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part 2

Introduction

The second stage of practical theology is called by Osmer ‘The Interpretive Task: Sagely Wisdom’.[1] This is the stage at which we bring various theories from the sciences or humanities to bear upon the phenomenon on we which we are reflecting, in order to be able to understand better from a human perspective what is going on. Thus in Chapters 3 and 4 I seek to interpret preaching with the aid of several theories related to human communication. We will consider aspects of language, media, rhetoric, sociology and psychology. If as theologians we are tempted to doubt the necessity or worth of this stage – preferring to move straight on to the next stage, in order to develop a theological perspective – the wisdom tradition of Scripture should be sufficient to convince us otherwise. Osmer gives an excellent account of the pertinence of the wisdom tradition to the practical theological task.[2]

Some might still feel, however, that preaching is such an irreducibly theological event that to postpone a properly theological consideration of it till Part 3 is to give in to reductionism. Are we not allowing our basic understanding to be dictated by ‘secular’ categories? I offer three responses to such a fear.

First, the phenomena of preaching which I seek to analyse here are, to my mind, thoroughly conditioned by God himself. In no sense do I regard preaching as merely a ‘secular’ occurrence. There is no wish to claim that the various ‘human’ categories applied to the study can fully encompass or explain the divine realities inherent in the event. In Osmer’s helpful analogy, human theories provide a map of the territory that may be found more or less suitable for the expedition, but they are not the territory itself, and of necessity leave much out.[3] This is true even when the ‘territory’ is purely mundane. Yet such theories and categories, with all their limitations, stem from the creativity implanted in us by God himself. They are not ‘secular’ at all. They mediate his creative wisdom to us and are meant to be used, alongside what we call the ‘special’ revelation he has given in Christ and through Scripture.

Second, I make no claim that these categories from the human sciences, or my application of them, offers us a ‘neutral’ analysis. There can be no such thing. Therefore, although I do not make theology an explicit part of the framework in this part, I am very happy to acknowledge that a theological perspective undergirds the way I seek to understand everything – preaching included. In practice that means I have chosen frameworks of analysis that seem to me to accord with such a theological perspective and usefully fill it out. Most importantly, I adopt a fundamentally positive view of the potential of human communication, grounded in the belief in a God who communes with his children and enables their mutual communion to be real and not sham.

Third, the truth of God’s incarnation in Christ suggests that to ignore the human dimensions of our knowledge, our practices and our discipleship would be profoundly un-theological. If, as we continue to claim, God still speaks, somehow, through human beings, our aim should be to seek to understand with all our (God-given!) human powers what that claim entails and what are its practical consequences for us. History is littered with the wreckage caused by those who have been so confident in the possession of divine inspiration that they have (unwittingly) wrought abuse of some kind on their many hearers. Such speakers (if Christian) have often, I suspect, not grasped this implication of the incarnation: that far from neglecting the human, we are called to embrace it and enable it to be God-filled. For preaching, this means that it would be sub-Christian to neglect the human capacities, conditioning and categories of thought which enable us to make the most of who we are and what we might be. When all that has been attended to, the question of whom, how, when and where he will inspire is for God’s free choice alone. The danger for us is precisely that we will be so sure of God’s inspiration that we seek to act as God instead of being ourselves. This, to me, is amply sufficient to justify bringing all the relevant tools of human knowledge, skill, creativity and hard work to the task of preaching itself, and of understanding what it is we are about.

Central to reflection on the nature of preaching must be an awareness of the dynamics of human communication, and the various theories considered in Chapters 3 and 4 all bear in some way upon this phenomenon. Preaching’s place in Christian tradition and contemporary Church life gives it a unique character among communicative events – a uniqueness greatly enhanced by the divine dimensions claimed for it in Christian theology. But to overlook what it shares in common with other acts of communication would be a grave mistake.

The simple model of communication in which a ‘sender’ (usually a speaker or writer) encodes a ‘message’ (usually in words) and delivers it to a ‘receiver’ (usually a hearer or reader) is now widely and rightly regarded as inadequate. Even if we expand the model to allow for a possible act or acts of translation somewhere along the way (in other words, bringing a third person into the frame as an interpreter, or envisaging the necessity of a specific process of decoding by the receiver), it should be clear that an event of communication is more complex than the simple ‘delivery’ of a message.[4] Such a model implies, essentially, a mind-to-mind procedure that excludes the subtle but highly important elements of personal interchange that take place within and beneath the outward signs of words (or other signals).

Thus we are wrong if we imagine that preaching is simply a matter of words. In a helpful application of contemporary communication theory to preaching, Achim Härtner and Holger Eschmann explore the model of the ‘message square’ offered by the Hamburg psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun.[5] The ‘message square’ recognizes that the ‘message’ is not simply a one-dimensional piece of encoded ‘content’. Rather, this ‘content’ is but one aspect of the message, one side of the square. Along with it go three other sides: disclosure of self (the sender is saying something, at least implicitly, about themselves), relationship (the sender is saying something, at least implicitly, about his or her relationship to the receiver(s)), and appeal (the sender is saying something, at least implicitly, about how he or she desires the receiver(s) to respond).

