POWER
IN EXPOSITORY PREACHING
by Faris D. Whitesell
Chapter 9
Power Through PREPARATION
By now you may
be feeling that expository preaching requires too much preparation
time to be seriously and regularly undertaken. Homiletical authorities
commonly agree that the expository is the hardest type of preaching
and that it usually requires more time in preparation. We do not minimize
these facts. However, we do hope to show that it is possible to save
time without stinting preparation.
Ministers today live under the pressure of many demands upon their
time. This has been called the maceration of the minister. Our survey
questionnaire revealed that 153 out of 223 pastors considered lack
of sufficient preparation time their chief problem. This figure was
nearly forty per cent higher than that reported for their second problem,
that of finding good illustra-tions.
Pastors have one big advantage over most other callings—they
can plan their own time schedules. This allows them to give priority
to the duties they think most important. Certainly preaching stands
first in the minds of most ministers and parishioners, in the order
of pastoral duties. No pastor should expect to prepare for it with
tag ends of time. Any type of preaching should require a sizable bulk
of time. Wilbur M. Smith has written: "I know of no quick road
to worth-while preaching. It is hard work, but wonderfully rewarding.
We are living in a day of superficial, inconsequential, unmoving preaching."1
Let us make a
few suggestions regarding the conservation of time for expository
preaching.
First, the pastor should block out and set aside certain periods
of time for sermon prepa-ration and general study. Four hours a day
on four mornings of the week are little enough. If these periods are
broken into, then he shall have to try to make up the time at other
points during the day. Periods of study shorter than two or three
hours are not satisfactory. It takes time to get the books and equipment
into place and to warm up the mental machinery, but periods longer
than three or four hours may cause weariness and lessening of accomplishment.
Second, planning one’s sermons for several weeks or month
ahead can save time. If the expository preacher plans to preach through
a book of the Bible, or a sermon series of five to ten sermons, he
has a real advantage. While preparing one sermon, the pastor finds
material appropriate for future sermons and drops it into the proper
file envelope.
Third, beginning early in the week on the sermon or sermons
for the following Sunday puts the mind on the alert to capture ideas
and illustrations throughout the week.
Fourth, carrying a notebook in the pocket and a commentary
in the automobile may help in recording good ideas during spare minutes.
Fifth, a time of regular personal Bible study will not only
furnish spiritual strength to the soul, but will turn up Biblical
illustrations and thoughts for current sermons. The preacher must
learn to live by the same Word he preaches to his people.
Sixth, forming the habit of expository preaching will eventually
save time. The preacher forms homiletical habits and builds up a background
of Biblical knowledge that makes him more effective. Gradually the
thrill and joy of expository sermon preparation will be so great that
the preacher will regret turning to other duties. William G. Coltman
told the writer that he prepared two expository sermons every week
whether he preached them or not. Even when he knew he was to have
a guest preacher in the pulpit, he prepared his two expository sermons
for that Sunday just the same. He felt he could not afford to break
his homiletical habits or to miss the pleasure of preparing to preach
the Word.
Seventh, keep right with God. Expository preaching is no practice
for a backsliding preacher. The strength and power of the Word simply
will not distill into the mind and heart of the man living in disobedience.
He will be like Samson with his locks of hair shorn, or like David
trying to use Saul’s armor.
Let us emphasize this truth regarding time spent in sermon preparation:
sermons are poor or good, other things being equal, in proportion
to the time spent in preparing them. Paul S. Rees asserted that he
spent approximately twenty-five hours out of each week on direct and
intensive preparation for the two Sunday sermons. When Walter A. Maier
was preaching regularly on the "Lutheran Hour," he said
he spent one hour in preparation for every minute he preached. H.
E. Fosdick made the same claim for his preparation of his sermons
at Riverside Church in New York. If homiletical geniuses require so
much preparation time, can average preachers afford to skimp?
We have already emphasized the necessity for good source material
for expository preaching. Many pastors have poor libraries for this
purpose. The preacher needs half a dozen good commentaries on any
passage he undertakes to expound. If he can use the original languages,
he can get along on fewer. The use of lexicons and concordances was
discussed in the chapter on explanation. How can a pastor obtain the
books he needs?
It is better to have a few good ones and use them than to have many
ordinary books of limited value. If a man concentrates his expository
preaching on one Bible book for a series of weeks, perhaps he can
buy two or three new exegetical commentaries on that one book. If
he cannot afford to buy, maybe he can borrow a few helpful books from
fellow pastors. Some of the local libraries may be able to help him.
A pastor’s wife can often help him obtain wanted books by guiding
parishioners to certain volumes for his birthday, anniversary or Christmas.
