A New Media Homiletic?

Rev. Casey T. Sigmon, Ph.D.

Out of the chaos of war, revolutions, flower power, cults, civil rights movements, and decline in church attendance, our very own Fred Craddock joined the conversation started by homiletician David Randolph in 1969 about the need for a new hermeneutic/homiletic for preaching. This new homiletic, according to Craddock and Randolph, should be "designed to bring the word of God to expression in the concrete situation of the hearers" (Randolph 1969, 19) in place of the old homiletic that "spoke but did not listen" to the situation of the people (Craddock 2001, 26).

Practitioners of the "New Homiletic" introduced a proposal for sermon content that took seriously the world of the Bible and the world of human beings breathing and experiencing the sermon each Sunday in creative tension. As Craddock said, "Taking the congregation out of context is as much a violation of the Word of God as taking the scripture out of context" (Craddock 2001, 104).

The New Homiletic also invited new forms of preaching shaped by the medium of the Gospel story and the storytelling media of the day. [1] In the next wave of New Homiletics in the 1980s, Eugene Lowry and his "Loop" in The Homiletical Plot played with the movement of the 20-minute sitcom for the sermon form, plotting movement from itch to scratch in the experience of the listener, from oops and ugh about real situations in need of resolution to whee! and yeah! as the Gospel reshapes what seemed unsolvable. David Buttrick interacted with film studies in his Homiletic and encouraged preachers to plan a sermon not with points (three points and a poem!) but with a plot (moves and structures).

Now one might ask fifty years later what the new media are inviting preachers to consider when it comes to effectively communicating the Gospel. And what might Netflix and reels say to us about homiletical form? What should the content be?

Do we need a New Media Homiletic?

I am writing a book for preachers and congregants with Cascade Press to address this question. Stay tuned for more.

However, for now, here are some initial invitations I have for my Disciples colleagues who wish to explore a new media homiletic today:

1)     First, preach in such a way that you invite curation, play, and conversation. This could mean that you share snippets of the sermon on Sunday on Insta, Facebook, or TikTok. And it could mean that you flip the sermon and find ways to gather people around a theme/text for actual conversation instead of a 20-30 minute monologue. I’m with Craddock when he encourages the preacher to, “seriously” consider “whether it is best to continue to serve up a monologue in a dialogical world” (Craddock 2001, 15). Create hashtags and QR codes that invite congregants to play with the message and share their insight on social media during the week.

2)     Build sermons collaboratively on social media. Monday morning, pop onto a platform and share the unpolished starts of the sermon: this is what I’m thinking about looking toward Sunday, and here is the text…then ask on social media, what do you see/hear/question in this text?

3)     Don’t be a ChatBot preacher. The pulpit doesn’t need to be a theological Alexa or Siri. Think more towards offering formational space to encounter God through a sermon and less about reporting facts about the text that a 14-year-old can google and fact check in a second. So far, I’ve noticed that ChatBots aren’t great at telling stories, jokes, or expounding upon meaning of a text for a particular people in a particular situation.

Generations coming up in the church are being shaped daily by the fast-paced, visually engaging, remix and share, scroll culture of new media. Should that matter for preaching?

Everything Preaches and Teaches

Rev. Tanya Lopez

Preaching is a uniquely wonderful but challenging part of congregational leadership and ministry. While many of us do our best to prepare and deliver the kinds of sermons that touch hearts, uplift and encourage people, serve as a catalyst for change, and have people leaving their pews energized and ready to work, we know that not every sermon does that. My peaching professor in seminary began one of our class sessions with a powerful statement that I have engrained in my mind and heart. She said, “everything preaches and teaches.” This short but profound statement carries so much truth. Often, it’s not what we say, but what we do and how we show up that touches lives and delivers the good news in powerful ways. 

I admit that I tend to favor preaching from the New Testament. It’s not to say that I don’t love or connect to the Hebrew Bible texts, it’s just that there’s something about the New Testament that captures the messiness and realness of the beginnings of the early church. I especially love the tenacity of very different people coming together to form a new thing. This feels so relevant and needed especially today. I find joy in challenging myself in preaching familiar texts in new ways, I love emphasizing Jesus’ humanity, and I especially love highlighting the stories of women and other “minor” characters that have a lot to teach us. 

I recently started a sermon series using texts from the Hebrew Bible. I had worked hard to write the first sermon of this new series to serve several functions. I planned an introduction that served as a bridge to the previous passages we had been journeying with, I made sure to think of personal yet lighthearted anecdotes that could help make the passage relevant to our lives, and I even did my best to write a powerful conclusion that I hoped would encourage people to live out their faith beyond the walls of the church and especially in challenging moments of their lives. All that planning ended up going out the window. That morning I was running late to church. I had gotten a few calls and emails just the night before about changes in worship due to volunteers having unexpected emergencies, and I was trying to make last minute adjustments to adapt to those changes. I had also not had the best week. From having a few restless nights to changes in my family’s schedule due to the end of the school year and all that comes with that—it was a very draining week. 

I was not feeling my best. I was tired and emotionally drained. I was also feeling empty in terms of my capacity to channel the kind of energy that it takes to deliver a sermon. I preach bilingually every week and it takes a lot of time and work to write sermons that don’t feel repetitive for those that understand both English and Spanish and that also build and move the message forward while alternating between two languages. I was struggling to follow my own manuscript and ended up preaching a completely different sermon than what was planned. All that I had worked so hard on remained on my iPad unspoken. I shed tears as I preached which made my voice crack. This wasn’t the dynamic way I wanted to preach that day. 

But on that Sunday, I embodied what I was saying. I embodied a message that many need to hear and see. God can use you even when you feel overwhelmed and not at your best. 

Some days it’s hard to find the energy within yourself to deliver a message that will encourage others. These are the Sundays that I sometimes feel upset and disappointed at myself because I didn’t preach the message I had planned or wanted to share. But—these are also the Sundays when people give me the most positive feedback and thank yous. They share with me how connected they felt to what I was saying but also to how I showed up. 

Everything preaches and teaches, and sometimes we forget that the most powerful messages are not always the ones we write.