Seven star preachers suggest the end is not in sight "
The Word became flesh," says John's Gospel of the incarnate Christ of Bethlehem. In Christmas sermons before some 75 million Americans this week, words about Christ will become flesh in the person of the preacher. Through their strange and marvelous craft, Christianity has been transmitted and reshaped for every age since Christ himself went "preaching the Gospel of the kingdom."
For many American churchgoers, though, a Sunday sermon is something merely to be endured. Many preachers and parishioners alike think that passionate and skillful preaching has grown rarer and rarer in individual congregations in the postwar years. The chilling of the Word is a major contributor to the evident malaise in many a large Protestant denomination these days.
For Roman Catholics, the sermon has not been as important, but rather a kind of spiritual hors d'oeuvre before the Eucharist. Otherwise, as Catholic Columnist Rick Casey explains, priests might become mere "performers" like Protestants, and "upstage the Eucharist." In Protestantism, however, the sermon is virtually raised to sacrament. Even if all believers are "priests," they still need expert guidance. Said Theologian Karl Earth, "Through the activity of preaching, God himself speaks." As a result, lackluster sermons strike at the heart of Protestant religion.
One man tempted to think that American preaching is a dying art is George Plagenz of the Cleveland Press, who writes an oft acerbic "review" of a local church service each week, complete with restaurant-type ratings. Instead of cuisine or ambience, he rates worship service, music, sermon and friendliness, granting up to three stars in each category. In nearly two years Plagenz, who listened to many pulpit greats a generation ago, has found only two preachers worth three stars.
Plagenz blames this in part on the backwash of the 1960s. "A lot of men went into the ministry for reasons other than preaching. They were interested in social action, so now we're stuck with them." It seemed only natural that in 1969 The Pulpit, venerable sister magazine of the Christian Century, renamed itself Christian Ministry.
Charles L. Allen, folksy pulpit patriarch of Houston's First United Methodist Church, thinks that seminarians' lack of interest in preaching was largely due to the emphasis on social impact encouraged by Martin Luther King Jr. The irony is that King, "one of the greatest pulpit men of all time," moved his countrymen as much with words as with deeds. "A lot of younger preachers at the time didn't see that," says Allen.
Many preachers devote far too little time to research, reading and writing in sermon preparation. As a result their poorly constructed, poorly thought out addresses wander from point to point, and listeners' minds wander too. Lack of effort is not necessarily a sign of sloth. Ministers increasingly are expected to bear heavy loads of counseling and administration that nibble away their time. One rule of thumb is to spend "an hour in the study for each minute in the pulpit." But many modern preachers say they are lucky to manage half that.