Better to have books than neckties or golf shoes. Now and then a pastor’s
widow will sell quite reasonably, or even give away her husband’s
library. The preacher might watch for any such bonanza. Once in a
while people of the parish will have good books which they have inherited
or bought, but are no longer using; if the pastor shows an interest
in such books, they may give them to him, or at least lend them. Another
workable plan is to establish a new book fund from funeral fees, wedding
fees, and honoraria from extra speaking engagements.
Expensive sets
are seldom worth the price. Better buy individual commentaries of
known worth.
Any passage of Scripture should be thoroughly investigated as suggested
in the chapter on explanation. This investigation should proceed carefully
and in a somewhat leisurely fashion in order to note all angles and
bits of information. Many a passage that seems dull and dry on casual
reading will come alive as thoughtful investigation proceeds. The
careful expositor will be as thorough as he possibly can in the investigative
process. He will not hesitate to abandon traditional interpretations
if evidence justifies. But he will not buy new ideas just because
they are new. While he will respect consensus and will not discard
it quickly, he will never regard it as sacred. He will take long,
hard looks at what the Bible says and what the commentators say it
means. He will pay no premium for the new and startling, but he will
not reject it if evidence supports it.
Investigation my include talks with fellow pastors about the interpretation
of certain passages, or even telephone calls to Biblical authorities.
The Scriptures yield extra bonuses to the process of meditation. Moses
said, "…you shall mediate on it day and night…"
(Joshua 1:8, rsv). And the Psalmist wrote, "…his delight
is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night"
(Psalms 1:2, rsv). During His Satanic temptations in the wilderness,
Jesus declared, "It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’
" (Matthew 4:4, rsv). In meditation, the preacher does relaxed
thinking about his expository passage. He mulls or broods over it
as he walks, drives, or sits alone. He is half in prayer and half
in reflective thought. He is turning the passage over and over in
his mind, asking it questions and comparing various interpretations.
After getting into bed at night, he may still continue meditating
about his text. He is not worrying or doubting, but is beholding it
in wonder, inquiry and contemplation. He thanks God for the privilege
of thinking His thoughts after Him. Thus as he drops off to sleep
his unconscious mind takes over and deals with the passage. In the
morning he may awake with new ideas and approaches.
Meditation can never be a hurried and pressured process. It takes
time, but it can be spare time. It is a refreshing exercise for the
mind and the soul of the preacher. While it goes on, the Scripture
passage is soaking in and taking hold of the preacher’s spiritual
outlook. The more meditation the text receives, the better the ensuing
sermon will be.
As he investigates and meditates, the pastor will be making notes.
He will not try to keep them in any particular order but will jot
ideas down as they occur. For this purpose, he needs note pads always
at hand—in his pocket and his car. He will not mind if he writes
the same ideas down several times. His notes will include not only
ideas, questions, comments, applications, illustrations, but hints
for an outline as well. Again, he should not have to hurry in his
note-making.
After a time he will assemble all his notes and go through them for
the purpose of making his final outline, or at least his working outline.
Once his outline has been completed, he will jot into it the material
for expanding it—explanations, arguments, illustrations, applications.
This is not writing out the sermon in full but merely getting all
his material in order.
A sermon
must take the form of specific words either during preparation or
delivery, or both. A sermon cannot exist merely as detached ideas,
or as an outline. Many good men stop short of completing their sermon
preparation. They preach from skeletons or briefs of sermons. They
have never pushed the process on to the point of putting every idea
into particular words. They depend on the inspiration of the occasion
and their own powers of extemporizing to give them the exact words
in delivery. Preachers who do this will always be inexact, repetitious,
and abstract. Their style will be rough, wretched and ragged.
A sermon must be verbalized in order to be communicated. The better
one verbalizes the sermon in his study, the better the pulpit delivery
will be. This does not necessarily mean that the whole sermon must
be written in full, though most of the greatest preachers do write
out their sermons completely. W. E. Sangster wrote: "It is the
man who has never written his sermons out, and never intends to, who
is almost certainly doomed to unconscious repetition and mediocrity.
Without being aware of it, he repeats himself in ideas, in illustrations
and phrasing."2
In an article in Look magazine some months ago, Ralph W. Sockman
described his method of verbalizing as follows: "I do it the
hard way, all hunched over, writing the sermon in longhand, with books
opened up all over my desk. By the end of the afternoon, I may have
25 pages."3
Other pastors feel that writing sermons takes too much time and work.
They hate the mechanical slavery of writing, and believe that they
lose their inspiration and fire while writing. If they can verbalize
as completely some other way, none can object to the omission of writing.
There are three or four other ways to verbalize the sermon apart from
writing it.
