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57 pages

English

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Is bigger always better?It's not often that we hear the virtues of the small. Our culture teaches that bigger is better--and that includes church ministry and preaching, too. But what if rather than swinging for the fences, preachers focused on improving their sermons through small habits, practices, and exercises? What if smaller is better?In a world where "small" isn't always celebrated, Jonathan T. Pennington provides Small Preaching, a short book of simple tips that can have revolutionary effects over time. Pennington offers preachers 25 words of wisdom that will help shape their preaching for the better.

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Philosophie et théologie

Christianity

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Publié par	Lexham Press
Date de parution	28 avril 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683594727
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Small Preaching
25 Little Things You Can Do Now to Become a Better Preacher
JONATHAN T. PENNINGTON
Small Preaching: 25 Little Things You Can Do Now to Become a Better Preacher
Copyright 2021 Jonathan T. Pennington
Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225
LexhamPress.com
All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com .
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.
Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version ® . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Print ISBN 9781683594710
Digital ISBN 9781683594727
Library of Congress Control Number 2020950472
Lexham Editorial: Elliot Ritzema, Andrew Sheffield, Jessi Strong
Cover Design: Lydia Dahl
To Tracy Pennington, who has faithfully listened to a lot of
sermons from me over twenty-five years, and whose advice
has been immeasurably valuable. The effectiveness of any
of my sermons is directly tied to whether I listened to her
brilliant pre-run advice on Saturday night or not!
Contents
Introduction
The Person of the Preacher
1 Handling Praise Carefully and Gladly
2 Handling Criticism Carefully and Humbly
3 Band of Brothers Preaching
4 Pastoring as Conducting
5 Be God’s Witness, Not His Lawyer
6 Distinguishing between Preaching and Teaching
7 Encaustic Preaching
The Preparation for Preaching
8 Manuscript Writing as Thinking
9 Sermon Writing as Sculpture
10 Snack Writing
11 The Rhythm of Education and the Jigsaw Puzzle
12 Kill Your Darlings
13 Iceberg Preaching
14 “This Sermon Stinks”
The Practice of Preaching
15 The First Minute of a Sermon
16 The Last Minute of a Sermon
17 Preaching the Church Calendar
18 Preaching the Cultural Calendar
19 The Power of Predictions
20 Every Sermon a Story
21 Make Music in Your Sermon
22 Always Exposition?
23 The Unexamined Sermon Is Not Worth Preaching
24 At Weddings and Funerals, Be a Guide
25 Stealing as Sub-Creating
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Introduction
“S mall” is not a particularly positive word in most instances. Who wants a small bank account, a small amount of honor, or a job with a small salary or a small number of benefits? And even though we might romanticize some advantages to having a small church, I think few pastors in their honest moments would rather have their church be small than large and growing.
When it comes to preaching, I’ll go out on a (small) limb to suggest that no one has ever put “small” and “preaching” together in a positive sense. One unscientific bit of supportive data is that in an age when any potentially marketable website domain name has been snatched up by squatters hoping to make a quick buck, www.smallpreaching.com was readily available to me. (I now own it, so don’t get any ideas. In fact, check it out for some great resources.)
But “small” can be good and even revolutionary. Think of “small ball” as practiced during the 2013–2014 season by the Kansas City Royals in baseball or the Golden State Warriors in basketball. The Royals used a “small ball” strategy to show that a team can be very successful without a beefy budget or highly paid home run sluggers. They employed a technique of small, methodical steps—base hits, bunts, stolen bases, sacrifice flies—to get runners on base and around to home. And it worked. Similarly, the Warriors, instead of concentrating on having the “big man” underneath the basket, found great success through fast-paced offense with multiple agile dribblers and shooters.
In his excellent book Small Teaching , James Lang applies the idea of “small” to help teachers become more effective at what they do. 1 Lang, a professor himself, knows that most teachers want to develop their skills and become more engaging and effective, but doing so is difficult. Conferences, books, and seminars promise that a radical overhaul of education and pedagogy will solve all of our problems as teachers. Lang, however, rightly argues that it is not possible for teachers and professors to change everything they do—to flip every classroom, to revamp an entire school, to jettison all they have been taught. Instead, it is far more wise, realistic, and effectual to make small steps—methodical little changes to how a teacher approaches teaching and learning. It’s a “small ball” approach to improved pedagogy, and it works.
Small ball. Small teaching. And now, small preaching. Occupationally, I am both a professor and a preacher, and I care about both of these roles very much. I give a lot of my time and energy to focusing on what these two roles share—the importance of excellence and beauty in the act of communication. I’m also aware of the many challenges that preachers face as they live out their calling. If you’re reading this book, you probably care about all of this too.
My goal in this book is to help you make some small ball/small teaching steps toward intentionally better preaching. This is not a book about a whole philosophy and practice of preaching. There are plenty of good books out there like that, and I have been inspired and helped by many of them. If you ever took a homiletics course in seminary, you got your professor’s own version of that, I’m sure. Instead, this is a book of small ideas that you can try today.
How does lasting change come about in diet or exercise or acquiring a new skill? Through taking small steps in the same direction over time. This book does not promise that if you just do this one thing, then your preaching will magically be different, the preaching version of hiring the $200 million slugger or the 7’2” center. Instead, I offer you here some small ideas that can have big consequences if you play the long and methodical game with sincerity and intentionality.
Small Preaching is a collection of twenty-five short, easily digestible essays that invite you to see and be in the world in certain ways. These nugget-sized explorations are organized under three headings, complete with pleasant “p’s” and alluring alliteration: The Person of the Preacher, The Preparation for Preaching, and The Practice of Preaching. The essays you’ll find here are varied in their approaches, topics, content, and modes. Some cast vision; some challenge assumptions and habits; some give “pro tips” gleaned from experts. But all invite you to consider small changes that can add up to big effect, no matter whether you are about to start at your first church, or are an old pro. So come and start small.
The Person of the Preacher
1
Handling Praise Carefully and Gladly
W e humans, made in the image of the relational Triune God, need the encouragement and love of others. There was only a brief and singular time when a human was completely alone in creation, and God’s verdict was clear: “It’s not good for the human to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
Humans—including the small subspecies of humanity who are called to preach—need the encouragement and love of other humans. “The worker is worthy of his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18) applies not only financially but also relationally and emotionally. Praise is a good and natural need. It is a sustaining gift.
Most preachers I’ve observed are hesitant to receive praise and compliments. This is a mistake. But at the same time, the pastor needs to think carefully about how to handle praise in a healthy way.
We can sum up the healthy reception of preaching praise with two adverbs: carefully and gladly.

