There is a discipline to preaching every Sunday morning. Like many things in life, the more you do it, the better you get. I also maintain another weekly ritual where the same principle applies -- Saturday morning tennis. The two activities are not that all that different, from a mental perspective, sharing more similarities than "practice makes perfect." In fact, I have learned a lot about preaching by thinking about my strengths and weaknesses on the tennis court.
When I lived in Manila, I hired a retired tennis pro to work out with me once a week. At 6:00am every Saturday morning my coach would warm me up with drills for 30 minutes before he and I played a set or two. On the rare occasions when he couldn't make it, and I would just play a match against a friend, it felt like something was missing. Preaching is the same way, in that the sermon is just one part of a worship service, one that happens within a liturgy of other important moments -- both before and after the proclamation of the Word. The sermon doesn't have to "say" everything -- there are hymns, prayers, readings, testimonies, and songs that can lead people into God's presence. That's why it doesn't feel right when I have to preach in class as an assignment; I just stand up, read the scripture, pray, and go to it. It is like playing a set of tennis without warming up first.
My tennis coach did more demonstrating than explaining. The tenor of his teaching style was "more with less." I can still remember my first lesson with him. I was all over the place, taking way too many steps on my approach, utilizing some kind of crazy-looking back-swing. Not even 5 minutes into the lesson he stopped and used his let-me-show-you-how method, mimicking my flailing arms and legs so I could see how I was working twice as hard as necessary. According to his demonstrations, a good tennis player knows where the ball is going, gets there efficiently, and gets ready for the opponent's return shot -- all with as few steps as possible. My preaching has gone through a similar metamorphosis. Maybe it was because I was so eager, or maybe I had been building up to this call all these years, but my first sermons had enough points for an additional 1 or 2 sermons. My congregations were gracious, but I was wearing them out. Remembering my tennis lessons helped me see that I was preaching with a lot of unfocused energy, adding too much material to each message. Lately I've been getting better at figuring out just what I need to say, saying it well, and stopping.
At first I didn't get my coach's "show me" style of teaching. It wasn't until I read
The Inner Game of Tennis that I began to appreciate his quietness, in which Tim Gallwey used principles from Buddhism to enhance his concentration on the court. His main discovery was that the chattering in his head prevented him from hitting the ball well. These voices of self-evaluation ("That was a weak shot"... "No wonder that went in the net. Look at the grip you were using.") distracted him from what he really needed to be addressing -- namely, the ball. Anne Lamott is an author who used to play tennis on the junior circuit.
She says that writers also suffer from these chattering, secondary voices that distract from actually getting down to the task of writing. There are just too many details in tennis -- as in writing or preaching -- to hold in one's conscious mind, and she says that trying to process all of them simultaneously is paralyzing. So clearing one's head of the noise is crucial to stop this crazy-making second-guessing. Gallwey wants his readers to keep their eyes on the ball, concentrating only on that, thereby preventing the tennis player from over-thinking other details. I am similarly learning to focus on where I'm going to land my sermon. They say Rafael Nadal thinks
3 or 4 shots ahead when he's playing a match. He knows where he wants the point to go, usually setting things up so that he can finish off with his massive forehand. If I know where my sermon is going, I stay on track and don't let a lot of extra words -- either the ones that I'm saying, or the ones in my head -- get me distracted from the message.
There are one hundred other things to consider while preaching: Am I going too fast? Where are my hands? Did I just mispronounce Melchizedek? (Yep, I just did.) Richard Lischer wrote in
The End of Words that preaching is not really about our words; it is about the ultimate purpose of God's salvation history: the reconciliation of all things through and in Christ (
2 Corinthians 5:19,
Colossians 1:20-22). Lischer applies the same "more with less" principle to preaching, emphasizing a moment that he calls the "focal instance." This is in contrast to the traditional sermon illustration that sometimes we remember more than the sermon's main point. Lischer warns that preachers can work up their own stories so that they stand out more than the gospel itself. A focal instance still describes important points, but it weeds out unnecessary details that distract from the central focus.
I have learned to make errors boldly. It is more fun to aim for the lines than to take an easy shot down the middle. Similarly, I've learned to be bolder in my preaching, no longer cautiously trying to make easy points safely in the center of the court. Congregations want a preacher to be confident, and they will return that confidence when they sense it.
Finally, you cannot prepare for all aspects of a given match. As a tennis player, you have to react to specific circumstances -- your opponent's service, the weather, your sore shoulder, etc. In preaching you can only prepare so much, because the word for that day also has to respond to the moment. I'm learning to prepare my sermons so that my peak interest and energy arrives on Sunday morning. If I prepare too much too early, then I just end up reading a message that doesn't hit where people are. Being "ready to go" on Sunday means that I'm still wrestling with the text myself as I stand up to preach it.