A very practical one is to preach the sermon from notes into a tape
recorder. This gets the sermon down exactly as the preacher has verbalized
it. As he listens to the recording, the preacher should make notes:
of his mistakes, of new ideas that flash upon him, of parts of the
message he wishes to revise. With these corrections and additions
indicated in his notes, the preacher should preach it again to his
recorder. It would be better to let an interval of time elapse before
recording it the second time. Another hearing, revision and playback
would be desirable. On Sunday morning before going to his church,
the preacher should listen to the second or third recording so as
to refresh his mind with the sermon.
The disadvantage of the recording method is that one never gets any
sermon in writing so he can examine it minutely. He may have a library
of taped sermons but he has nothing to publish in magazines or books.
The advantage is that he hears himself as he actually is. He will
probably feel quite humble and be anxious to improve.
A better method, but one not available to many pastors, is to dictate
the sermon to a secretary and have her type it in full. Then the preacher
can go over his manuscript carefully to make the necessary revisions
and corrections. A typing of the revised manuscript should put the
sermon into proper shape for absorbing or memorizing. This method
has been used by such preachers as Clovis G. Chappell, Clarence E.
Macartney, and Harold J. Ockenga. But this method may not be as easy
as it sounds. To do it, a preacher must be a very clear and fluent
thinker, or he must verbalize his sermon to himself enough times so
that he can dictate it straight through without fumbling and stumbling.
Many tape recorders are equipped with transcribing devices. With such
a machine, the pastor can take his time in his study for recording
and correcting his message, then the secretary can take her time transcribing
it from the tape. In either or both of these cases, we believe the
preacher makes a mistake if he utterly flees the writing experience.
He needs it in order to perfect his thinking, his fluency, and his
style. If he does not write sermons, let him write articles, essays
and books for publication. He will be a better preach if he does.
Then there is the rehearsal method of verbalizing, or talking it out
loud. James Gordon Gilkey first writes the sermon then rehearses it
several times. His words are: "So after my sermon has been completed
as a piece of written work it must be rehearsed as a piece of public
address. I always preach a sermon several times to the furniture in
my study before attempting to preach it to the people in my church.
Only then can the sermon be delivered without notes and with the proper
rhythm, movement and climax."4
Others follow the method of Gerald Kennedy—verbalizing from notes
rather than full manuscript. He has said: "The next morning (Thursday)
I take the outline and scratchy notes into a room where I can talk
it out loud. This seems to me important, because preaching is not
only bringing thoughts to people, it is also finding words to make
the thoughts march. Sometimes a preacher gives the impression of having
the thoughts in order, but the way of presenting them has an unfinished,
almost rough manner. At any rate, it may be a good thing to try speaking
the sermon out loud if its effectiveness is not quite up to par…I
speak it through again Friday morning, again Saturday morning, and
then parts of it early Sunday morning. By that time I am ready to
preach without any notes….Each time the sermon is gone through,
the preacher becomes a little more free from his paper, partly because
the material begins to flow from one point to another."5
Other men believe that they can achieve full verbalization without
any writing at all. They simply rehearse the sermon to themselves
and speak either extemporaneously or from brief notes. Joseph Parker
followed this method in his later life. F. R. Webber says of him:
"During his early ministry he wrote his sermons, but in later
life he learned to speak extemporaneously, with marvelous precision
and force. He selected a text early in the week, then walked Hampstead
Heath, concentrating his thoughts upon his text….He paid little
attention to actual words. He carried with him to the pulpit his text,
written with a lead pencil on a small piece of paper, and a few lines
suggesting the main thoughts in their orderly sequence. The presence
of his great congregation of 3,000 or more people gave him the required
fire, and he expressed himself in language whose force and beauty
any preacher might envy."6
Parker’s method worked for him, but would it for you?
Prayer and verbalizing go together. The idea is to pray through the
sermon either on one’s knees or by walking up and down in the
study. Whether the sermon has been fully written, dictated, recorded,
or merely compiled in notes, the practice of praying over it sentence
by sentence and paragraph by paragraph is an excellent one. Billy
Sunday said that no matter how often he preached a sermon, he always
soaked it in prayer before each presentation. The Holy Spirit can
use this prayer-saturation period to inspire additions or deletions
in what has been prepared.
There would seem to be no one best way to achieve the verbalizing
stage of sermon preparation. Each preacher will have to find those
methods that work best for him. If he can write it out in full, this
should be his aim. If he preaches twice on Sunday, perhaps he need
write out only one sermon completely. But the verbalizing must not
be omitted. It is at his own peril that the preacher neglects this
process.
When the sermon has been fully prepared, what shall the preacher take
into the pulpit? A full manuscript? Full notes? Brief notes? An outline?
A few catch words? Or, nothing at all? Again, a man must experiment
and find out for himself what is best. J. H. Jowett preached from
a full manuscript, but had his sermon so fully absorbed, and handled
his manuscript so skillfully, that very few people realized he use
one. Many great preachers have been manuscript preachers.