Carefully. There are a couple of reasons why we must be wisely careful about how we receive praise. First, what Emily Dickinson says about fame applies more generally to all forms of praise:
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing. 2
Fame and praise are fleeting and fickle. Beware of putting much stock in the praise of others. Hold it all at arm’s length lest you be throat-punched when its inevitable cousin criticism shows up.
A second reason we must be careful in our reception of praise is that it is an addictive drug that can blind us to the ultimately important praise—the praise and honor that come from God himself. In Matthew 6:1–21, Jesus teaches at length on the danger of seeking the praise of others. Our problem is not the natural human desire for reward or praise. Our problem is our drive and love for getting praise from the wrong place. If we treasure up the earthly reward of people praising us, we will find ourselves with only that treasure, not a reward from God. Where our treasure is, there our heart is, too. So open carefully the gift of praise.

Gladly . Most preachers are aware of the dangers of praise, and most of us are not going to openly seek praise in a crass and obviously self-promoting way. (Though subtle compliment-seeking and praise-fishing are much more common. Guilty as charged.) This good piety and humility, however, can lead us to struggle to embrace the other, balancing aspect of praise reception: receiving it gladly.
It is good, natural, and beneficial to be the recipient of praise. This is a basic and non-sinful human need. Moreover, as Scripture teaches, we should give honor where honor is due. A preacher who is called and gifted and who labors at the craft of preaching is worthy of appropriate and healthy honor. Only an unbiblical altruism eschews this way that God has made the universe: good begets good; labor begets honor; those who sow diligence should harvest its fruit. So we should not be hesitant or resistant to receive compliments on our preaching. This is a gift not to be rejected. It is good and right.
So what do you say when someone compliments you in person or in an email? I embrace these moments with gratitude and say some combination of these things:
• “I’m glad to hear that you