The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative by Steven D. Mathewson

Author:Steven D. Mathewson [Mathewson, Steven D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781585588442
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2002-04-01T08:00:00+00:00

Delivery

In any preaching event, how you use your voice is important. You have the opportunity for vocal variety and punctuation in your pitch, punch (volume), progress (rate of delivery), and pause.[7] Whether you preach from a first-person or third-person perspective, you will have the opportunity to deliver lines from characters in the story. Use a combination of these variables to convey the emotion of the speech. As a general rule, you’re not being as dramatic as you think you are. For example, if you are moving from loud to soft, it may seem to you like the volume drops from level 9 to level 2. When your audience hears it, however, or when you listen to yourself on tape, the volume level only drops from level 9 to level 6. The pause that seems like four seconds to you only takes one second. So don’t be afraid to overexaggerate your contrasts.

When you deliver your story, use large gestures. Large gestures help preachers get rid of nervousness. They also add realism to your story. Storytelling lends itself to gesturing more than any other form of communication. Using your hands, you can toss wheat into the air with a pitchfork. You can draw a bowstring and shoot an arrow. You can point to Jerusalem or Bethlehem or a well or the field of Boaz. You can shield the sun from your eyes.

There are a couple of other things you can do to help your audience visualize the scene you’re constructing. Remember to keep Jerusalem or Shechem at the same spot throughout the whole sermon. If you point to your left at the imaginary city of Jerusalem, you must always point to your left when indicating Jerusalem. If you point to your left the first two times and to your right the third time, you will create visual confusion. Furthermore, remember that your congregation sees everything backwards. When you draw a line from left to right, your audience sees a line being drawn from right to left. So if you are trying to construct a timeline and talk about the past, you will want to start the line on the congregation’s left, which happens to be your right.

Eye contact is also important. Haddon Robinson notes, “Almost without exception, a congregation will not listen attentively to speakers who do not look at them.”[8] He counsels looking at and talking with one listener at a time for a second or two. Look that listener in the eye, then turn to someone else. The goal is not simply looking at listeners but talking with them.

However, storytelling is the one time a preacher may momentarily gaze over the audience and look into space. As Fred Craddock observes, “A good storyteller seldom looks at anyone.”[9] A preacher may want to look beyond the audience when relating a dialogue between two characters. In a first-person narrative, the preacher might look beyond the listeners when delivering the reminiscences or reflections of a character in the story. Essentially, you are looking beyond the audience to the scene you are imagining.

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