PARISH PRACTICE Much more than performance
NICHOLAS HENSHALL
If there is to be a renewal of preaching today then what is needed are, first, eager and committed prayer from congregations who expect more of their preachers; and, secondly, preachers who have a real openness to criticism
T
he first time I ever preached in a Methodist chapel, something extra - ordinary happened. Before the service began, a group of stewards took me
into a small room, and prayed for me. It was not a cursory vestry prayer or a formal prayer of preparation. They prayed openly that the congregation would hear the Word of God through what I would say that evening. It was one of those moments in ministry when I was confronted by a truth I had almost forgotten: that was what they were expecting; that was what they prayed for – to hear the Word of God through what I was going to say. Preaching is at a low ebb in our culture.
Many congregations have ceased to expect good preaching altogether, and certainly stopped praying for those who preach. Some even claim that preaching as we know it is no longer possible in a culture like ours, and completely incomprehensible to anyone under 45. Nick Hornby’s caricature in How to Be Good, where the sermon consists mostly of the vicar singing highlights from The King and I and hits from the Top 20, is uncomfortably close to reality. But in Catholic and Anglican
traditions alike, certainly over the last half century, a key note of liturgical renewal has been the insistence that word and sacrament should walk hand in hand.
TO DO
Over 23 years of preaching, and 48 years of listening to other people preach, I have become convinced of the power of liturgical preaching to touch and change lives. And I am equally convinced that our neglect of this ministry is a disaster. The fact that the word “sermon” and its cog- nates in contemporary English are almost entirely pejorative is a challenge to preachers and communities alike. Preaching has something of an uneven
history. Undoubtedly important in the early spreading of the Christian message, the post- Constantinian Church shows an extraordinary flowering of powerful preaching. Reading sermons by Augustine, John Chrysostom and others today – except as an exercise in
14 | THE TABLET | 5 February 2011
Usea sermon feedback form at least once a year
Set up a small group to give regular feedback on preaching
Make sureevery preacher gets to hear others preach
personal devotion – is unlikely to speak to us as preaching, any more than the sermon col- lections of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But their power is beyond question. As with St Bernard on the Song of Songs, something extraordinary is going on. But there have also been long periods where preaching has been profoundly under- valued or absent altogether, certainly in the liturgical context. However, again and again a renewal of preaching, often associated with a renewal in sacramental life, has issued in a renewed missionary character for the Church. The first Dominicans found a warm welcome in England in 1221 because their prior, Gilbert de Fresnoy, demonstrated his abilities as a preacher to the Archbishop of Canterbury by creating a sermon on the spot. You only have to stand in the vast space of the Dominican church in Siena to know that it was built almost solely for the purpose of preaching. And in the same city’s central square, St Bernardino would preach regularly for up to four hours. The Wesleyan revival of the eighteenth century again illustrates the power of preaching to renew the Church. Tradition also tells us that preaching is more a gift than something we learn. Clergy may have the gift, but many do not. And many of the most powerful preachers in Christian history have not been ordained people but laypeople. The reformed Church of England put such a high value on preaching that it intentionally restricted this ministry of preaching and did not license most parish clergy
to preach. It would take a brave bishop indeed to suggest this now. The renewal of preaching today demands in the first place committed prayer from congregations who expect more of their preachers. Secondly, it demands that preachers have a real openness to criticism. When I worked as presenter on BBC local radio, my producer regularly talked me through items and interviews that hadn’t gone well. And – however painful to my ego – I had to learn from that. Preaching is not (or rather, not simply)
performance, and is not offered in search of ratings. It is more important than that, and therefore it is crucial that preachers are open to constructive criticism and new possibilities. The sermon review sheet is a simple and helpful tool (you can find an example on the Sermons page of our website, with audio of recent sermons). Both the review sheet and listening again to sermons are important disciplines that help preachers grow. Schubert, in the last year of his life and at the height of his powers, joined a music class to learn how to write fugues better. He knew that even the greatest composer still has a lot to learn. Every preacher needs a similar humility. That is why preachers need to learn by sitting at other people’s feet. Anthony Bloom, Rowan Williams, Herbert McCabe and Desmond Tutu were among those I listened to as a student, sometimes travelling long distances to do so. The best and most fundamental training and ongoing formation for a preacher is to hear good preaching. Good preaching is not teaching, or
imparting knowledge, or encouraging others, though it may have elements of all these. Nor is it an occasion for the preacher to show off his or her knowledge or lack of it. One sermon heard on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, claimed to be based on the bits about Mary that Luke missed out through lack of space. I recall another a few years ago that wrongly assumed that the word often translated “sins” in modern versions of the Lord’s Prayer was the same as the word Paul uses for sin. Both sermons ended up inadvertently preaching heresy. The least inadequate definition of preaching I know is Richard Holloway’s: “the commu- nication of truth by means of personality”. This is a unique form of communication – texts of Scripture; the people I have visited this week; the unexpected encounter in the post office. They all form part of the mix. But ultimately preaching is the truth of the Gospel filtered through the particular prism of the preacher’s experience in and for their community at prayer.
■Nicholas Henshall is vicar of Christ Church, Harrogate.
http://sites.google.com/site/ christchurchharrogate
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