Theological Foundations of Preaching: An Interview with Jim Fitzgerald INTERVIEW

What theological foundations should we keep in mind when we seek transformative preaching? Grace & Peace talked with Jim Fitzgerald, currently chair of the School of Theology and Ministry at Southern Nazarene University. Fitzgerald also has pastored in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Missouri.

INTERVIEWER: Rebecca Rodeheaver

IN THIS AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND INSTANT COMMUNICATION, WHAT IS THE PLACE OF PREACHING?

Around 20 years ago, people began to wonder if video would be a better method of communicating than preaching. Would we do better showing clips or other videos rather than having a live person speaking? Our culture today is more image-based than word-based. Is visual imagery more important than words? Since then, oral communication has made a comeback. We’ve rediscovered that we can develop imagery through language, not just by flashing something on the screen. Many people regularly listen to podcasts and TED talks, so now, even in an age of images and video, speech is still important.

As much as I love listening to preaching podcasts and sermons online, I still think they are distinctive from the worship context. Preaching is unique theologically because it’s an incarnational moment, an embodied presence and voice. It’s more than disconnected bites of information or imaging, more than what a person can receive through a podcast, PowerPoint, or social media. Embodied speech is present and alive.

WHAT ELSE DISTINGUISHES PREACHING FROM GIVING “TALKS” OR OTHER PRESENTATIONS?

Preaching is distinct in several ways: The first is the spiritual element and, in particular, the role of the Holy Spirit. A sermon and a

speech may have some overlap in content, but we don’t usually invoke the Spirit’s presence in a speech. The Spirit’s role is vital in proclaiming and receiving God’s Word.

Another distinction is the worship context. In a worship service, people come to the sermon with a different set of expectations than they do for hearing a speech. Sermons are not just for inspiration, motivation, or entertainment. Neither is preaching a stand-alone event; the worship context does not solely depend upon the sermon. Certainly, the preaching moment is powerful, but all the elements of corporate worship impact us. Our expectations of what happens in the sermon are heavily shaped by our expectations of worship.

Preaching has a rhythm. If you listen to a motivational speech or a TED talk, you likely won’t return every week with the same people and the same expectations as you do in the context of worship. Preaching is different because it’s habitual, it’s a pattern, it’s a rhythm in our life.

Furthermore, as the worshiping community gathers to receive God’s Word, listeners are shaped by participating in this act of worship together. As we participate in a worshiping community, we are transformed by the relationships that extend beyond the preaching moment.

HOW CAN A PREACHER CROSS THE HERMENEUTICAL BRIDGE—THE GAP BETWEEN THE WORDS OF THE BIBLE

AND THE LIVES OF PEOPLE IN THE CONGREGATION?

Part of the question is: How big is that gap? Obviously there are gaps of time, context, and culture, and of course, we must research historical data to learn about these people and their culture. But the Bible is more than a collection of books that is thousands of years old. Because of the Spirit’s involvement, the Bible is the living Word of God. Isaiah 55 says God’s Word will not return to Him void but will accomplish its purposes.

So, to bridge the hermeneutical gap, we examine not only what the text is trying to say, but we look at what the text is intending to do. Ask, “What’s happening here? What’s the author trying to accomplish?” These words have a purpose. We must try to capture what the author was trying to do in the original audience and ask how we might recreate that.

Our Wesleyan doctrine of Scripture helps us. We talk about Scripture inerrantly revealing the will of God for all things necessary to our salvation. Embedded in our Nazarene Manual statement on Scripture is the idea that scriptural voice is intentional, an active voice revealing God to us.

Part of the way we discover that intent is by paying attention to the form in which it comes to us. If we read Scripture and—regardless of whether it’s a psalm or a prophetic text, a gospel or an epistle—it all sounds like the same three-point sermon, we’ve not done justice to the text. Why is some of it poetry? Why is some of it lament? Why are there genealogies? Why is some of it in the gospel form? We have to pay attention to the rhetorical function and why it was written this way.

