When the preacher confesses, people listen, Miller insists_110804

Posted: 11/05/04

When the preacher confesses, people listen, Miller insists

By George Henson

Staff Writer

NEW BRAUNFELS–Three points and a poem may offer a familiar formula for preachers, but it may not be the best way to reach the person in the pew, noted preacher and professor Calvin Miller recently said.

“I never advocate three-point sermons,” said Miller, speaking at Oakwood Baptist Church in New Braunfels at an event sponsored by Bluebonnet Baptist Association. “It's easier to jam three points into the text rather than saying what the passage itself is really saying.

“Besides, people can't remember three things, and you can't preach on three things with equal intensity, so why not pick one.”

One of the most important things a sermon must do is hold the attention of the congregation, he said. Miller suggests using visual aids–and it doesn't hurt to keep those hidden for a bit.

“Boxes and bags are great,” he said. “No matter how boring you are, you are going to hold their attention–at least until you open the bag.”

Knowing that the preacher is a real person who has experienced the trials of life also is a step toward being heard, Miller said. Paul's “thorn of the flesh” was what made the Apostle Paul believable to his hearers, he said.

“If you can manage to bleed with them, you will never want for job security,” he said.

Many preachers may have been taught to leave themselves out of their illustrations, but Miller disagreed.

“The strongest kind of preaching is confessional,” he said. “When you confess, people listen.”

But “there is a limit to how far you unzip the viscera,” he added. Never confess to more people than you have wronged, Miller said.

He also cautioned against falling victim to the “sin-as-entertainment syndrome,” where the sin takes center stage instead of the grace of God.

That goes for guest speakers as well.

“We Baptists have a habit of paying people big bucks for dirty rotten stories,” something Miller believes can put the emphasis on the wrong part of the sin equation.

Another of the tips Miller offered the preachers was: “make every sermon an apocalypse. … Save something back for the end. … Help them see something they have seen before.”

“It's not how well you explain anything; it's how well you help them experience the mystery of God,” he said.

Preachers need to learn audience analysis, Miller said. “Figure out who these people are, what they will hear and how they will hear it.”

That becomes even more crucial for pastors who have a long tenure with the same congregation, he said.

“Churches are not the same from Sunday to Sunday. Things happen between Sundays. Your job is to figure out what those things are and how it affected them,” Miller said.

Part of that is done through “the speech before the speech–what you say before you get to what you wrote down,” Miller said.

Relate back to current events that have affected members of the body, he suggested.

Preachers have to connect with people to be effective, he said.

“If you don't keep your humanity, you can't do much,” he said. “People listen to preachers they like–and they want to know that you internalize what you tell them.”

It is important for congregations to know the preacher doesn't just believe his sermon, but lives it out.

Narrative preaching is the key to reaching many people, Miller suggested. It has visual component that paints a picture in people's minds that they can relate to and hold on to.

Preachers should use both components of telling a story, however–plot and character.

Plot, he suggested, is easier. It simply tells what happened. He offered the story of the Good Samaritan–we know little detail about him, whether he was short, tall, bald, overweight are not disclosed.

Adding that detail or character is harder for most preachers, Miller said, and it is important that it not detract from the truth of Scripture.

But storytelling can be a way to offer up truth in a way that it sticks with the hearer.

“Storytelling scratches an itch everyone has,” he said. “It is the barb that snags the three-minute attention span of modern churchgoers.”

Miller pointed out that a movie theater is filled with people of varying ages, races, income levels and backgrounds, but all are drawn to the telling of a story.

When preaching, Miller said, he makes a manuscript, but he only carries an outline to the pulpit. “I don't believe in read sermons. Talk to your people; have a conversation–but don't read to them.”

Going against a popular trend, Miller said he also would counsel against providing outlines to the congregation or putting an outline of the sermon up on a screen.

“If they are writing, they have to take their eyes off your eyes–it weakens the sermon. When it comes to the point of making a decision, it's a lot more likely if they haven't been writing. That's what I believe,” he said.

He also told pastors to consider using metaphor over alliteration, just as Jesus did.

Ending the story or sermon on an upbeat also is important, Miller said.

“When Jesus walked out of the tomb, he stamped a happy ending on the story. If you don't put the happy ending onto the story, you haven't preached the whole gospel.”