Preaching by Ear

Speaking God's Truth from the Inside out

Dave McClellan

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781683592174
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

According to Kenton Anderson, professor of homiletics at ACTS Seminaries of Trinity Western University, this volume represents "a powerful tool" because it offers a new (actually old) model of preaching. For centuries preaching has been shaped from a literary standpoint (i.e., reading, writing, outlining, and displaying sermons). But a pre-modern method of oral preparation and delivery largely has been forgotten.Preaching by Earhearkens back to an earlier era when sermons were rooted inside the preacher and moved out in a natural and powerful way.

Part 1

Preparing the Preacher

Something Old, Something New

1

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. . . . The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

C. S. Lewis, “Introduction” to Athanasius, On the Incarnation

I was raised with the expectation and desire to be . . . what’s the word? If we phrase it nicely it would be “influential” or “effective” or “excellent.” A simpler word would be “great.” I wanted to be a great preacher. Coming from a long line of preachers, I felt like I had a destiny that was waiting to be fulfilled.

The Pressure’s On

As a thirty-something-year-old youth pastor, I was asked to preach in what we came to call “Big Church” (which meant the main service). It was prime time. With teens I had learned to speak informally. I would prepare, but I didn’t really care how it came out. Speaking to junior highers, especially, taught me to be flexible and adapt on the fly. What’s interesting to me now is that, in the pressure of preaching to adults, I abandoned everything I had learned about flexibility, and crafted what seemed like the safer alternative: a manuscript sermon. I needed control over each phrase. There was no room for error. This was no youth group; this had to be good.

I wordsmithed the manuscript until I thought it was as close to perfect as I could get. Then I read it over and over until I had it virtually memorized. On Sunday I read it, but tried hard to disguise the fact that I was reading. I used my best acting skill to make it seem like all these words were just effortlessly spilling out of me. I don’t even remember what I spoke on. But I can still picture that manuscript. My safety. My sure thing.

When I finished the sermon, I felt pretty good. In those days all sermons in Big Church were recorded on cassette tapes, so of course I secured a few. I sent one to a friend of mine from college days for “feedback.” Actually, I was hoping more for kudos than feedback. But, oddly enough, I got feedback. My friend said that the sermon was pretty good. But that it didn’t sound like me. I protested. Didn’t sound like me? He said it sounded kind of stiff—like it was a preaching persona and not just Dave speaking. I remember feeling confused and provoked. I knew what he meant. It was a persona. Real Dave, the Dave that people knew outside the sermon, could never craft precise words like that in the moment. But that’s what I was trying to present to people: something a little better than Real Dave.

I thought a lot about that. I didn’t like what he said. But I was scared of giving up the safety of the script. So I resolved not to do that again. I resolved that if I was ever asked to preach again that I would take the risk of sounding more like myself. I would be willing to lose some of the polish to gain a sense of authenticity.

Risky Preaching

So let’s talk about a style of preaching that is—well, a little risky. The oral orientation is a movement away from safety and predictability. It’s a move toward vulnerability with a hint of the spontaneous. It’s not knowing exactly where you’ll go next. It has an openness, an unfinishedness. It pulls deeply from internal resources: emotion, experience, firsthand acquaintance with truth. It requires the preacher to speak into a live moment from a whole heart.

Think about political speeches. There was a time, not that long ago, when politicians could speak off the cuff. Some still attempt it. But it’s risky. With every word they say being recorded, any gaffe will be replayed over and over. Most of the important speeches now use the teleprompter to hold the speaker to a very precise and prearranged plan. Some get pretty good at it. But if you watch their eyes carefully you’ll see them going ever so slightly back and forth, working their way through the script. You don’t really need to watch—just listen. People don’t compose like that in ordinary conversation. There’s too much polish. Spot-on metaphors flow out effortlessly. Sound bite follows sound bite. It’s good language, good writing, but it’s not natural. It’s a persona.

