Future of the Sermon Topic of CMU Church in Ministry Seminars

Is the sermon dead?

Dr. Tom Long

People might be wondering that today, considering all the new ways people get information and entertainment —the Internet, TV, video games, Ipods and a hundred other ways. In this world of fast-paced stimulations and distractions, is preaching the best way to communicate today? Or is it time to declare the death of the sermon?

“I don’t think so,” says Thomas Long, Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA, and keynote speaker at the January 14-15, 2008 Church in Ministry Seminars at CMU. “But I do think that preachers have to work more creatively to get a hearing. There was a time when people were attuned to getting their information from the human voice. Preachers could assume that congregations were at least ready to hear them if they did a good job of preaching. But that’s not true anymore.”

According to Long, “people today get their information more randomly and episodically. There’s no plot line to their world. People’s attention is so fragmented, and so attracted by a burst of energy there, a burst of energy here, that making any sense of the whole is a difficult task.”

Long says that preachers today need to recognize this new reality by changing the way they preach.

“It’s not possible today to preach a traditional sermon with a narrative plot that has sequential sections,” he says. “If somebody quits in an early section, the whole thing is lost.”

Dr. Dan Epp-Tiessen

Long’s current thinking is that he will “no longer start with sentence one and assume a continuity of listening through to the end of the sermon. I think of my sermons in terms of chunks. For each section, I want to be sure to give the congregation the information they need to listen to what I am saying and be able to use it.”

While at CMU, Long will be speaking on the topics, “Engaging the Biblical Text in Preaching,” “Engaging the Hearers in Preaching” and “Preaching in a Windstorm—Speaking the Gospel in Today’s Culture.”

In addition to Long, Dan Epp-Tiessen and other CMU faculty will be offering workshops and clinics on sermon-related topics at the Seminar, which is titled The Witness of Preaching.

“Sermons need to be lively, engaging, and not drag on” if they are to capture and hold the attention of the congregation today says Epp-Tiessen, who teaches homiletics—the art of preaching—at CMU.

Preachers also “need to use language and images that are vivid and lively and that gets people’s minds and imaginations going,” he adds.

Both Long and Epp-Tiessen think the sermon plays an important role today. “I believe that a carefully thought-through sermon has the potential to move people and help them hear God’s voice,” says Epp-Tiessen. Adds Long: “The community of faith . . . is sustained by hearing the voice of God speaking to it. A sermon is a word of God for these people on this day. The preacher stands with one foot in the congregation and the other in scripture and says: ‘This is what I hear God saying this to us in this moment.’”

Cost of the Church in Ministry Seminars is $125, before Dec. 15. Click here for more information or to register.

Posted November 3, 2007