Stark, F.
This practical-theological study in the field of homiletics deals with the development and present-day meaning of the sermon within the protestant church service. From a theological exploration of the meaning and the intention of the sermon as the Word of God, we have researched current preaching practice within the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. The research question of this study is as follows: Along which historical lines has the view of the sermon as the Word of God developed, how does this development relate to the expectations, opinions and experiences of present-day church ministers and churchgoers, and in what way can the characterization of the sermon as the Word of God play a constructive role in current theory and practice of protestant preaching?.
The research question can be divided into a variety of sub-questions. It is these sub-questions which provide the structure for this study:
1. What is the basis for regarding the sermon as the Word of God in protestant theology, along what lines has this characterization developed and what does it mean? (Chapters 1-9)
2. Which factors lead the listeners to understand the sermon as the Word of God and what methods can be used to study these factors in empirical material? (Chapters 10-13)
3. What opinions and expectations do present-day churchgoers and church ministers have with regard to the sermon as the Word of God and how do these relate to the actual content and reception of the sermon? (Chapters 14-19)
4. What points of departure does the evaluation of the research offer for developing a theory that contributes towards a modern-day interpretation of the sermon as the Word of God? (Chapter 20)
In Chapter 1, we give a concise account of current developments with regard to the sermon, identifying five tendencies. First, we observe that a growing focus on liturgy is undermining the central place and separate status of the sermon. Second we see changes in the traditional, strongly developed catechistic function of the sermon. It is no longer geared as much towards initiation into religious doctrine but towards a thematic discourse on a wide range of subjects and ethical issues. Third, we observe that the sermon is more strongly oriented towards ecumenical lectionaries, although its primary focus still appears to be on matters within the church. Fourth, we see increasing attention being devoted to the individual and a particularizing of the message of the sermon. Fifth, we suspect a growing ritualization with regard to the sermon, whereby a free and renewing proclamation is narrowed down to the transmission of a more or less predetermined explanation. The description of these current developments forms the setting within which this In Chapters 2 to 9, a literature survey investigates how the realization of the sermon as the Word of God came into being and how the protestant view of the sermon developed. The foundation for the realization that the God of Israel is a God who makes His will known through the spoken word can be found in the Jewish tradition, in which prophets, priests and later also documents, are able to interpret the voice of God. In the synagogue the sermon came into being as a contemporary interpretation of the Scriptures.
The Christian sermon is derived from the person of Jesus Christ, whose beneficent and salutary words and deeds were at one with his God. His community of followers have been given the assignment of bearing witness to this .good news. in the world. In the time after the apostles and evangelists, this direct testimony came to be based more and more on written sources. This gave rise to various interpretative traditions in which the Word of God was more or less directly identified with the written source of the sermon. At the time of Augustin, a sacramental view of the sermon developed: it was seen as the form in which God shares Himself with mankind. For the listeners, the sermon was primarily an initiation into the secrets of the faith.
In the Middle Ages, an increasing formalization of the sermon could be seen,with resort to fixed lectionaries and homilies. While there was virtually no place for the sermon within the official mass at that time, outside of the mass it was a completely different story. From 1100, under the influence of mendicant orders and travelling preachers, a tradition of confessional sermons and sermon services flourished across Western Europe, without the Eucharist and given in the people.s native tongue. These services can be regarded as precursors to the Word services of the Reformation.
Among leading Reformation figures such as Calvin, Luther and Zwingli, we find a strong but varied emphasis on the sermon as the unique way in which God imparts salvation through the working of His Word and the Holy Spirit. The sermon was seen to draw its authority directly from the authority of Holy Scripture and was the Word of God in action through the Holy Spirit. This working of the Holy Spirit was mainly linked to the application of the Word and with obedience to the Word of God.
In the age of the Enlightenment, more attention was devoted to those being addressed by the sermon. The character of the Reformational relationship between Word and Spirit changed. The focus was no longer on the external authority but on the internal authority of God.s Word. The sermon could therefore manifest itself as the Word of God to mankind, but this implied that man must therefore have the experience of being addressed by the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. Various movements devoted themselves to an appropriation of the sermon, tinged both with individualism and pietism, or to a view of the sermon as an important instrument of instruction.
In the 19th century, with Abraham Kuyper and the Neo-Calvinists, a counter movement rose up against modern theology. They valued the .service of the Word. highly. These circles brought forth homilist Hoekstra, whose Reformed homelitics was groundbreaking in its incorporation of the psychological element in the appropriation of the sermon.
The influence of Karl Barth.s theology on the Dutch theology of preaching was continued by Miskotte. In his wake a Dutch variant of dialectic theology came intobeing in which reverence for the Word of God corresponded directly with reverence for the sermon. A discussion about the nature of the liturgy and sermon in the relationship between Word and Spirit flared up between Noordmans and Van der Leeuw, with the former representing a pneumatological vision and the latter a sacramental vision.