That’s not only true of Scripture; even culturally recognizable forms of communication set our expectations. If we start by saying “Knock, knock,” people know to expect a corny joke. If we say, “Once upon a time,” that sets their interpretive lens. The various forms can set expectations, so we need to draw on that as we go to Scripture texts. Once that’s done, lots of hard work is still ahead, but it’s not the same overwhelming challenge as if you’re just peering into a series of historic words to see what it says.

DESCRIBE THE ELEMENTS OF PREPARATION BOTH FOR THE PREACHER AND THE SERMON.

Two dimensions are at work in preparing the preacher. One is identifying our calling and the second is tending to our spiritual health.

I have to agree with Eugene Peterson, who said we tend to forget what our calling really is. We get distracted, tempted, or seduced by other work. Peterson calls us back to what he identifies as our essential work as ministers: prayer, study of Scripture, and spiritual direction.

There will always be distractions—some we will have to pay attention to and others we will have to resist by saying, “No, that’s not my calling.” But if we’re too busy chasing other work, we will find it challenging to develop a rich life of preaching. Our preaching becomes just functional if we don’t have the right grounding in our calling.

We must attend to spiritual growth in our own lives. Is our time in Scripture and prayer a personal priority, or do we only practice these disciplines in our role as a preacher? We need to pursue both the disciplined study of a particular text and also our own devotional development, so we don’t only approach the Scripture thinking, “I’ve got to get something for Sunday.” Are we being fed through prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction? I don’t think we can effectively prepare for preaching a sermon without having this parallel track in our life.

At its root, sermon preparation is a disciplined commitment to wrestle with Scripture. It’s also a determination to deeply and patiently exegete your congregation, so you can understand and speak to your community. We don’t just talk about what Scripture meant 2,000 or 4,000 years ago, but we engage Scripture with the context of our people. We must keep our audience in mind through the process of sermon preparation, which requires being attentive and aware of the diverse human experiences, news, trends, and cultural shifts.

Are we willing to put in the time, week after week, to wrestle with the text and to listen to what’s going on in people’s lives, to what’s happening culturally and globally? We have a responsibility to engage our people in this level of conversation.

HOW CAN A SERMON BE TRANSFORMATIONAL WITHOUT SIMPLY PLAYING ON EMOTIONS?

Transformation only comes by the work of the Holy Spirit. We certainly craft a sermon the best we can for that moment, but ultimately, it’s not about us. Now that doesn’t excuse us, we can’t just say, “Well, the Holy Spirit will fill in the gaps where I didn’t prepare.” We must do the hard work of preparation, but ultimately, transformation comes through the work of the Spirit.

I think a lot of transformation is influenced by people’s expectations. Do people come expecting to encounter God, or do they come anticipating they’ll learn five ways to help them be a better husband or be able to manage their money better? What hopes do they have about the transformation that might take place in their lives as they come to worship and respond to the sermon? I think perhaps a lot of the success Billy Graham experienced was because people came expecting something life-changing, more than they did from a “regular” service. Are our people prepared to have an encounter with God?

I put a lot of stock in the cumulative effect of a preaching ministry. Certainly, one sermon can be transformational and can radically change someone’s life. But I think there’s value

in a long-term, cumulative preaching ministry where, week after week, people are being formed by the Spirit through the proclamation of the Word. Sometimes transformation happens in crisis experiences, but don’t forget that it often happens incrementally. Transformational power is present in the long haul. We need to note and affirm that sometimes the Holy Spirit works slowly.

THERE IS MUCH TALK ABOUT “PROPHETIC” PREACHING. HOW CAN PREACHERS BE PROPHETIC IN THE BIBLICAL SENSE OF THAT WORD?

Prophetic preaching is willingness to speak truth to power. It includes a willingness to be a dissenting voice, and it endeavors to frame things as Kingdom issues. Some people think prophetic preaching is anytime you raise your voice or denounce something. There may be times to speak that way, but speaking truth takes courage and humble, broken hearts. Are we willing to critique the things people cherish, or are we co-opted by the desire to be part of power, rather than speak to power?