Recently there’s been a resurgence of interest in preaching without notes. There are books written specifically to teach that approach. But oral homiletics is different. Having or not having notes is not the point. We might memorize a manuscript and not have any notes when we preach. But that’s not “preaching by ear.” Preaching by ear is this: speaking from personally held, deep convictions in a w ay that enables our words to unfold in the moment by considering the actual people present with us. We are well-prepared, but we’re not certain exactly how it will come out of our mouths.

Of course the counterfeit version of this is that of the thrill-seeker. For this preacher, the higher risk brings higher reward. If a preacher can keep his wits and adapt to the unfolding moment, literally crafting words not in the safety of the study, but in the heat of the moment, the effect is dramatic and palpable. People feel, in that kind of moment, a participation in the sermon. Instead of being passive receivers, they sense, and they are accurate in the sensation, that they are co-creating the sermon. If it works, they experience something quite unusual. And the preacher feels the difference too. As a preacher, you know what I’m talking about. It’s where the synergy produces more than either the preacher or the audience could generate on their own. There is a sort of magic shared moment.

Yet, herein lies the danger. Anybody, believer or not, can potentially learn to do this. Pagan orators of the ancient world describe it. Hitler embodied it. Preachers more interested in personal acclaim can use the gospel to generate and seek it. In this case, the cart pulls the horse. The preacher is, honestly, more interested in the effect of the message than the message itself. There is a danger of “trafficking” in truth. This reminds me of John’s sad summary of the Pharisees: “they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God” (12:43). Preaching just for effect is a counterfeit of the real thing.

There is another way. “Preaching by ear” is humble. It means speaking with less artifice. It means speaking firsthand truth. It means sharing the spotlight with the hearers. It means being sacrificially vulnerable. It is risky, yes—but not in pursuit of glory. It actually focuses on the hearers and the message so much that a beautiful self-forgetfulness emerges. It pursues the good of the congregation more than position, polish, power, or prestige. It is in this direction we will aim—to find ourselves less automatic, less contrived, and more open in our preaching.

On Perfectly Balanced Vulnerability

I just finished perusing the latest copy of a popular pastoral journal. Its theme was (and if you read pastoral journals at all, you’ll recognize the regularity of the theme) what makes a pastor fit to lead. In it I read the advice of multiple mentors. Most of them spent their time doing two things: recommending a more honest and vulnerable pulpit, while simultaneously warning about the danger of being too vulnerable. Most of us preachers, scared already at the thought of showing weakness in the pulpit, will hear enough in the warning to justify our typically overly cautious approach. Nobody, they tell us, wants to hear about the preacher’s life every week. What a relief. Because I don’t want to tell it every week.

And so the expectation that we be more real becomes ever greater and ever more daunting to pull off with perfect balance. I know of no way to keep this mythical balance. The only way I know to become an authentic preacher is to make mistakes doing it. If we could do it perfectly, it wouldn’t be very authentic.

Preaching by ear is a move toward authenticity in the preacher. It is the conviction that in some sense, the sermon will always implicate the preacher. The actual life and character of the preacher will always be the governor on the sermon. We cannot preach what we have not experienced. Or, rather, we can. We’ve all done it. But there is a cost. A sense of distance creeps in. Less eye contact. More temptation to keep repeating the obvious. Less compassion. A slightly scolding tone. Maybe we substitute strong words to cover our own nagging sense of unworthiness. We’re aware, at some level, this advice we’re throwing out has no sense of punch or passion to it. But we don’t know how to get it. So we just keep talking until we can close in prayer.

If you learn to preach by ear, chances are people will think you’re a better preacher. It’s very normal to want to be a better preacher. It’s very normal to want them to like you, even admire you. But that should not be the reason to learn. It should start with a conviction that you will preach nothing that you haven’t wrestled with yourself. That you will ignore no problem that plagues you and advocate no solution you haven’t personally tested. That you will speak from firsthand failure and firsthand discovery. That you will not mooch ideas from other people, or Scripture itself, and pass them along disconnected from your own life. Your life will inform every text even as the text informs your life. You will internalize and swallow the truth until it leaks out in ways you can’t contain. You will feel the freedom of loving the highest things and calli...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Part 1
• Part 2