But something about preaching from a manuscript does not seem to be
consistent with prophetic and apostolic practice. Listeners generally
do not care for manuscript preaching. They rightly feel that a sermon
should be a message from God spoken directly from preacher to people.
Therefore, extemporaneous delivery without manuscript or notes of
any kind would be the popular preference. The pastor should cultivate
this ability, and most men can do it if they really try. The biggest
requirement for preaching without notes is to have a logical, coherent
outline that can easily be memorized. If the sermon has been carefully
put together, it will all hang to the outline. When the outline consists
of three or four simple but progressive main points, stemming out
of a thesis through a key word, preaching without notes is not so
difficult. Clarence E. Macartney preached entirely without notes,
and today so does Harold J. Ockenga. This is the ideal way.
However, the majority of preachers prefer to have some kind of notes.
Admittedly notes do relieve pulpit pressure and aid the memory to
recall the whole sermon. The trouble is that notes may grow too complex
and lengthy. In that case, they are almost as objectionable as a full
manuscript. If one is to use notes, he should reduce them to one side
of one page, so that there is no turning of pages.
The writer has found that all the notes necessary can be typed on
one side of a 4" x 6" file card; the card is then fastened
into one’s Bible, opposite the passage used for the text. Two
square, non-tearing paper clips at the top and two on the side hold
the note card firmly in place, so that it cannot possibly fall out
or blow away, and this type of paper clip does not tear or mar the
pages in a Bible. For best results, one should capitalize, indent,
underline, and use different colors. Here is a sample based on our
familiar passage, Luke 18:1-8.
Praying Always—Luke 18:1-8
All of us believe
in prayer, but most of us fail in it. This parable teaches us to pray
at all times, or on all occasions, and not to forget or faint or give
up. Our passage reveals four reasons for praying always.
I. Our
Lord urged it, v. 1
- This is reason
enough for true believers.
- Jesus Himself
practiced it.
- It can be
done if we try.
II. Life’s
emergencies require it, vv. 2-5
- This widow
faced a real crisis.
- She prayed
always to a wicked judge.
- Emergencies
requiring prayer come to us, to our loved ones, to friends.
III. God’s
mercies encourage it, vv. 6-8
- Our God is
the opposite of the wicked judge. He hears their cries.
- He is just
and long-suffering.
IV. Son
of man’s return seeks it, v. 8
- When Christ
returns He will seek the faith that prays always.
- He will render
full and speedy justice.
- Will He find
"the faith" in you?
Conclusion:
Make prayer the unbroken habit and major force in your life. When
we faint instead of praying, prayer becomes a farce instead of a
force.
With his sermon
fully prepared, and his pulpit notes fixed in the proper place, the
minister can now relax. All he will need to do now is to give his
sermon a quick review and commit himself to God in prayer before he
goes into the pulpit. He can rest well on Saturday night. He should
see that he gets his full quota of sleep so that he will be at his
physical, mental and spiritual best at the time of sermon delivery.
He can now have a fair measure of assurance that he has done his best
in sermon preparation and can expect God to back his human best with
the enduement of the Holy Spirit. Power through adequate preparation
will insure power in communicating his sermon.
Is the expository sermon harder to communicate than the topical or
textual? At first thought, it would seem to be; it is more confined
in what it is and what it can do. But, on second thought, the expository
discourse may be easier to communicate than other types of sermons.
It deals with Biblical material of vital interest to church attenders,
and therefore enlists the sympathies of the listeners with the preacher.
It bestows an authority of the listeners with the preacher. It bestows
an authority upon both messenger and message that requires a hearing
and a response.
The preacher, or his congregation, or both, may hinder the process
of communication. The preacher may not be aware that such a problem
exists; he may lead an ivory-tower existence out of touch with the
problems and needs of his people; he may speak in theological, philosophical,
or scholastic terminology which has little meaning to his congregation;
he may live such a shallow spiritual life that he has no vital message;
he may so expend his time and energies on churchly duties that he
does not have time enough to prepare challenging sermons; his voice,
gestures and pulpit delivery may be so poor that they hinder rather
than help him.
The congregation may prevent communication by lack of spiritual growth,
by preoccupation with the cares and pleasures of life, by involvement
in worldly practices out of line with Biblical living, by suspicions
and jealousies of one another, by secularization, and by hardening
of heart. Then, too, the acoustics of the building may be poor, the
seating arrangements awkward, the ventilation and lighting insufficient,
and outside noises and sights too distracting. Any or all these can
hinder communication.
Chapter
10: Power Through COMMUNICATION
To
communicate means more than to make the people hear the sermon. It
involves receiving it, considering it, and responding to it. The
supreme test of a sermon is whether or not it communicates. If it
fails here, all else is in vain
