Speaking to Fewer than Seventy-five
Preaching with the Small Congregation by Laurence A. Wagley, Abingdon, $10.95
Reviewed by Grant Lovejoy, instructor, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas
Intuitively we know the sermon should take the size of the congregation into consideration. After all, researchers have confirmed that the small church is not just a miniature large church. Until recently, though, no one had suggested how preaching could build on the unique strengths of the small church. Now Laurence Wagley has written Preaching with the Small Congregation to do just that. He tells how pastors of congregations with average attendance under seventy-five can develop a style customized for the small church.
Wagley, professor of preaching and worship at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, started this research to encourage and assist his students who were pastors of small congregations-like the one in which he had grown up.
“We live in a culture that values bigness,” he writes. “If it is not big, loud, and expensive, it must be failing. … It is not surprising that members and ministers of small-membership churches are demoralized and consider their practice somehow deficient.”
Wagley encourages the small church to work from its strengths: intimacy, emphasis on preaching and worship, flexibility, and capacity to involve people. His thesis is that a participatory approach to preaching best uses these small-church assets.
Members may participate in the sermon in many ways. The preacher may speak briefly and then step into the midst of the congregation, saying, “You have heard what I have said about this issue. What do you have to say?” Or, following the preacher’s remarks, the congregation may move to another location-a classroom, for instance-to participate in a discussion.
Then again, the congregation can retell a biblical story. Having announced his intention a week earlier, the preacher invites someone to read the biblical story and then asks, “How does the story begin?” As people reply, the preacher affirms the responders, asks questions to elicit further insight, and helps members explore the dynamics of the story. The preacher may summarize the congregation’s insights to conclude the message.
A participatory sermon on grief may begin (or conclude) with a testimony by a church member who has faced grief and is prepared to talk about the experience.
Sometimes the preacher takes a minute or two to raise an issue involving conflict or tension. The preacher then calls on the congregation to help describe the nature of the problem. Members tell how it affects them personally and as a community. The preacher may then ask the congregation questions such as “How do most people deal with this problem?” “Do some solutions make the problem worse?” “How have you dealt with this problem?” “Are there things we could do to help?” “Are there any biblical answers?”
Wagley thinks this type of preaching offers several advantages:
-It follows the example of Jesus, who conversed with people more often than he gave an uninterrupted monologue;
-It helps church members better remember the sermon’s biblical content;
-It encourages members to study during the week;
-It is more likely to change people because they are involved, not detached;
-It minimizes clergy-laity distinctions.
He also discusses how participatory preaching can move naturally into congregational decision making. In fact, he recommends the shared sermon as an excellent way to deal with controversial decisions, because the method is perceived as even-handed and above board. It helps people work out their differences in the context of Scripture and worship.
Wagley knows there is resistance to his proposal. In a phone conversation, he said that pastors are more hesitant about it than church members and are surprised by church members’ positive response.
Does this approach compromise the prophetic role of the pastor? Wagley admits it threatens the prophetic role as some conceive it. But he writes that it is only a threat when the proclamation of the Word is considered the exclusive preserve of the clergy. He thinks the prophetic role should be extended to the whole church. The participatory sermon helps the whole congregation speak a prophetic word to the world.
“I believe participatory preaching is more persuasively prophetic than a lone voice saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ ” Wagley writes.
He concedes that participatory preaching is not an everlasting balm.
“Church members surveyed after sharing in a participatory sermon often respond, ‘This was great, but I wouldn’t want it every Sunday.’ ” Wagley agrees, though he is less explicit about it in his book than in our conversation. He thinks there is a place for traditional didactic sermons, though he thinks even these should include both narrative and dialogic elements.
As a church grows beyond seventy-five in attendance, the pastor usually will cease using the participatory sermon on Sunday mornings. The dynamics of a larger congregation undermine the effectiveness of this sermon style. However, even in large churches the participatory form still may be useful on Sunday or Wednesday evenings, if those services have the intimacy and flexibility of small congregations.
When I asked about weaknesses of this approach, Wagley identified three: it can become superficial, relying on the minister’s gift of gab rather than study of the text; it can become predictable if the members climb on their same soapboxes week by week; and it requires the preacher to have both imagination and interviewing skills.
One other potential weakness comes to mind: the participatory preacher must affirm people’s contributions and yet correct statements that are off the mark. Sometimes truth and accuracy may be sacrificed on the altar of acceptance and good personal relations.
These potential difficulties aside, Laurence Wagley is to be congratulated for filling a gap in homiletics literature. When combined wisely with other sermon approaches, the participatory style can contribute to the well-being of small congregations. Talking together about the Scripture and its implications deepens insight on both sides of the pulpit.
A Homiletic Clinic
Biblical Sermons: How Twelve Preachers Apply the Principles of Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson, Baker, $14.95
Reviewed by Michael J. Hostetler, graduate student, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
I’ve never preached a sermon in which I haven’t imagined, somewhere in the congregation, the imposing figure of Vic Walter, my homiletics teacher, scribbling notes on an evaluation form he soon would hand me.