The empirical revolution in society and theology during the 1960s led to a more relative view of the authority of the sermon and to a principled deliberation of the importance of the listener as subject of the sermon. In the present day, postmodern views of the sermon stand in diametric opposition to a revival of the classical rhetorically enhanced authoritative sermon.
Chapters 10, 11 and 12 contain the operationalization of the results of the literature survey with a view to the empirical research. The empirical study was conducted among 246 churchgoers at 19 different church services on Pentecost Sunday in 1998. Data was collected from these church services in the form of questionnaires completed by the churchgoers and the church ministers, and the complete script of the church service and sermon.
Using the developmental history of the sermon as a basis, we derived six key determinant factors in the communicative process with a view to understanding the sermon as the Word of God: the sermon itself, the listener, the (biblical) text, the church minister, the liturgical context, church and society, and the presumed working of the Holy Spirit. These factors were processed in a homiletic model. They determined the structure of the questionnaires for the survey among churchgoers and church ministers, and formed the basis for the analysis of the sermon.
Drawing on the historical development outlined above, we also observed that there are three ways in which the sermon can be given form as the Word of God: sacramentalization, modernization and reference.
- Sacramentalization means that the sermon is the realization of the Word of God. The sermon presents the reality of God.s spoken word and deeds; through it, people receive forgiveness and a new orientation in their lives. The interpretation of thesermon as God.s Word is based on the acknowledgement that the prime actor of the sermon is God Himself.
- Modernization means that the sermon reinterprets the Word of God in a new context. Modernization is mainly concerned with the content of a previously received source of the Word of God. The interpretation of the sermon as the Word of God lies in the acknowledgement that the revealed text reflects the Word of God.
- Reference means that the sermon refers to or proves itself to be the Word of God.
The sermon has a transforming power and shapes the human consciousness, whichis capable of the realization that God.s Word can be heard and experienced in the sermon. The sermon is not a direct manifestation of the Word of God, but an indirect interpretation by the listener who attaches the predicate Word of God to the sermon. These three lines of understanding with regard to the sermon have developed in a distinctive way within the protestant tradition. They distinguish themselves in relation to two different points of departure: Word and Spirit.
A sermon typology has been developed on these grounds, in which the line that follows from the Word is translated into a text-centred as opposed to an application-centred approach. Text-centred sermons are sermons whose meaning focuses primarily on the conceptual clarification of the text and the proclamation of the content or the testimony of the Bible story. Application-centred sermons are sermons whose meaning is primarily characterized from the perspective of application by the listeners. It is with this goal in mind that the conversation with the biblical text is initiated.
The second line of distinction with regard to typology is a theological-reflexive line and concerns the way in which God.s presence and action is presupposed in the act of the sermon. This distinction involves three modes: kerygma, didactics and paraclese. The end result is a sermon typology with six types.
Chapter 13 presents an overview of the results of the survey among 246 churchgoers in 19 different churches. A number of key findings emerged from the comparison between churchgoers and church ministers:
1. The level of satisfaction with the church service is high among churchgoers. The churchgoers attach a great deal of importance to the sermon and give it a more central role than the church ministers do. The church ministers are more apt to express reservations about the importance of the sermon more than the churchgoers are.
2. With regard to the aim of the sermon, the churchgoers attach greater value to an explicit relationship with their daily lives than the church ministers do. This is very much related to their tendency to attach central importance to the sermon, since it is in the sermon that they seek the link between the writtenword and everyday life. However, the church ministers are primarily geared towards exposition of the text and are less focused on the present-day reality in which the churchgoers find themselves. Their preparations for the sermon involve systematic reflection on the text but not on the listeners.
3. Church ministers presume that the churchgoers at the very least expect some moral instruction from the sermon, when in fact this is barely the case. The churchgoers. primary hope is for personal encouragement.
4. Churchgoers cite an .encounter with God. as their main reason for going to church. Churchgoers are looking for the atmosphere of transcendence, therange within which everyday life can be fulfilled by the divine, by the dimension of God Himself. They experience this in different ways: equally in ritual actions such as the blessing, community actions such as singing and in the sermon, where they are touched by a single word, example or specific application. For the church ministers, the motivation for the church service is primarily linked to the collective celebration and the manifestation as a church.
They mainly appear to experience the .encounter with God. in relation to their role as church minister, associating it with the moments at which mutual contact between the church minister and the churchgoers is in evidence. This can also occur at various moments in the liturgy, especially at points where the church ministers experience a sense of wonder when, because of or in spite of their own words and deeds, they feel they are being addressed or touched by God.
Chapters 14 to 19 contain an example-based analysis of each of the six sermon types and an evaluation of each type:
1. Text-centred kerygmatic sermon
The strength of this type of sermon is that the power of the words in the text itself can make their expressiveness felt in a new context. The minister does not preach.about. the words of the text but .with. them. This demands that the church minister be able to create the perfect analogy in terms of the situation in which Scripture can resonate. The difficulty with this type of sermon is that it does not lend itself to every type of text. Furthermore, it asks a great deal of the church minister, as regards a .faithful. approach to the text of Scripture as a source for modernizing the spoken Word of God in the human situation.