Thus in a sermon and in any particular section of it, the preacher is not only ‘delivering content’ (even if they think that is all they are doing). They are also disclosing something about themselves, something about their relationship to the hearers, and something about how they wish the hearers to respond.

The unity and force of the act of communication will depend considerably on the consistency between these elements. For instance, let us suppose the preacher is explaining 1 John 4.7: ‘Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and the one who loves is born of God and knows God.’ The ‘content’ of the explanation may be well encoded, in a language that the hearers will easily understand. But the hearers will also be ‘hearing’ what the preacher’s manner and the wider context of their words is disclosing about him or her. Is this preacher a loving person? If so, the content of the explanation will be reinforced; if not, the communicative event will seem flawed – love is being spoken about, but not demonstrated. Further, they will also be ‘hearing’ something about the preacher’s relationship to them: does this preacher love us? If he or she loves others but not the hearers themselves, the content of the message will not be much supported. Finally, they will also be ‘hearing’ an implied appeal. The preacher may simply be explaining the text, but the hearers will surely detect whether or not the preacher really means them to take the text’s injunction as applying to them. The preacher may or may not go on to make that application explicit, but the hearers will know whether they are to take this text and its explanation seriously. Preaching, like all other communicative events, is a relational activity, involving not only the mind but also the emotions, the will, and the richness of person-to-person contact. Sometimes those who, for whatever reason, seek to suppress or deny this reality only succeed in making it more obvious.

The presence of this ‘square’ of factors puts certain obligations on both sender and receiver. When communication is working well, these obligations tend to be fulfilled quite automatically. It is the first stage of reflective practice to raise such unconscious or automatic levels of behaviour to consciousness. It is often a breakdown in behaviour or relationship – in this case, that of communication – which makes us conscious of these levels; one of the great hopes of the reflective practitioner, in whatever sphere, is to achieve prevention of such breakdown rather than to be always trying to pick up the pieces.

Thus whether they think about it long and hard or not, anyone who wants to communicate with another or others as a ‘sender’ will be putting a part of themselves into the words; will see the event as a relational one; and will reckon with the fact that their words will carry an appeal of some kind. Equally, anyone who wants to be involved in communication as a ‘receiver’ will be alert not only to the message contents, but also to the personal, relational and appeal aspects of the sender’s message: they will be ‘four-eared receivers’, attuned to all four sides of the ‘message square’.[6] Moreover, in any continuous piece of communication there is constant interplay between sender and receiver, such that the sender is always responding to signals picked up from the receiver (seeking to discern whether the message is getting through, and on what levels), even as the receiver is always responding to signals picked up from the sender (seeking to detect the various aspects of the four-sided message, and how one should react to them).[7]

Although this interchange is most obvious in conversation or dialogue, in which the roles of sender and receiver are constantly being swapped, it is a mistake to think it is not also happening in a largely monological address. The receivers’ signals may be silent ones, but they are there to be discerned nonetheless. And the public nature of preaching, as an event with multiple hearers, makes this process especially complex.

All this constitutes the most basic reason why preaching must be considered as a corporate, not an individualistic event. The previous chapters have already given strong backing to such a notion, as preaching has been located within the tradition and practices of the Church. But it is as a communicative event that it displays this corporate character most obviously.

In this part we will unpack the implications of the ‘message square’ for preaching. In Chapter 3 we will consider the mystery of language, the words (or images) which are the basic tools of communication, and the relationship of medium and message. This will lead to examining preaching as rhetorical journey, an event in time, with constant interplay between ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’. In Chapter 4 we will explore preaching as a sociological event in which the identity of a congregation is shaped, as well as some of the psychological dynamics which feed into the preacher’s self-disclosure and appeal, the relationship between preacher and hearers, and the hearers’ response to the message.

Finally we will raise the question of preaching as an event of spiritual encounter. How are claims that preaching is a locus for meeting with God to be assessed? This will form an appropriate transition point to Part 3, in which we will turn to our theological appraisal of preaching events.

[1] Richard R. Osmer, 2008, Practical Theology: An Introduction, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 79–128.

[2] Osmer, Practical Theology, pp. 81–100.

[3] Osmer, Practical Theology, p. 80.

[4] For an explanation, expansion and critique of this basic ‘cybernetic’ model see Achim Härtner and Holger Eschmann, 2004, Learning to Preach Today: A Guide for Communicators and Listeners, Sheffield: Cliff College, pp. 167–71.

[5] Discussed in Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 171–98.

[6] Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 175–6.

[7] Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 176–7.