Preaching myths (VIII)

I could extend this series for much longer, but I think I will finish with this familiar myth:

8. Since preaching is not a performance, as long as the content is good, delivery doesn’t matter.

This myth is birthed from a good motivation. Many preachers want to honour the biblical text (content), and don’t want to draw attention to themselves (delivery). 

So, in an attempt to avoid performance or entertainment, the preacher therefore ignores delivery. This is worth wrestling with though:

A. Poor delivery skills will draw attention to the preacher. If you have ever heard someone preaching with an unchecked verbal pause (i.e. the repeated use of a word without intending to use its meaning), or with an awkward gesture, or without any hint of a smile, or with unusual or absent eye contact, then you will know that it can become very distracting. 

A preacher you cannot hear, or who bores you to tears, or who doesn’t seem to care about you, is a preacher who will draw attention to himself as people try not to roast the preacher over their Sunday lunch (instead of celebrating the great content that may or may not have been there).

B. Working on delivery is not about performing.  Obviously, for some it is, and there are plenty of examples on YouTube or in the press that bring shame on the name of Christ for their quirky insistence on being strange. 

However, for most of us, working on our delivery is a matter of love for our listeners and good stewardship of the ministry God has entrusted to us.  Working on delivery is not about performing, it is about communicating effectively.

C. The goal of giving attention to our delivery is to help us become more natural.  We are not living in the old days where delivery was largely about platform presence and effective acoustics (i.e. vocal projection). 

In this day and age, the goal should be to be natural, normal, authentic. And in the unnatural environment of public speaking, it takes work to be natural.  It takes some work to make our gestures “fit” the size of the audience, or to progress logically or chronologically from left to right (from the listeners’ viewpoint). 

It takes work to bring the energy and dynamism we have in conversation into the strange setting of addressing a crowd.  Our goal is not to perform, but to be able to communicate effectively … and to be ourselves.

D. We cannot abdicate any aspect of preaching and “leave it to the Spirit”. I have seen this logic in several variations. There is the “I will do the explaining, but leave the application to the Spirit” idea – this is not good thinking. 

The Spirit is involved in your study, your explanation and your application. (What you can’t do is force change inside your listeners, that is His exclusive domain.) Equally, there is the “I will do the content, but I will leave the engaging of listeners’ attention and interest to the Spirit” excuse for being a dull communicator. 

Again, poor thinking.  We need to be leaning on the Spirit’s help in every aspect of sermon preparation and delivery. We cannot hand over one part of that, any more than we can push out the Spirit and claim to handle any part on our own.

There are many other myths I could ponder, but I will leave it there for this series.  Thanks for your comments, conversation, sharing, etc. – it is all appreciated.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. This article first appeared on his blog Biblical Preaching.