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The CBS Sunday night program 60 Minutes has been on the air now for almost 30
years, the last 20 of those years consistently in the top ten of weekly ratings, an
amazing record! You've seen it. Three 18 minute stories every week, the hour cut
into a neat three parts. The success and longevity of 60 Minutes has been the
subject of a lot of communications media research, resulting in countless articles
and not a few books. Almost from its beginning, the program itself--or, rather, its
individual stories--struck a nerve of the time, a time that has even shifted, with 60
Minutes shifting along with it. The American people related, and related well, to
whatever the magic of the program is.

I don't have the answer to what that is, even though for a couple of semesters in
the 1980s, when I taught at Pepperdine University, I conducted a graduate seminar
on 60 Minutes. We taped it and watched it intently; we studied it ourselves. It was
then that I devised my theory that each 20 minute piece (as well as other aspects of
the program) represented a kind of contemporary sermon. Every week, it gave us
three new, very-forward-looking "sermons," if you please.

Ironically, the hour came (still does) at 7 o'clock on Sunday night, exactly the time
when we had evening church all the time I was growing up. The pieces invariably
had a viewpoint-they were based in news, but they were not reporting: they were
editorially-oriented segments. They "argued" something, however implicitly. You
knew where the program stood on an issue when each piece was over. Very
sermon-like.

I say all of this (something that I will say more about in other places) to talk for a
moment about one particular thing with regard to 60 Minutes and our sermons.

Throughout all of its history-still true-at least one in three stories on the program
is what can only be called a "people story." You surely have seen some of them. It
is a profile. Always about a well-known, though often quirky or
out-of-the-mainstream person. That individual was interviewed, along with
interviews with others, and footage from the person's life. It was the forerunner
(and still probably better) of the popular A&E nightly program Biography.

The profiles on 60 Minutes, if you followed them closely, were never just for
entertainment. Not the Hollywood stuff. The people were carefully picked and
explored. They were held up as worth knowing-and also as remarkably human,
really human. The message was clear: Let's both celebrate and learn something
from this person about living, about succeeding and failing, about being ourselves
and rising above whatever might try to hold us down.

There were no morals at the end. There didn't need to be. They were just
explorations, meditations even; and you marveled and grew, if ever so slightly, as
you came to know "this person." It will always be part of the great contribution of
60 Minutes to American life.

It was from that program, and those "profiles," those "people stories," that I
came to believe in the value of preachers doing similar "profiles." Profiles of the
real people, the common people, from the Bible. No morals at the end of the
stories are needed, even though sometimes one is compelled to piece one together.
But the hard drive of the weekly sermons, with their teaching, their theology, their
ethical imperatives, could use a judicious, and frequent, blend of "people
sermons."

The old, now-forgotten, homiletician Andrew Blackwood used to called these the
"biographical sermons." A good designation. Not heavy sermons. In fact, the
emphasis should be on getting to know somebody from the Bible, preferably
someone that the congregants (and maybe the preacher) has never heard of.

An example. There is a grand story-a short story-that arises from 2nd Samuel 17
and then chapter 19 of an old man-the text says he is 80-named Barzillai. When
King David hastily takes his men into the wilderness to confront his son Absalom
in battle, they took no provisions of any kind, probably under the mistaken view
that they wouldn't be there very long. But then, as time stretched out, they were
stuck. To their aid come three people who lived out there, one of whom was
Barzillai.

That's all it says until we come to chapter 19. The battle is over. In agony, David
prepares to return to Jerusalem, but before he goes, he finds Barzillai, and, to
repay what Barzillai did, David urges the old man to return with him and live out
his life in the palace. Barzillai says "no," he cannot, but then has a talk with his
King. It is a moving and very tender exchange. You should read the story. It is rich
for telling and exploring.

60 Minutes would have liked Barzallai. Turn Barzillai into a 60 Minutes profile-a
delightful people story from which we can all learn and grow. David's story gets
told all the time. It gets tiresome. 60 Minutes would have passed on David in favor
of the 80-year-old man who said no to the King. Pass on David. Reflect on Barzilli,
"interview" him, in a sense; and think about what it means for all of us to grow
old. Just enjoy the story, fill it in, think about it, share it with your people. Sure, live
like Barzillai at 80. It's a noble way to move into the senior years of life.

It's a 60 Minutes kind of story. It could be a 60 Minutes kind of sermon. And look
how successful 60 Minutes has been.

--Joseph M. Webb