Creativity and Innovation in Preaching

By Tim Ward & Edward Dowland-Owen

This article, from Issue 1 (Winter 2014) asks the question: Do liberals and conservatives have polarised views on the place of creativity in preaching? We asked two preachers from different ends of the theological spectrum to give us their thoughts…

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Someone recently asked me a question about preaching. ‘It must be difficult to come up with a new sermon every Sunday,’ he said. ‘How do you do it?’ At the time we were running together, so my answer was probably gasped out fairly incoherently. What I tried to say to him was something like this: ‘At the very core of their task, preachers ought not be creators and innovators. In fact, that would be a bad thing to try to be. God has given us a truthful and reliable word in Scripture to preach, and the preacher’s job is to open up that word with as much faithfulness, clarity, engagement and power as possible.’ Sitting here at my desk, feeling a little more relaxed than I did at that moment on our run, I can spell that answer out a little more, in two ways, each with an important qualification:

●   as regards the content of the sermon, creativity and innovation ought not to be things that the preacher seeks – except in one particular area;

●   as regards the form of the sermon, creativity and innovation are fine – except, again, in one particular area.

Let’s think about each of these in turn.

THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON

A word closely linked to creativity and innovation is ‘imagination’. Now imagination is a God-given human faculty, and used in the right way is a wonderful thing. I happen to be coming to the end of reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time, and the power and subtlety of Tolkein’s imagination is a delight.

However, Scripture’s few explicit references to imagination are mostly negative. That is because the Bible- writers have in mind the human tendency to imagine what we would like God to have said, rather than what he has actually said. Through Ezekiel, the Lord pronounces woe to ‘those who prophesy out of their own imaginations’ (Ezekiel 13:2, 17). God describes Israel’s unfaithfulness to him as their ‘pursuing their own imaginations’ (Isaiah 65:2). As with every human faculty, the fallenness of the imagination can also be redeemed and sanctified, so that it contemplates

the wonders of what the Lord has done, although that will always exceed our powers of imagination since he ‘is able to do to immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20). Thus there is no real place for the exercise of human imagination in establishing the core message that the preacher is to preach. That message

is to be found in Scripture, faithfully and correctly handled. Crucial in this are the ‘handover’ passages in the New Testament, where we see the generation of apostles handing the baton over to the first generation of their successors.

Again and again what they say is not, ‘I wonder what innovative message you will come up with to preach?’ Instead what they say is, ‘pass on what you have heard from us. Stick with that.’ Here are a few examples:

●   And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others (2 Timothy 2:2)

●   Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)

●   But as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of (2 Timothy 3:14)

●   And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things (2 Peter 1:15).

There is a fundamental theological reason for the lack of innovation in the core content of preaching: God’s act of salvation and revelation in Christ is now complete. The next significant event in salvation history will be the return of Christ. Until then, no new event will occur to excuse us from obeying these apostolic instructions.

But there is a qualification, and it is in the area of applying these truths into people’s lives. Cultures change; new things develop. Discerning how a particular biblical truth speaks into each new generation, so that preachers preach into the present world and not one that faded away forty years ago, takes a good measure of wisely imaginative thinking.

THE FORM OF THE SERMON

By contrast with the sermon’s content, there is a good measure of scope for creativity and innovation when it comes to the form of the sermon – that is, precisely how I communicate what God has given me in Scripture to proclaim. What kind of introduction should I have? How much time should I spend getting people’s noses into the text itself, and how much time on application? How much illustration do I need, and what kind? What kind of ‘pulpit manner’ should I adopt?

These seem to be areas of freedom, because Scripture does not answer these questions directly. A creativity in communication that aims to serve the God-given core content is a thoroughly useful quality in the preacher.

However, as always with Christian freedom, it is a freedom to be exercised in service of others. My creativity is to be directed to the end of communicating this message as powerfully and engagingly as I can to this group of people, for their up-building in the Lord. Again, though, this general point comes, I think, with a qualification. I am persuaded by the venerable argument that the sermon as a proclamatory monologue to be received in faith is a trans-cultural form that we ought not to abandon.

