Jamaica Gleaner Online Mind and Spirit - Towards better preaching Saturday | December 29, 2007

Jamaica Gleaner Online
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Mind and Spirit - Towards better preaching
published: Saturday | December 29, 2007


Contributed photos
LEFT: Rev. Dr. David W. Kuck. RIGHT: Book cover of 'Preaching in the Caribbean: Building Up A People For Mission'.

Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

On Monday, December 17, the Rev. Dr. David Kuck, who is one of the deputy presidents of the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI), officially launched Preaching in the Caribbean: Building Up A People For Mission. His book is a publication of Faith Works Press.

Dr. Kuck, a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, has been serving at UTCWI since 1991. He is a lecturer in New Testament and Homilectics (the art and craft of preaching). His 248-page volume is dedicated to his wife, Mary.

What inspired the writing of your book?

The first thing is that I was asked to teach preaching when I came here at UTCWI, even though it is not really my field. Over the years, I have been teaching it and developing lectures. Eventually, I printed those lectures and from that point on it seemed natural to do a textbook. Also, the lack of anything like this in the Caribbean. As far as I know, it is the first and only introductory textbook on preaching in the Caribbean.

There are collections of sermons, and a few reflections on preaching of one sort or another, but to my knowledge, no textbook from any tradition. It seemed to be a good thing to do. Also, I got tired of using North American textbooks - even though I am North American. I see the difficulties of using those textbooks here. So, for all those reasons, I thought it was about time to take what I had already done as lectures and put it together in the form of a book.

Describe the structure of the book?

The theme of building is the central metaphor. So, I have as part one 'Laying the Foundation: Principles of Preaching'. Which seeks to cover some basic theology, biblical theology, and theological views of preaching and the role of the preacher.

Part two is the major part of the book. It is called 'Building on the Foundation: Preparing a Sermon'. That section deals with the nuts and bolts, the A to Z, beginning to end, of how to put together a sermon - from choosing a text, to topic, to delivering the sermon, to how to develop a whole life of being a preacher.

Part three is called 'Testing the Building: Deeper Probings'. I wanted to go a little more deeply in certain aspects of preaching. This might be called an intermediate level. That section focuses on three things I think are crucial for good depth in preaching - one is biblical interpretation for social and personal transformation. We interpret the Bible in many ways, but we don't adequately do it often with that goal of transformation. Then the next topic in that section is 'Analysis of the Contemporary Situation of Preaching'. It deals with how we go about analysing our situation. The third chapter in that section is how we go about 'Proclaiming the Gospel in the Contemporary Situation'. My key argument in the book is that preaching at the centre is proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ I think almost everyone would agree with that in principle, in practice it gets lost easily.

Part four is called 'Adapting the Building: Special Circumstances'. That section is looking at some special types of preaching, for example funerals, weddings, preaching to children and youth, and other kinds of special occasions - harvests, anniversaries, dealing with topical sermons, and I think an important chapter for the Caribbean is 'Working with Multiple Congregations and Lay Preachers'. Here is where the North American textbooks are silent it is changing in North America, most pastors in North America are serving one congregation and don't need lay preachers, etc. It is a short chapter. I did not find that there is a lot to say on it. But it is at least a start.

Part five has some appendices. There is a worksheet that I advocate using. There are some exercises that can be used. The whole point of this book is that though it was developed in the classroom, and will be used, at least by me, in the classroom, I wanted it to be a book that could be used in other settings … I tried to write it on a level that I think lay preachers could use it.

There is always talk about the need for more expository preaching. To what extent does your book address that subject?

That (expository preaching) is partly a matter of definition, and definitions vary. I do address expository preaching to some degree. But the basic bread and butter kind of preaching that I present in this textbook is highly textual-based preaching, but not exactly expository preaching. I understand expository preaching to be a rather detailed and verse-by-verse commentary on the text and its application. I advocate taking, starting with the biblical text, a more thematic approach. ( I advocate) exegeting the text, finding the most crucial pointing the text, and bringing that out in the sermon.

Could you expand on Chapter 20 - Working with Multiple Congregations and Lay Preachers?

A: In preaching to multiple congregations, I believe that it's crucial that ministers in preparing their sermons, think about each of the congregations that they are going to be addressing on Sunday morning. I suppose that in an ideal world, they would write a different sermon for each congregation. But that is not really possible to do. I have had the experience myself of preaching in a circuit or cure where one congregation is filled with lots of highly educated people. And then you go down the road a little bit and you get farmers and other people who need different images, different metaphors and different ways of approaching things. Maybe the preacher in preparing to speak to the different congregations could including something in parenthesis - metaphors and images, examples - that are appropriate to one congregation or another. That would be helpful.

