Tips on Preaching from a Priest in the Pew
By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker, ’82
Walter Russell Bowie (1882-1969) was an outstanding and prolific priest of the Episcopal Church. His parish ministry culminated in sixteen years at Grace Church, New York City. For eleven years, he served at Union Theological Seminary, first as professor of practical theology, then as dean of students. For five years before retirement, he taught homiletics at Virginia Theological Seminary.
Bowie also wrote many books. Several of his hymns remain popular. In 1935, he delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale Divinity School. And he contributed extensively to the twelve volumes of The Interpreter’s Bible (1951-1957).
Sometime during his New York years, Bowie taught a preaching elective at General Theological Seminary. Decades later, one of his students in this course recounted a story about him. Apparently, Dr. Bowie asked the student whether he knew what frozen food was, to which the student answered in the affirmative.
His professor continued, “Frozen food is full of nutritive value, but no one can eat it until it is cooked and seasoned. Some of the theology in your sermon is like frozen food. It is soundly orthodox but not prepared well enough for your hearers to benefit.” The student went on to use this criterion to assess his own preaching throughout his long ministry. Upon composing a sermon, he would ask himself, ”Frozen food?”
I have heard enough (and preached enough) sermons that may have qualified as frozen food that I have found myself accumulating tips for preachers (myself included) so that homiletical meals in our time have a greater chance to be nourishing and enjoyable. Like many sayings in the Book of Proverbs, these tips are meant to keep people from trouble, even ruin.
They are only tips, but consider applying to them an old saying about rubrics: If you must break a rubric, be able to articulate—if only to yourself--the reason for breaking it in this instance. Applying the same principle to preaching tips could keep a worthy meal from remaining frozen.
Work intensely on your sermon in all its details. You expect your church musician to rehearse. So should you.
Somewhere along the path of sermon preparation, there should be a full manuscript, even if it is not taken into the pulpit.
Give your sermons titles, even if only for your own reference.
Preach on the Psalms sometimes. It’s fun.
When preaching at the Eucharist, do not open the sermon with a spoken prayer. Transition seamlessly from the Gospel to the response to the Word.
Never begin a saint’s day sermon with “Not much is known about __________” even if it is true.
Do not tell stories about your children and other relatives without their permission. (Exceptions can be made for the deceased.)
Never refer to a Scripture text, a hymn, or a part of the liturgy as “familiar.” Avoid ostracizing people who have just now walked into a Christian church for the first time in their lives.
Avoid technical theological vocabulary. Instead, do the work of unpacking the reality behind the term.
Quotations in sermons should be brief, like this tip.
Use reference works in preparing a sermon, but keep the sermon itself from sounding like a reference work.
Avoid ending a sermon with a prayer unless it is one you wrote for the occasion. An open-ended conclusion provides listeners with a greater opportunity to live out the gospel.
Twelve tips are plenty for now, maybe too much. Here’s another story, one that can perhaps redeem this detailed advice. It comes from a sermon by George Everett Ross, an Episcopal priest and gifted preacher of the late twentieth century whose life and ministry are the starting point for Leonard Sweet’s 1995 study, Strong in the Broken Places.
Ross recalls attending a cocktail party in Cleveland where he was approached by a grim-faced woman who asked him, “What is the most important element in a sermon?” He gave what he later called a little pedantic answer of his own and then turned the question around, asking this perfect stranger what she thought was the most important element in a sermon. “Hope. Hope. Sermons should offer hope,” she said and wandered off.
Ross felt as though he was hearing this message for the first time. He was convinced that the hope this woman sought was the real thing, “nothing less than a conviction deep in the mind and an assurance steady in the heart that the outcome of our days will be God’s outcome.”
Sermons should offer hope.
The Rev. Charles Hoffacker (’82) is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland. Now enjoying an active retirement, he ministers in various ways, including as a writer, independent scholar, activist, and board member of the Frances Perkins Center.