Homiletics 2 File 25 Professor David Schmitt Question by: Paul >> PAUL: Sometimes my sermon seems to write itself. I don't need to do an outline. I just write the sermon. Do I really need to be concerned about a structure at this point? >> PROF. SCHMITT: Paul, that's spoken like a truly busy pastor. I know exactly what you're talking about. There were times in my parish experience when I would sit down to write the sermon and for some reason usually I don't know why. For some reason, that sermon would just flow for me and it made me think that I really didn't need to know anything about structures. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I kind of superstitiously found out or felt like when those things happened, usually the rest of the week was going to go awful. It was almost as if God was giving me the gift of a perfect sermon early on in the week, so that the rest of the week, I would be up to my ears in all types of ministry situations. I think that perhaps the reason the sermon flows so easily for us at times is either it is resonating with a very important life experience for us, in which case it's easy for us to know exactly what we want to say it may be hard things that we're saying, but it's easy for us to know what it is we should be saying or it could be a matter of habit. That is, you've done a certain style of sermon so often that it comes naturally to you. You don't even think about it. It's almost as if it just flows right out on the page. But I'd like to to argue that you should think about structure even when the sermon is flowing so easily, and here's a few reasons why. First, structure is what we would call a transferable skill. Now, imagine what it would be like if you never thought about structure at all. This would mean that each week when you sat down to write the sermon, it was a cast of the dice. Was it going to go well, was it going to go awful? Some weeks, the sermon would go well and it would be great and you'd be thinking, "Boy, I'm a great preacher. This thing's just flowing for me." Other weeks, you'd be tearing your hair out because you haven't been able to figure out how to put all of this stuff together. It's kind of a roller coaster ride for the pastor, don't you think? One week it's good, the next week it's not. You're going up and down, up and down, and you're never really sure what it's going to be like the next week. Now, if you take those weeks where it goes well for you, those weeks where it just seems to flow, and you stop and you analyze "what's the structure that I'm using," you've just learned a skill that you can apply in those weeks when it's not going well. Structure is something that can be transferred from one sermon to another, and so you're not just left to the odds whether or not it's going to work, but you actually begin to build for yourself a toolbox of different structures you can use, and so when you come across a week where you're having trouble, you sit down, you look through that toolbox, and you think, "Which one of these structures is going to work for this particular sermon?" So first reason why I would encourage you to stop and think about structure, even those times when it's flowing well, is that it's a transferable skill and you're going to build up your skill in writing structures. The second reason you'll want to work on structure or identifying your structures is for the purpose of a critical evaluation of your development. See, a structure sets out your sermon for you. It lays out each of the moments that the hearers are going to go through from the beginning to the very end of the sermon, and you then can, through that overview, look and see how much development you're offering to one section of the sermon versus another section. And that's important. Because we tend to have this this tendency where we will overdevelop things that don't need to be overdeveloped. For example, let's say you're writing a sermon on that Hebrews text, "Let us run with perseverance the race that has been set before us," and you're writing at a time period when the Olympics are on, so you turn on the television, turn on the radio, you can't get away from the Olympics. And as you sit down to write that sermon, you're going to start with that opening analogy of running a race and you think about the Olympics, the Summer Olympics, and you start talking about all of the different things that happen at the Olympics, the perseverance, the development of strength of these athletes, and you go on and on and on about that particular aspect because it's fresh on your mind. The airwaves are filled with it. Later, however, when you come to that point in the sermon where you're talking about running with perseverance that spiritual race, that, you don't develop very much. Now, I ask you: Do people who, for an entire week, cannot turn on the television without having the Olympics blasted in their face, do they really need you to spend a lot of time developing the sports analogy? No. These people, who perhaps only come to church on Sunday, who perhaps only hear the scripture read on Sunday, who perhaps don't think about their spiritual life during the rest of the week when they're running that race, these people, they need you to develop what it means spiritually to be running the race. But you, unfortunately, have simply taken something that is already being developed in the culture and develop it a lot for yourself in the sermon, and that which the culture needs, that which the culture is not developing for your people, that you don't develop. I know it happens to me all of the time, and usually as I'm writing a sermon, I think to myself, "If something comes easily to me, if I'm beginning to come up with idea after idea after idea about this particular topic, it may be that it's going to come easily to my hearers." And my work as a pastor is to look at those topics that come hard for me. Look at those topics that deal with the way in which faith interacts with life, and in ways that are that raise questions for us that we want to seek answers to, just meditate on those topics, and to develop them. Now, if I know my sermon structure, I can divide it up into parts, I can evaluate what I'm treating and where I'm treating it. I can begin to evaluate how much development I'm giving to each idea. So that would be a second reason why you would want to be able to identify your sermon structure. Not only is it a transferable skill, it also allows you the ability to do critical evaluation of your development. A third reason is for the sake of your hearers. Having a structure, having some sense of progression, even if it is only intuited on the part of your hearers, having some sense of progression makes it easier to listen. Sometimes as you listen to the sermon, you wonder if the preacher has just stepped off into some form of associational logic, where he comes up with one idea and that leads him in the story to another point and he throws that point in, and some preachers actually write sermons that way. They gather all of this material, they're not exactly sure how it all goes together, they take a story from the Internet, a story from a book, a story of scripture, they put it all together, they go out and they throw it out to the people. And as parishioners, you know, God love them, they're so wonderful, they sit there and they think, "You know, I guess I just wasn't really listening well today." Well, it's not their problem. It's our problem. It's not that you aren't they aren't listening. It's that we haven't given them that structure or organization that helps them listen, that makes it easier for them. So that would be the third reason is that it makes it easier for the hearers. And the fourth reason is that it actually will give you more confidence in preaching. When you walk up into the pulpit, or you stand there in front of the people, and you're going to be offering them a sermon, it is wonderful to know that there are four main ideas that you're going to talk about, four simple thoughts that you've organized in a certain pattern that you're going to communicate to them. And when you stand there and you start communicating each of those units, each of those thoughts, you spend time developing the first one until you think the people get it. And if you don't see that they're not getting it, you spend more time developing it. Once you see that they get it, you then move back to that larger pattern and you move to the second thought and you develop that for them. And so you can have greater confidence in your preaching as you enter into the pulpit or you stand there in the midst of the congregation and you say to yourself, "I'm going to cover four basic ideas today. Here's the order I'm using and I'm going to simply stand there and work with the people, talk with them until we understand and experience each of these ideas." So four main reasons why I think it's probably good to work on structure? It's a transferable skill, offers critical evaluation of your development, it gives the listener something to hold onto, makes it easier for them to listen, and it also can give you greater confidence as a preacher.