Also those who have had the virtue of some formal theological training should work carefully and fully with their lay preachers. Too often there is a kind of competition. The lay preacher is used to preaching then the ordained minister comes in and the lay preacher feels put upon. On the other hand, sometimes the ordained minister comes in and says, I know I can preach well, and you guys are not trained. There has to be some mutual openness. The trained minister has something to share with the lay preacher and vice versa. They should aim where possible to study the text together.

What has been your observation of much of the preaching that goes on in Jamaica?

Well, there is much good preaching. One thing to commend, is that most preachers do try to take the Bible as their basis. But I think, there are two things that need improvement - and in saying this, I am not criticising Jamaican and Caribbean preaching any more than any others. But I think there are a couple of things that need improvement. One, is to pay more attention to serious intentional interpretation of the text. That is looking at the text to ask critical questions about what the text may be saying to us today. If, for example, the text seems to be saying that Paul is telling women to wear hats in church. If you look at the text more fully and critically in its own context, the basic message may be quite different. Everybody in showing leadership in the church should have some concern for the things that might offend others or give wrong impressions. In our context that is probably not having anything to do with hats but maybe other things. So in focusing on the literal surface meaning of the text, we may miss what Paul was really concerned about. So I think more intentional, Rev. Garnett Roper calls it 'self-conscious' interpretation of the text, where you are aware of what you are doing when you interpret the text …. This book tries to spend quite a bit of time on how you get from the text, to interpreting the text, to the sermon.

You have a chapter called 'Using the Internet', what do you try to share in that section?

There are lots of resources on the Internet. You can find all kinds of sermons, you can find all kind of sermon studies and illustrations. I think the most important thing is to encourage people who use the Internet to sit down and use it and try to use it with some knowledge of the source you are getting the information from. If someone says something somewhere on the Internet, find something else, either on the Internet or in a book to check the interpretation that you may find. By all means, do not simply lift sermons, or sections of sermons off the Internet and preach them as if they are your own. The image of plagiarism becomes a major issue here. It has become a problem especially in sermons. There are differences of opinion on it. Some say, "Well if it is a good word, why not use it?" But there are issues of honesty. I know that in North America we are still having a few cases where a preacher has been discovered to be using somebody else's sermon from the Internet or some other source. And the congregation has booted such a minister out. They were saying that they did not mind so much that that you used someone else's sermon but you gave it as if it was your own. It was dishonest. So if you do feel compelled to use someone else's sermon, at least tell the people that it was you are doing. The reason we don't tell people that that is what we are doing is that we know they won't like it. They want to hear from us. That is not just an issue of honesty, but an issue of the Word becoming alive in a particular context.

Under the section called 'Testing the Building: Deeper Probings …', do you have a checklist of things you should look out for as you seek to apply the Word to the contemporary situation?

A basic principle which I think is important is that the preacher needs to analyse the human situation. I break that down into three parts. Every preacher should at least look in every text to see where those three things come. One is our broken relationship with God. That vertical relationship with God. And that is the traditional understanding of sin. Secondly, in addition to that our brokenness with our own full humanity. This is the one that uniquely comes out of Caribbean theological context because of history and what was done to people, we don't have a very good relationship with our own self, our own humanity. Thirdly, our broken relationship with our neighbour.

If we are fully analysing the human situation, in any given text, we should at least look in the text and see if we can find any or all of these three. Too many preachers are content to leave it with just our broken relationship with God. Ninety per cent of the sermons say we are sinners in need of forgiveness and there's a call to repentance. But there is much more to it.

To what extent has Liberation Theology, in its various shades, influenced how you have approached this work?

I have tried to take it most seriously and that has been part of my steep learning curves since I have been in Jamaica. In that section of the book in biblical interpretation and analysing the contemporary situation, I have tried to take seriously theologians like Ashley Smith, Lewin Williams, Burchell Taylor … Inviting preachers to ask those kinds of questions of the text: 'What is liberating in the text?', not just in terms of individual liberation, but more so in terms of social, community and corporate dimensions of liberation. I find that in much of our preaching we speak well to individual liberation, we don't do so well at addressing liberation in the corporate context.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Kuck's book is available at the UTCWI Bookstore.

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.

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