Helping Them See What You Say

Charles R. Millhuff

Preaching by its very nature is a sleight of mind kind of thing. Unlike the illusionist who has an object to work with, all you have to work with are your words and their minds. Of course in today’s world you can be absolutely spectacular with overwhelming PowerPoint presentations, video clips and even live enactments splayed around your pulpit. Still, it is the spoken word that is the keel of this ship called the sermon you are floating out there every Lord’s Day. In the golden age of radio, a common term used to describe the place of this phenomenon was “The Theater of the Mind.” Though radio dramas have lost a lot of their appeal to talk or musical formatted radio, the phenomenon still takes place every Saturday on National Public Radio as Garrison Keillor takes us to Lake Woebegone in Minnesota “where all the men are handsome, and all the women are strong, and all the children are above average.” Sound effects and his skill and humor place one where ever he pleases.

And so it can be with the preached word. Preaching must not only play well in the intellect, it must play well in the mind. The mind is the screen on which you place thoughts that are born of your words. You can understand the concept of mercy but when it is described with passion in your personal experience with say, your yet trained Springer Spaniel hunting dog, it comes very much alive. Dr. James McGraw my homiletics professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary said repeatedly that illustrations were the windows of the sermon that shed light on the truth. I am afraid that too many sermons are being preached in the dark of good but dim scholarship minus the illumination of personal experience. Truth must have a face. Truth needs a living “here and now” presence.

Let me share a few ways, I have worked on this aspect of the craft of preaching.

1) Be on the outlook for illustrations at all times. They ARE everywhere. Invite your staff and church members to hunt as well for you. Sharpen your observation skills. Take in the world around you. Look at the faces in the crowd. See things from a different angle. Listen to your world. Five-sense: see, taste, hear, smell and feel everything. Try not to miss a thing.

2) Practice verbal description. As you drive, play live radio news reporting. “As we approach this intersection, a sleek Vette slides past us on the right breaking as if in butter, its pipes emitting a throaty rumble.” That’s how you get good at description that is real. You must PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE . . . OUT LOUD! Make the abstract concrete. Give them something to pound on.

3) Tell your illustrations until you are actually living them. They should in time produce real tears of joy, grief or even rage. (Yes you can learn to do it in spite of your personal reticence.) Life changing truth is intimate and this is the risk that is inherent to all effective communication.

4) Only say what you really believe. Conviction is the mother’s milk of verbal reality. Like the best hunting guides you will never see it until you do. Yes, they can see what you say.

Preaching that has this element is frankly unforgettable and isn’t that a good thing? Jesus must have believed in this approach, for though He referred to Holy Scripture constantly He was often setting up truth with or illustrating it in every day realities like the farmer’s field, the lost lamb, coin or boy. The grieving mother, the tough judge or watching for the thief leave pictures we all can identify with. He was a master storyteller and you with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and a breaking heart for your people can be one too. Yes they can see what you say, and indeed they must.