2. Text-centred didactic sermon
This type of sermon offers the listeners a clear message as to the intention of the sermon from the very beginning. The structure of the sermon is often easy to follow since the text forms the central thread for a sermon structured into a number of different points, a sermon centring on a specific problem or a narrative sermon which takes its own path while following the line set out by Scripture. This type of sermon is clearly geared towards appropriation and shapes it using the normative content of Scripture. A disadvantage is that the content draws so much attention to itself that appropriation can fade into the background and that it assumes .learning. to be synonymous with cognitive learning.
3. Text-centred paracletic sermon
In this type of sermon, the exposition of Scripture is the instrument by which the churchgoers are presented with a possible application of the sermon or the opportunity to discover it. From the outset the interpretation of the Scripture passage is sought in its possible significance to the listener.s reality. That makes this type ideal when formulating a sermon in which Scripture is used as a basis for exploring aspects of the lives of the listeners or community which are experienced as relevant at that moment. A danger with this type of sermon is that if a textcentredapproach becomes too dominant, the listeners may lose interest, especially if the start of the sermon suggests a paracletic approach. This type of sermon also demands that the church minister be able to home in on the existential and affective dimension of a passage, in addition to the cognitive, in order to connect with a possible application by the listeners.
4. Application-centred kerygmatic sermon
This type of sermon demonstrates the possibility of giving a kerygmatically charged sermon while operating from an application-oriented treatment of Scripture. This makes it possible to concentrate extensively on possible application by the listeners and bring it fully to bear through an expression of God.s present-day involvement with mankind. However, if the kerygmatic character of the sermon is expressed in relatively simple and concise terms, there is a danger of narrowing the scope of the Bible text or of simplifying the message of the sermon.
5. Application-centred didactic sermon
In this type of sermon, the explanation of Scripture is completely devoted to the listeners. learning process. The listeners themselves are initiated into the understanding of Scripture and the practice of a life of faith. In this sermon type, the understanding of Scripture is not regarded as an understanding in its own right, but as an understanding geared towards human experience. This type of sermon is characterized by a substantial involvement in daily life and practising one.s faith. An obvious side-effect of this type of sermon is that the listeners. subjectivity and their interest in the process of learning and understanding are treated fairly separately from the church tradition and possibly even from the expository traditions of Scripture.
6. Application-centred paracletic sermon
This type of sermon shows that it is possible to create room for paraclesis while taking an application-oriented approach to Scripture. The asset of this sermon type is that, in principle, it gives the listeners every opportunity to discover for themselves what the work of the Holy Spirit means to them in the present day. The focus of the listeners in this type is strongly aimed at giving practical meaning to faith in their daily lives. Examples in the sermon are therefore very useful and indeed indispensable. A danger of this type of sermon is the pitfall of moralism. In the paracletic mode of preaching, the message of the sermon is more related to the working of the Holy Spirit than to the deeds of God or Christ in relation to mankind. This can come across as rather vague, leaving the immanent and sometimes hidden working of the Spirit almost invisible and unspecifiable.
Chapter 20 contains the evaluation of the study, conclusions and points of departure for homiletic theory. Comparing the level of appreciation for the various sermons in relation to the types provides further insight into the individual character of the various sermon types as they relate to the churchgoers. Textcentred kerygmatic sermons can open up a liberating perspective in which the listeners truly feel that God is speaking to them at the deepest level of their existence. Paracletic kerygmatic sermons did not feature prominently in the study.
Most of the sermons in this study were didactic, a type that fits in well with the protestant tradition. Text-centred didactic sermons in particular are characterized by means of clear exposition of Scripture, which listeners value highly. Paracletic preaching appears to be best expressed on specific occasions or in combination with a didactic approach.
With regard to the current developments outlined in Chapter 1, we observe evidence in the research material of a conscious and careful attempt to embed the sermon in the liturgy of the church service as a whole. However, this does not have a negative effect on the separate importance of the sermon for churchgoers. In the Pentecost sermon in particular, there is evidence of a strong thematic tendency, especially when working with preparation groups. Despite the sometimes missionary interpretation of the theme of Pentecost, the orientation of the church service and sermon remains largely within the church. Accordingly, the scope of the sermon remains more limited than the pretension represented by the concept of preaching as the Word of God.
As a recommendation for further research and theory development, we advocate the importance of contemplation on the essence and work of the Holy Spirit with regard to the tension between text and appropriation. The realization that there are several types of sermon through which the Word of God can be heard may help church ministers to select the form that best suits a particular situation. In view of the lack of systematic attention we observed among church ministers regarding the homiletic situation of the listener and given the tensions involved in forging a connection between this and the text, we have formulated a sermon preparation model into which a theological-reflexive phase has been specifically incorporated.
Preaching which moves in this way within the protestant tradition retains its relevance and urgency because it is capable of representing the utterance of God in Word and Spirit, and of modernizing it in a direct relationship with the everyday reality of the listeners. That is what churchgoers expect: spiritual nourishment, manna for their spiritual journey: a sermon as the Word of God.
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