Prophetic preaching has compassion. It has concern for justice and concern for the marginalized, for those who get overlooked or are harmed by cultural and corporate practices.

I also think prophetic preaching is done within the context of a community. Prophets have a deep love for God and for the people entrusted to their care. They are willing to speak in a more public arena, and they are obedient to address big-picture issues, not just personal, interior issues. Prophetic preaching allows us to step back from the surface issues.

Anyone can rant about something, but is there biblical justification for it? We must humbly ask, “Is what I’m preaching, especially if I’m labeling it ‘prophetic,’ in line with the tradition of Scripture and the tradition and testimony of the church?”

It is an immense challenge for pastors to preach prophetically because of our real desire for self-preservation—not wanting to preach ourselves out of a job or not wanting to alienate ourselves from people we love. But I don’t like

seeing prophetic speech as a separate function, with the pastor doing pastoral preaching and then calling in a prophetic preacher or evangelist to speak what the pastor is not quite confident enough to speak. Pastors need to be able to preach prophetic messages in grace and love, with a broken heart.

WHAT ARE SOME TIPS FOR EXEGETING BOTH THE AUDIENCE AND TEXT OF SCRIPTURE? HOW DO BOTH OF THESE ELEMENTS ASSIST THE PREACHER?

When it comes to exegeting Scripture, I encourage preaching students to not let the commentary be their first step. Read the text, listen to it, pray through it, and try to paraphrase it. Ask your own questions first, because if you jump to the commentaries, they’ll ask questions for you, which will frame the issues differently, and you’ll miss some stuff that you may have found in your own exploration.

Now, having said that, certainly use commentaries! They may uncover questions you didn’t think about. Develop or find a good theological library so you can draw on those resources. You can find resources online as well, though sometimes it’s difficult to ascertain the context, background, or training of the person who created the materials. However, with all the resources available, there’s really no reason for not studying a text thoroughly. A lot of scriptural exegesis is just putting in the hard work.

As you facilitate dialogue between the text and the congregation, you need to know them both well in order to get them in conversation with each other. So, you can’t spend all your time studying, interacting only with Scripture and commentaries. You need to spend time with your people, connecting with their lives outside of the sanctuary, whether that comes through shared coffee breaks, hospital visits, pastoral phone calls, or dinner fellowship. The more we know our people and our community, the richer our preaching is.

Part of exegeting our audience is examining not only the people who attend our church but also the people who are not there. Who in the community doesn’t show up on Sunday morning, and what do we do about that? We don’t learn our people just to preach to their comfort. We might need to know them well enough to say, “We’re not reflecting our community.”

We must be able to step outside of our own demographic. As a preacher serving diverse groups of people, I have to try to look at the world through the eyes of a single mom, or an immigrant, or someone who works for minimum wage, or someone who is in a different state of life than I am. If all my sermon illustrations are drawn from my personal experiences, I’m not doing a good job of exegeting my audience. I need to give voice to those who are not like me.

WHAT OTHER INSIGHTS ON THE THEOLOGY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL PREACHING WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE?

As Wesleyans, our theology is ideal for believing in a theology of transformational preaching. Our doctrine of prevenient grace tells us that the Spirit has been at work in each person’s life long before he or she steps foot in our sanctuary. We hold a deep conviction that God is at work in every person’s life, that the Spirit is actively seeking to draw that person to God. Our theological foundation reminds us that transformation doesn’t initiate with us; it initiates with God, and we are participants in that.

Therefore, transformation doesn’t rest on whether I have the most eloquent speech or sermon. God is the active agent in the preaching moment. Our doctrines of justification and sanctification highlight that there can be distinct yet unique transformational moments in people’s lives, but we also remember our theology of growth in grace. God is forming us in the image of Christ.

God’s work is what makes the sermon a means of grace for listeners, not just a speech. When we understand preaching as a means of grace, that opens the door for an expectation of transformation. Preaching is not just stirring emotion, not just eloquence, not just wisdom, but God’s doing something in that moment. God is intent on saying something.