And everyone has thoughts. Especially around the edges of preaching.
- How long a sermon should be.
- The use of humor or anecdotes.
- Keeping the people interested.
- The proper use of notes or a manuscript.
The same preacher will hear that her sermon is too long and too short; boring and exciting; confusing and straight-forward on the same Sunday. (And sometimes every Sunday.)
We will hear how important it is to prepare to preach. Because the people have high expectations. So we have to be funny (but not too funny). We must engage young people (but not alienate the seniors). So we better bring our best work every single week.
And we will also hear how important everything else is. How we shouldn’t have much time to prepare, what with all the other things we should be doing. How long does it really take to write a sermon, anyway?
The Prep Time Debate
I can’t say for sure that the church debated sermon prep a thousand years ago. But it isn’t new.
Recently, a couple of preachers at the Festival of Homiletics, the big preacher’s conference, argued that good preaching takes time; and the church needs to honor that.
Unsurprisingly, the ensuing discourse online chose…a different route.
And the reason it was unsurprising to me is how often we choose to major in the minors.
The two preachers, famous for their preaching and writing skill, argued for a standard I heard about from a classmate in seminary in the mid ‘00s: sermon prep should be at least 20 hours.
This, of course, is based on the 40-hour week and clearly can be adjusted and dealt with in a variety of ways. But the Twitterverse got really fixated on the number 20. In three very specific ways.
1) What about the Part-Timers?
Already having to wrestle with the challenge of serving congregations with full-time expectations in a half-time position, many people were offended by the idea that all 20 of their hours were to be taken up on sermon prep. They described experiencing this as arguing that their preaching would necessarily be inferior.
2) Hyper-focused on current practice
Some spoke to how much time they spend now and how ridiculous it would be to spend four or five times as much time working on a sermon.
Another version of this is to look at how little time most preachers already have for preparation. So the suggestion that we make more time for sermon prep would deprive the church in some way.
3) Doing vs. Talking
The classic debate of words vs. actions: some read the idea of devoting twenty hours to sermon prep as ridiculously indulgent when they could spend that time in a soup kitchen.
What struck me about all the responses to this latest dustup was how reactive it all was. Why was it so easy to reject the idea of giving preaching so much time today? Because it is easier to look at the preacher who does as indulgent rather than see what is wrong with the church itself.
The church glorifies workaholism.
Whether it’s Paul’s perfectionism or denominational decline, we aren’t looking at the overwork of our preachers, pastors, and priests as a structural problem, but the institutional bulwark from certain death.
This was where my own heart went.
I understood every critique and snarky comment. Every joke made at the expense of earnest preachers seeking to get better at preaching. People who are following their vocation.
And yet every time I read another comment, I got more and more bewildered.
What is this gospel you all are preaching here on Twitter?
A gospel of not enough time and doing it alone. Preaching on Twitter that this encouragement for more time to preach is somehow against the interests of the people actually marginalized by a church that refuses to pay them? Why aren’t we advocating for our clergy to all be making a full wage?
Why do they all assume it is indulgent to want to preach well and not that the church expects them to do all of the “real” work?
And I thought of all the times I’ve heard the references to needing seminary classes in unclogging toilets and shoveling snow—you know, the stuff we’ll really have to do in the “real world.”
I’ve always wondered why the church expects it’s pastors to spend so little of their time doing the things in their ordination vows.
If we’ve got time left over from all the “other duties as assigned”, maybe we can squeeze a couple hours in there for blessing, teaching, and preaching.
The whole thing reads like a weird flex.
Preaching is a vocation.
And we must treat it that way.
At the root of all this reaction is the mutual denigration of the act of preaching. That it is only words, should only take a few minutes to throw together, so that we can get to the real work of preserving the institution, sitting with people, or serving the poor. It is reactionary and it is foolish. But it is also understandable.
Rather than say
“I can’t devote twenty hours because _____,”
why aren’t we saying
“Why doesn’t the church share in more of the work?”
The preacher/pastor/priest is expected to shoulder our burden. And we don’t seem to notice the problem in that arrangement.
The act of preaching
So many of my friends love the words attributed to St. Francis: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” But they often use those words to silence words; making action the only acceptable form of preaching.
This, of course, is offered as an antidote to a life of only words or that belittles a life of humble service. But we all know that effective preaching requires both words and actions.
Preachers live out their vocation in all of it.
What this whole “debate” reveals is that preachers are obviously the scapegoat for our fears around institutional decline.
The root problem is our leadership crisis.
The pandemic exposed the central problem of the present era—whether we are willing to see it or not—is leadership. Precisely, the relationship of the base of the pyramid to its top.
How much power resides in the people—and how much goes to the figurehead?
This is certainly why the right is presently exploring both populism and fascism. But it is also why the left has been so confused by the breakdown of institutions and social norms. Because we are all putting the power in the hands of the person at the top. And they are saying but I can’t do it all myself.
At least, the healthy ones are saying that. As the epidemic of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention reveals, the relationship of power to abuse is dependent on how centralized that power is. And how willing the people are to maintain that power for them.
A pyramid’s base produces a solid foundation. A foundation that can easily hold the weight of the structure.
But our current view of leadership upends our most logical rhetoric. It is as if we believed the top is the only part of the pyramid that truly matters. So that if we get the right piece at the top, the whole thing would be perfect. No matter the work of the other blocks. Nor the defects in the base that cause the whole thing to collapse.
We are all necessary.
In my church, there are four holy orders. And the first, and most important, are the laity.
Preachers, pastors, and priests are not the whole of the institution. We are part of it. We play an important sacramental role within it. A role that we all value for the gifts we offer to it.
And we are all struggling to best embody our part of an institution that reflects the gospel.
A gospel many of us are called to not only embody in our actions, but our words. To preach. All of the time.