For eleven former students of homiletics professor Haddon Robinson, fantasy becomes reality in the pages of Biblical Sermons.
This book is a companion volume to Robinson’s Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, published in 1980. Here, however, he wants “to demonstrate how the approach to homiletics in Biblical Preaching is worked out in sermons of several experienced communicators.”
The format is simple. Robinson presents twelve sermons, each followed by a few paragraphs of his analysis and an interview with the contributor.
The keynote and strength of this book is its refreshing variety. The reader might expect twelve examples of expository preaching to consist of twelve traditional deductive expositions, yet some of the sermons are inductive. While two expound a single verse, others work through a paragraph or more, and two cover an entire book of the Bible. Three narrate stories.
Robinson enjoys this mix: “Any preacher who prepares forty to a hundred sermons a year knows the weasel sameness that sucks life from a message. Sermons hammered together like a doghouse each week are a burden to preach and a chore for a congregation to hear. Unfortunately, the ‘great awakening’ in some churches is not a period of history but the moment when the sermon ends and the congregation stands for the final hymn. Perceptive preachers know that variety is not only the spice of life, but of preaching as well.”
The inclusion of traditional, deductive expositions and story sermons highlights an important insight of the book: that expository and narrative preaching are not on opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Expository sermons . . . are not identified by the form they take,” writes Robinson. “Any form that communicates the message of a passage clearly so that the listeners understand it, accept it, and know what to do about it is adequate.”
When I asked Robinson to explain this, he emphasized that behind every sermon, regardless of form, must lie the historical, grammatical, and literary study of the text. That is what exposition is all about.
The form the sermon takes in the pulpit, however, should be influenced by the culture in which it is preached.
“For a long time classical rhetoric has dictated form,” said Robinson, “but now in our visual age, with communication taken over by electronic media, traditional deductive forms are being replaced by more conventional forms. We must take theology and move it to image.”
Therefore, even narrative forms, when grounded in expositional study, can be regarded as expository. Further, they are probably more suited to our times than more traditional approaches.
The book includes sermons by eight pastors from different parts of the country, one conference speaker, one evangelist, and two presidents of educational institutions.
The interviews offer practical insight into how each speaker goes about the preaching task. For example, evangelist Larry Moyer, in talking about his use of humor says, “I don’t think I’ve ever preached a nonhumorous evangelistic sermon.” And conference speaker Nancy Hardin, who speaks mostly to women, notes, “Women in particular respond to personal experiences and appreciate vulnerability in a way that differs from a group of men.”
Robinson’s analyses and the honest responses of the contributors in the interviews make Biblical Sermons a preaching clinic. It’s the type of book that can spark the creative flame in the preacher whose fire has dwindled.
Character and the Congregation
Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom by Susanne Johnson, Abingdon, $13.95
Reviewed by Nancy D. Becker, pastor, Ogden Dunes Presbyterian Church, Portage, Indiana
Most pastors are eager to enrich the spiritual life of their congregations. So they read books and attend seminars, which give them programs or practices they can initiate to help their parishioners enjoy a deeper walk with Christ. But with overloaded schedules and overworked staffs, pastors resist placing yet another program onto their workloads.
Enter Susanne Johnson, who wrote Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom to help such pastors, teachers, and lay leaders strengthen spiritual maturity among Christians in the context of the usual structures of the local church.
In a phone interview, Johnson, assistant professor of Christian education at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, said she once asked a group of pastors to list everything they were doing to provide spiritual care for their people.
Many drew a blank.
“Yet,” she said, “most of the things they were already doing constituted spiritual guidance.” She explained that leading public worship, proclaiming the gospel, announcing forgiveness, leading committee meetings, teaching the Bible, and praying on behalf of the congregation and with individuals are all ways the pastor guides the inner spiritual journey of each member and the church as a whole.
Johnson says the goal of Christian education is not so much the imparting of information about Christianity as the formation of Christian character.
“Christian spiritual formation,” she writes, “is a matter of becoming the song that we sing, the Story that we tell. We ourselves are to become the living texts of Christianity.”
Study, then, is only a small part of Christian education. Much more life changing is the spiritual growth and education that takes place when a Christian is part of a faith community. Johnson’s list (partial and paraphrased here) of people, events, and processes can serve as a checklist by which leaders can gauge the spiritual environment, or “ecology” as she calls it, of their church:
-The exemplars, spiritual guides, role models, official and ordinary saints of the church.
-The way the church interprets and reflects upon its faith.
-The church’s internal life, including how its policy, administration, supervision, leadership, and politics foster active participation in the church’s life and work.
-The liturgy where the Christian story is dramatized and rehearsed through ritual, rite, silence, and song.
-The spiritual disciplines, including the means of grace and works of mercy, especially the way people are trained and immersed in them.
