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This Month: "Preaching that Reframes"
By Wayne Brouwer, Harderwyk Ministries, Holland, Michigan
Standing at an exit door after preaching is an unusual experience. The longer I serve as a pastor, the more I dislike it. People seem to need to connect immediately with my "performance" in the pulpit. However, in my mind at least, that is not why the church gathers for worship.
The most common expression in one of my congregations was "I sure enjoyed you today!" While that may be flattering on a human level, it makes me queasy. Although I want to connect with people in a meaningful way as I bring the message, their "enjoyment" is hardly what I have in mind.
Other comments seem more appropriate. One woman said to me, "Thanks for the feast!" Later, thinking she might have mystified me, she explained that her mother had always described going to worship services as eating the Bread of Life. In light of that, this woman’s best compliment to a guest minister was the one she had offered.
More than once I’ve been told, "That was a great sermon for _______. I’ll have to get the tape and send it to her!" While I’m glad that someone might be benefited by the message I prepared, I wonder about its significance for the one who heard it first. Just as difficult are whispers of "Boy! You must have studied long and hard for that one," or "I really liked the story about . . ."
Probably the response I found most helpful, in all these years of preaching, came from a man who said, with an appreciative expression on his face, "I never thought of it that way before." While I know I can’t say something "new" every week, I do think that preaching serves people well when they view life, or at least some of its important aspects, in a different way after listening to a message.
When preaching is able to reframe life or expand the horizons of a worldview I think it has served very well. The Bible itself is essentially a new frame cast around life so that the picture of reality sparkles again with the Creator’s intent.
This kind of preaching tends to be inductive, at least for me. I usually begin by latching onto a common way of looking at life or aspects of it, and then pull people along until that particular perspective no longer makes complete sense. In the moment of uncertainty I try to open the window on the horizons of God’s view of things.
Sometimes my preaching may help people get through another week. Sometimes it may serve to bring conversion. Sometimes it is just practical enough to get a slight change in somebody’s behavior. But now and again there might even be an "Aha!" moment when the fabric of life is stretched back out to its proper shape, and the cataracts of evil are removed from the eyes of the soul.