David L. Barnhart, Jr., M.Div.
Graduate Student
Hints and Tips for Homileticians
Hints for Homiletics
These Hints are most relevant for homileticians following the Buttrick model explained in David Buttrick's Homiletic, but are generally good advice no matter what model you are following.
Remembering: One of the criteria we'll be using to judge the effectiveness of a sermon is what the listeners remember. The logic behind this criteria is that the things that people remember are most likely to change their way of seeing the world.
Of course, there can be subtle influences in the sermon that people don't remember - but our task is too important to fail to make a lasting conscious impression. The idea is to create a change in worldview, to give people a gospel lens through which they see the reality around them. Don't just make the sermon "memorable," make it "rememberable" - give people the ability to recall the way of seeing presented in your sermon so that they can apply it in their real-life situation.
Perspective: Key to creating a rememberable sermon is using perspective. Although we may be able to jump around visually while watching a music video or TV commercial, oral communication requires a firm sense place. Even if you read a screenplay, the writer will often note the "POV" (point of view) of the camera and character. Good cinematographers know how to use POV to their advantage, and avoid unintentional perspective shifts. When they do shift, it is carefully controlled.
Unintentional perspective shifts don't just happen when introducing characters. Sometimes when we are trying hard to make the connection between an analogy and the theological claim we are trying to illustrate, we change perspective. Check your analogies and illustrations to make sure that the perspective matches the perspective of the claim you are trying to illustrate.
Theological Claim: As we have discussed in class, a theological claim is not necessarily an explicit statement about God. But I do think that the phrase is appropriate in describing what you are doing in a move. Even if the primary task of your move is to impart some image and not necessarily make a proposition, you are making a theological claim through your metaphor - "love is like a rose," or something.
It would be a mistake to think that every theological claim has to be explicitly about God. Most of the important things we say about God we say indirectly, and we communicate those things through the images we choose and the metaphors we use. Statements about human beings are also theological claims. If I say "human beings abuse each other," that is a theological claim when it is in the context of a sermon - because it is probably part of a larger rhetorical argument which may deal with the nature of sin, salvation, community, incarnation, etc.
Perspective of Illustrations: A common mistake in choosing illustrations is the theology/anthropology perspective problem. Frequently people will want to make a theological claim about God, yet wind up illustrating something about us. For example, if you want to say "God is merciful," be sure that your illustration shows someone demonstrating mercy (God's POV), not someone being thankful at receiving mercy (human POV).
Fit of Illustrations: Another common mistake with illustrations is illustrating the opposite of your theological claim. People often make this mistake when they attempt to satirize the idea against which they are arguing. For example, if my theological claim is that God is merciful, I would want to use an illustration that shows someone demonstrating mercy, not someone begging for mercy.
Isolating claims and images while linking move starts: I know it does not seem intuitive to do so, but in crafting the sermon's moves it is important to see each of the moves as an independent unit. They should not "contaminate" each other with foreshadowing, recurring images, or similar illustrations. Though the moves are linked rhetorically, they remain separate statements.
Here's an example from Susan Bond's lecture on move starts. She comes up with the following move starts:
1. Jesus foolishly goes into dangerous places (ministering to prisoners, dangerous parts of town).
2. Thieves attack him (JC is crucified - "stretched out between two thieves").
3. Religious people - (that would be us) - just walk on by. (Images of trip to church in an SUV with the windows rolled up, turning off the news radio about the world's problems).
4. Guess who it is that winds up picking up JC's burden? A Samaritan! (Not a good church-going Christian, but an outsider - an atheist, a muslim, or whoever else your congregation considers "them"). Those who do the will of God are children of God.
5. But there is a resurrection, so get with the program!
All of these claims are isolated, in that the images and examples will be unique to that move. But they are linked by rhetorical structure. The way you can tell that they are linked is that when you put the move starts in order, they make an intelligible argument.