This is the un-official blog of the Queensland Theological College Preaching Class - but others are welcome to join in! We're exploring the mechanics of clear and effective Bible Teaching.
This is the un-official blog of the Queensland Theological College Preaching Class - but others are welcome to join in! We're exploring the mechanics of clear and effective Bible Teaching.
I use the test of purpose. Every element must justify its existence. Why is it there? (If that question can't be answered, it goes) Is that goal a worthy goal? Does it achieve that goal? Does achieving that goal contribute sufficiently to the overall goal of the talk? Could something else achieve that goal more effectively?
ReplyDeleteFor me, though, unless God has granted to me to grasp the rhetorical force of the passage, how it was meant to grip and move the original hearers, then the above questions don't help me.
Once I've taken the journey that the author/final redactor/God intended me to take, then I have my purpose in exposing the congregation to that text, in all its implications. Those questions become effective when applied to the task of ensuring my talk (logic-flow, phrasing, emotion-content, illustrations, etc) exposes the congregation to the driving force of God's Word with all the forces the passage contained.
I think that's why I instinctively felt I couldn't write what Phil wrote in that welcoming section. Currently all my talks are so exegetically driven (not tied to a verse-by-verse method or anything though) that to take someone on a journey entirely created by me feels like something I'd have to be older to have the cred to do. That's my instinctive reaction anyways, if not perhaps my considered opinion of how I should be.
But Pete - how? If we are not going to script, how are we going to control runaway content.
ReplyDeleteOh... you're talking about extemporaneous mode?
ReplyDeleteI've no idea. I can't do that yet. I have to preach from full-text, though I rely on it far less than I used to these days.
Still, wouldn't the same criterion apply? Boil the text down to the big idea (this must include the rhetorical function and purpose of the passage) work out the fundamental teaching points that must be made in order to have the congregation hit hard by the internal logic of the Word and its implications. By rhetorical function and purpose, I mean the journey that the writer is trying to take the reader on and the response that he seeks to use that to elicit.
Perhaps I'm still missing what you're getting at though.
Pete,
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right. A bunch of guys at college are pushing for 'de-scripting' ... My question fornthem is, how will we then control content?
I guess to that I'd ask whether they write a full-text at any point. I think if you want to really think about your text to the word level (or, as my good friend Mika says Obama does, at a syllable level) then you really have to have prepared full-text at least at some stage. Otherwise you've got to invent another control mechanism to enable you to do that.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that a disciplined person who's prepared VERY thoroughly could not use their pre-prepared script in the pulpit as long as they know it well enough and still control content well. I'm certainly not there yet, though.