This does not mean that having a question time after the sermon is wrong, or that breaking it into two sections is wrong. However, the nature of the gospel is that it is not the sharing of a thought, but is a declaration of a work achieved by God entirely on our behalf and entirely for us, and we are to hear and receive in faith (Romans 10:17). The sermon as a mode of communication is a divinely appointed means of grace. In its very form it expresses the truth that salvation is received by faith as righteousness is revealed to us.

Tim Ward

Tim Ward is the Associate Director of the Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Training Course. He was previously an Anglican vicar, and is the author of Words of Life: Scripture as the living and active word of God (IVP 2009).

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One of the definitions of preaching is ‘the art of delivering a sermon’. Preaching is fundamentally about communication. The art of communication is engaging those who are listening and hopefully evoking some kind of response within them. In order to capture the attention of the listener in a multimedia age the art of delivering and communication inevitably needs to change. Essentially, for communication to take place, the listener needs to be aware of the message that is intended to be communicated. To be creative is to use originality of thought, while to be innovative is to introduce something new and to make changes for the first time

If preaching can validly be described as an art, or indeed an art form, then there is great scope for communication in a variety of ways. Art is not a static thing restricted to one form but rather something which is varied and can take place using various media. I would argue that it is the same for preaching. If preaching is purely lecture-based and basically an opportunity to ‘text prove’ for half an hour, then it is likely not to engage the attention of the listeners. So the challenge is to develop tools in order to gain and maintain attention.

It is vital at the beginning of preaching a sermon to strike a connection; this is more easily done where there is creativity involved. It is at this point that an illustration is most appropriate. However it is also important for an illustration to be contextual: examples of this are news items that affect the local area, illustrating how faith, politics and the media interact. At this point it is good to be visual and to have a distinctive example. The use of YouTube clips

is a good example of how it is appropriate to be innovative and to give a distinctive feel to preaching. This is also an effctive way in which to ground the preaching in the life- experience of those who are listening. An example or illustration is useful to show that the timeless truth of scripture is also contextual, thereby rooting it firmly in the life experience of the listener. Surely this is the whole point of preaching: to convey a message and to see that message absorbed with its consequences lived out?

Within the Scriptures there are many examples of both creativity and innovation. Jesus often used stories and parables to illustrate a particular point or moral. The telling of stories is another example of how we are able to be both creative and innovative. An example from my own preaching experience occurred one December when I was doing some Christmas shopping. In a local shop I came across a crib for sale, labelled:

'Bargain Buy! Now £40, was £80! Only Jesus missing!’ Examples such as this provide a very rich opportunity for illustrations. Faith can only be lived out in the context in which we find ourselves and interpreted in the society in which we live. It cannot exist as if it is just in a vacuum, a thing in itself. Faith speaks to current affairs and current affairs speak to faith. These things should challenge us in our preaching. And sometimes points can only be made by unusual illustrations. However, when we try to be creative or innovative it is very important that the illustration does not take away from the central truth of the message.

Both creativity and illustration can, of course, be used to challenge the listener. They can provide an excellent opportunity to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, precisely because they take the listener out of the traditional passive comfort zone. The whole idea of preaching is to engage and to provoke a response, a challenge in the heart of the listener. Central to challenge is the need to be stimulated. Therefore, if creativity stimulates and challenges it is a good thing; if it begins to detract from the overall message of the sermon or begins to dominate then it is certainly not a good thing.

In conclusion I would have to state that the correct place for creativity and innovation in preaching is not only to capture the attention of the listener but also to further expound the gospel message, so that people can grow in faith and in knowledge and love of God. Of course there are some areas where there can be little scope for innovation: those areas concern the purpose of preaching and the valid content of what is preached. The whole point of preaching is to communicate a message, that message being fundamentally concerned with the things of God, conversion of life and the proclamation of the gospel message. While the medium of delivery can and should change over time, the nature of the message should not. The truth of the gospel and the nature of the love of God are unchanging; the challenge of preaching is one that must be embraced afresh in every age.

Edward Dowland-Owen

Edward Dowland-Owen is Team Vicar in the Rectoral Benefice of Cowbridge, a rural benefice in the Diocese of Llandaff He is also Diocesan Spirituality Offier. Previously he has served in urban, post industrial and suburban parishes.

*Bios correct at time of publication: Winter 2014