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    The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form
    The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form
    The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form

    By Eugene L. Lowry

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    About this ebook

    Now in reissue with a new foreword by Fred B. Craddock and afterword by the author, Eugene L. Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition follows in the same solid tradition of its predecessor. Upon its release, The Homiletical Plot quickly became a pivotal work on the art of preaching. Instead of comments on a biblical passage, Lowry suggested that the sermon follow a narrative form that moves from beginning to end, as with the plot of a story. This expanded edition continues to be an excellent teaching resource and learning tool for all preachers from introductory students to seasoned clergy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestminster John Knox Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2000
    ISBN9781611642117
    Author

    Eugene L. Lowry

    Eugene L. Lowry is William K. McElvaney Professor of Preaching Emeritus at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri.

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    4/5

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    • 3/5
      This book is a good tool for a beginning preacher or someone looking for a classic text in homiletics. Narrative preaching is a type of preaching style that quite a few current preachers utilize. This book is a classic in that genre and makes some compelling arguments for this style over some others. The author provides practical advice of what principles need to be in place. Good, not great, but useful.
    • 3/5
      Lowry was the first homiletics teacher I ever heard, sometime in high school, when I knew I wanted to go to seminary, and I knew I was interested in (at the time, others’) preaching. That was in perhaps 2000. Finally, now almost ten years out of seminary (Duke with Richard Lischer for preaching, for those who care) I’ve read what is supposedly a classic. It’s a very simple idea, an essay’s worth of content really. It would be a great essay, but at this length it overworks and oversells one approach to a sermon over against many other good approaches. Might it be that reading it now, I miss its groundbreaking newness back in 1980? At any rate, worth being familiar with, and an approach that is now affecting my own, but not a great book overall.

    Book preview

    The Homiletical Plot, Expanded Edition - Eugene L. Lowry

    Craddock

    Introduction

    There seems to be a wide disparity between good preaching as described formally and theoretically, and what happens on Sunday morning when we leave the pulpit with that certain interior knowledge that our sermon was a good one. Likely as not we know we violated the rules of preaching theory we were taught (or are now learning); yet it happened. The story got told.

    We wish we knew what it was precisely that made it happen. Not being able to identify what it is we do when we do well, we are left to happenstance. As Michael Polanyi, the philosopher, describes it: We know more than we can tell.¹ If we could just transform our intuitions into articulate form regarding what it is that happens in our best preaching, we could cause it to happen by design.

    Transforming our intuitions into articulate form is precisely the purpose of this book. In order to accomplish this task two things are necessary. First, we have to lay aside—at least temporarily—many of the cherished norms about sermon anatomy. For example, most books on preaching operate on the common assumption that sermonic organization evolves out of the logic of content. That is, one takes a theme or topic and cuts it up into equal parts (generally three), and then organizes the parts into some kind of logical order. As such the sermon looks like a paste-up even before it appears in the pulpit. We do this because that’s the way we were taught. Even prior to seminary we were taught this way in speech class. More crucially (and subconsciously) our language system teaches us to think this way. So we have been taught the science of sermon construction as though we are a strange breed of architectural engineers. This way of thinking and organizing is one of the cherished norms we need to lay aside or even engage in battle. But that’s not all!

    We need also to form a new image of the sermon—one that is congruent with our best preaching. Truth is, to continue our example, a sermon is not a doctrinal lecture. It is an event-in-time, a narrative art form more akin to a play or novel in shape than to a book. Hence we are not engineering scientists; we are narrative artists by professional function.

    Does it not seem strange to you that in our speech and homiletical training we seldom considered the connection between our work and that of the playwright, novelist, or television writer? This is most remarkable when you consider that our best preaching does in fact feel like a story. It is indeed The Story, and our task is to tell it, to form it, to fashion it—not to organize it.

    My hope is that whether you are a seminary student just learning the art of preaching and looking for something beyond mechanical rules, or are a seasoned practitioner, perhaps bored and burdened by the regular onslaught on Sunday morning sermon demands, you will find here a new vision of our common task.

    I propose that we begin by regarding the sermon as a homiletical plot, a narrative art form, a sacred story.

    Section One

    The Sermon

    as Narrative

    Reading a textbook on how to prepare sermons often is like looking up a word in a dictionary in order to find out how to spell it—you have to have the answer before you can probe the question! So it is that much homiletical advice tends to function in reverse—that is, it works reasonably well in evaluating a sermon already formed, but provides very little help en route! We are told, for example, that a good sermon is one that will command the active attention of every listener. Fine, but you can’t tell until it’s too late! The dean of homiletical theorists, H. Grady Davis, suggests that a good sermon idea is one which is generative¹—that is, one which has natural unfolding power. Most of us know exactly what he means—after we see one! But how do you get

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