I have a terribly publicly known secret: from time to time when i preach, i also cry. A little. Well, sometimes i cry, sometimes i just get a bit choked.
My experience of this is very mixed. On the one hand it's obviously rubbish. It is embarrassing, and i do feel stupid. Also going round my head is how irritating it must be for some people, in the same way oscar-winning speech whiners wind everyone up. People must be thinking "get over yourself, get to the point, or put the mic down and get away from the front". Others will be thinking "Wow, you really remind me of Sylvester Stallone... having his arse kicked by Estelle Getty in 'Stop, or my mom will shoot'". Yet others will suspect a cynical rouse whereby i'm attempting to employ some sort of emotional blackmail in a bid to manipulate the congregation.
All these things are regrettable and make me wish i didn't carry this affliction. The real kicker with it for me though, is how frustrating it is to be rendered silent while preaching. While i look to communicate a fragile point, for which i need my very best words to be most carefully aligned, i'm suddenly robbed of them all, only for them to have been replaced with silent sobs or a pain in my throat and a stinging in my eyes. Or, occasionally, by a little bit of snot.
However, on the other hand, i like it - to a degree. It comes from a place of genuine heart where i'm deeply feeling the weight of what i'm saying, to a level where that weight is clearly much, much bigger than i am. I like that because it has the sense 'of God' about it, and that encourages me. It's also rooted in three other things that i can identify:
- One is that perhaps i'm feeling the grief of what i'm describing.
- Another thing is anxiety because i feel that what i'm saying is important, it's something i've been entrusted with, and i'm hoping to God that i don't botch it. Or rather, the anxiety comes because the words i'm using can't fully contain what it is that i'm trying to express.
- The other thing it's rooted in is my own vulnerability. Often, if i'm saying something which is outside my sense of where most people are in their thought (or would admit to being), but which i'm convinced about and have struggled with, i feel terribly exposed and at huge risk of expulsion (or something like it), and the difficulty of the journey i've been on to get to that point all comes out.
This Sunday past was one of those Sundays. As well as looking to give account of myself here, there was a further thought that struck me. As well as some people finding the whole thing irritating, there are those who find it endearing, and others for whom it's a mark of authenticity in what i'm saying - or at least in my experience of what i'm saying.
It came back to me that one person who was there had reported to a third party that "it was good. I wasn't paying attention until he got upset, and that drew me in". So here's the thought:
We have this huge tendency to separate 'head' and 'heart' / emotion and reason / thinking and feeling. We're aware of this, and our post-enlightenment, post-modern world seeks to address it, but do we do it enough? If there is 'Spirit', it is surely a full-bodied combination, and potent exacerbation, of both parts. Do we still pay too much regard to reason at the expense of emotion? Do we do this more in preaching than in other realms? Do we require reason to lead us to emotion, or do we just pretend we do? What's the appropriate balance for preachers; for them to have thoroughly thought something through, or for them having been deeply affected by it?
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4 comments:
The last time I tried to comment on a post I forgot the verification word so it never got posted. I have filled it in first so hopefully I won't have to re-write all of this again.
Before I try to answer your questions/post my own thoughts on it all, I will try to give some background to my experience.
Without wanting to sound arrogant I am called to be a preacher. It's what I love and at times dread doing. It's something people have told me and it is what I feel God has drawn me to do.
My dads a minister and I grew up seeing him prepare and deliver sermons every work. I got to preach my first sermon when I was 15 and for the last 8 years I have preached at least once a week. I say all this not to show off my credentials but to explain how I found myself where I am today and why I think some of the things I think.
My first observation of preaching is it is elitist. The institutional churches favour academic style courses to train there preachers (and you can't preach without doing one). These churn out intellectuals and academics but not always good preachers.
It leads me to ask is preaching an intellectual pursuit of the mind or something else? and if it is an intellectual pursuit surely its just teaching?
I believe the thing that separates preaching and teaching is what you are speaking to. I think when we want people to understand something we teach to their head and when we preach it is to their heart and it is more than words. It's a mixture of words/silence/vision/Spirit/ emotion and its about something different (struggling to find the words to describe this)
What I think I am trying to say is I would rather listen to a preacher who is genuine, who shows emotion, who is sharing there honest revelation of God than one who has passed the local preachers course and is accredited to spout sterile sermon illustrations at people.
To answer your questions,
I would rather here experience than reason, preaching in my experience is sterile and academic, that reason has to come somewhere either before or after the emotion, and that preaching needs some balance. I don't mind reasons, the finer points of the Hebrew language or the mindset of the Hellenistic or Jewish world views. I think they can help preaching, they can illuminate and open peoples eyes. But first and foremost I feel preaching should show the impact of God in the preachers life. This is what God and I have been struggling with, this is where I am/have got to, this is the challenge I/we face. If God is present in it all he will speak to the hearts of the people.
I hope this somewhat incoherent response makes some sense or at least furthers the conversation.
Well I sort of appreciate it when you cry - because I know it really is coming from the heart. I know how easy it can be for me when preaching to get "disconnected" from the subject.
I also think your emotional engagement as a sort of a prophetic thing too.
I guess it's about authenticity... for some people that might mean crying for others it definitely won't. If (as Steve Holmes has said on many occasions, notably recently at the NAM conference, check out http://bromleyboy.blogspot.com/2010/06/applying-lessons-learned-at-latest.html ) preaching is about inspiration rather than information, then the emotional aspect is obviously important.
I'm not a weepy preachy and it doesn't really connect for me, cos I'm a tuff kinda girl, but for others it does absolutely.
Be true to yourself, self-aware, aware of others and you'll probably get the balance something like right... oh, and in my experience that H Sp is quite good at making sense of my worstest sermons!
obviously ,it is a very good story
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