-Environmental influences, including all the formal and informal ways a church enculturates members into its life and work.
As important as these are for determining how faith is formed, Johnson also recognizes that “formation of Christian character is actually an indirect matter. We are not to get up each morning and wonder if we are more formed than the day before. Our call is not to fixate on self-formation but to follow Christ and learn to live his Story as our own.” Nonetheless, participation in the church is absolutely essential if we are to form Christian character.
Johnson, herself an ordained minister, sees regular worship as the primary source of spiritual guidance. Pastors concerned with the spiritual formation of their congregations, she says, should expend their primary energy in creating and developing the worship service: “The focal setting for spiritual guidance is worship. … We initiate, form, and guide Christians through our common prayer and private prayer, through our giving, receiving, rejoicing and confessing, adopting, naming, instructing, washing, anointing, blessing.”
When I asked Johnson about her own spiritual growth and formation, she recounted a time in her pastoral ministry when she had to lead a weekly Communion service in a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
“Each week I had to think deeply about the Lord’s Supper just to prepare the two-minute invitation. The process of reflecting and participating in Communion with a congregation had a profound effect on me.”
Although her theology is troubling sometimes, and her theory abstract at others, practical consequences for the local church are not far away, for Johnson reminds pastors that “the church . . . is the decisive context for Christian spiritual formation.” And that simple reminder will encourage pastors to commit themselves more fervently to their weekly tasks.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: THE SMALL CHURCH
Developing Christian Education in the Smaller Church by Carolyn Brown, Abingdon, 1982
Anyone who knows the frustration of trying to adapt graded curriculum materials that work in middle-sized or larger churches to the small church that has one class for grades K-6, or has been stymied by the space restrictions of a tiny, two-room, open-country church, or has dealt with a critical shortage of cash, equipment, and purchased resources, will appreciate Brown’s book. She helps readers overcome just such difficulties.
Activating Leadership in the Small Church: Clergy and Laity Working Together by Steven E. Burt,
Judson, 1988
Looking at small-church leadership from a relational rather than hierarchical model, this book seeks to energize the small church by effectively strengthening relationships. Other topics include the search process in seeking a small-church pastor, the affirmation and training of volunteers, and ideas for size-appropriate activities and outreach.
Beyond Survival: Revitalizing the Small Church by James R. Cushman, McClain, 1981
Cushman, formerly a field staff member with Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center and now an associate for small-church development with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), analyzes the historical development of small churches in the company towns of Appalachia. He finds, for instance, that small churches often are hesitant to speak out on community issues, because community and business leaders sit in their congregations.
This makes it especially difficult to affect their community. He also outlines five stages for revitalizing the small church.
Making the Small Church Effective by Carl S. Dudley, Abingdon, 1978
Dudley, former small-church pastor and now professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, broke ground in Unique Dynamics of the Small Church (Alban Institute, 1977) when he showed us that the small church is not just a stunted large church, but a different animal altogether. In this book, considered by many as the bible of small-church literature, he analyzes the small church’s relational and interactive structure and makes the case that the small-church pastor should be a generalist and “lover.”
Entering the World of the Small Church: A Guide for Leaders by Anthony G. Pappas, Alban Institute, 1988
Pappas, editor of The Five Stones small-church magazine (P.O. Box 214, Block Island, RI 02807), brings together the small church and Robert Redfield’s studies of folk cultures. For instance, “spear waving” (asserting power or challenging a leader) is common to both primitive society and the modern church! Many keen insights follow.
Small Churches Are the Right Size by David R. Ray, Pilgrim, 1982
Ray formulates what he calls a “small theology.” A small-church pastor and conference minister in the United Church of Christ, Ray affirms the uniqueness of small churches. He reminds us, for instance, that the small church’s identity is tied to its personality and collective experience rather than to the programs it offers.
The Small Church Is Different! by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon, 1982
Nobody helps us understand statistical data better than Schaller. But he also mixes his teachings and theory with anecdotal illustrations based on his many years of consulting. Like others, Schaller highlights the importance of small-church members’ shared experiences.
The Pastor and People by Lyle E. Schaller, Abingdon, 1973
In this book Schaller explores the relationship between the pastor and congregation. His “Card Game” of priorities is one of his many noteworthy ideas. The pastor and a few key members write on cards their top priority for the church. Then one by one, they turn the cards over and explain their statements. This exercise checks utopianism in both pastor and people.
New Possibilities for Small Churches by Douglas Alan Walrath, ed., Pilgrim, 1983
Walrath, currently the director of Bangor Theological Seminary’s Small Church Leadership program and a former small-church pastor, brings together small-church experts to contribute their insights. “Possibilities for Small Churches Today’ by Walrath and “The Art of Pastoring a Small Congregation” by Carl Dudley are the best chapters. Dudley, for instance, notes, “Small churches have access and influence disproportionate to their size.”
-Compiled by Steve Burt
small-church consultant
Bethel, Vermont
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
