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You may not be aware of it yet, but there is a remarkable new "movement" in
homiletical theory and practice. It is an area that is being called "performance
studies," spearheaded largely by two bright young homileticians, Dr. Richard Ward
of the Iliff School of Theology and Dr. Jana Childers of the San Francisco
Theological Seminary. Both have new books out on the subject.

Ward's latest book is Speaking of the Holy: Preaching as a Communicative Art, a
kind of companion to his earlier Speaking from the Heart: Preaching With Passion.
Childers' recent book on the subject is titled Performing the Word: Preaching as
Theatre. All three are well worth your ordering and reading.

One knows that a "movement" is underway when a new subdivision is created
within the Academy of Homiletics, the annual gathering of mainline seminary
homiletics profs and others who teach preaching. The Academy now has a
"performance studies" group. The movement is growing-as well it should.

What is behind this new work in "performance studies" is a long-overdue
reawakening of awareness that HOW one preaches in the pulpit is a very large part
of HOW WELL one preaches, period.

Preaching a sermon involves two very large and distinct dimensions: the
preparation of what one is going to say, and the very important public task of
getting it said. The simple fact is that for several decades now, seminary education
by and large has emphasized the first of the two tasks-when it has treated preaching
as important at all-while thoroughly and shamefully neglecting the second task.
Time was when speech teachers were a part of the seminary education process,
when the importance of public speaking to preaching was understood--but they
have been missing from most seminary life now for almost a half century.

There has, it should be said, been a renaissance of concern about the "content" of
the sermon since at least the early 1970s. Even now, it is continuing. We are even
very close to studying "how to prepare a sermon" to death. What we have not done,
however, is devote the same kind of hard scrutiny and educational sophistication to
the public art of delivering the sermon. As a result, preachers much, much too often
prepare credible, probing sermons only to have them die in the abortive act of
delivery from the pulpit. What a tragedy!

Those young scholars like Ward and Childers are attacking this crucial problem of
sermon delivery.

They are doing it, though, from a theatre model-as evidenced by their use of the
word "performance." One performs a sermon as one performs a play; and Childers
book, in particular, draws heavily from the theater motif in exploring the
connections between theater and pulpit.

She knows, however, as does Ward, that there is a very keen danger in that model;
and despite the best efforts by both of them to circumvent that danger, the task is
still a daunting one. Two of these dangers need to be stated so that we stay keenly
aware of them.

First, actors, male or female, are just that: actors. It is assumed that the public
knows that when someone "performs," he or she "takes on" a character or a
part-what the audience sees and hears is not who or what the actor really is. It is
precisely that element of the "theater" metaphor that does not translate well to the
pulpit. There, the congregation wants desperately to believe, even to KNOW, that
what one sees and hears in the pulpit REALLY IS who and what the preacher is.

Second, it is also assumed that when an actor performs on a stage, every word has
been memorized and internalized before it is spoken. One has "learned one's
lines." In fact, the whole "trick" of acting lies in learning to say memorized and
well-rehearsed lines as though they are being spoken "extemporaneously," or "for
the first time." Every inflection, every bit of normal timing, every correct emotional
flicker must be in exactly the right place with the lines as they are spoken.

What this means, in short, is that there are thousands upon thousands of us who
acted in our high school and even college plays-but in doing so we learned how
utterly difficult it is to "act" well. We were amateur actors, having a grand time, but
never quite having the gifts or mastering the complex arts involved in acting. We
learned our lines and spoke them, but we always knew that we were slightly
"wooden" at doing it. We acted, but never well enough to pass professional muster.

For many of us, too, we learned to recognize what truly professional acting is. That
is, when a Paul Newman, or a Gene Hackman, or a Glenn Close works a scene,
even though every word is memorized, we in the audience are never, ever, for a
moment aware that that is the case. It is a remarkable skill, both innate and learned,
as most first-rate professional skills are.

The bottom line is this: What the pulpit does not need, even amid the concern to
improve sermon delivery, is a lot of bad acting. In the wrong place, it is put-offish,
embarrassing, even comical. And the fact is that it is probably not possible for
preachers to be turned into "good" actors. We are preachers after all, and not
actors, good or bad.

So what might we do?

First, we should read the books by Ward and Childers and others that are
appearing. Many of the dangers are addressed there.

But I want to make a second recommendation, however. It is to think of preaching
as theater-but as improvisational theater. This is, after all, the predominantly
postmodern mode of public theatrical performance. It is "An Evening at the
Improv." Is every performance well worked out? Yes, of course it is. But-is
everything carefully scripted and memorized in advance? No, absolutely not. If it
were, it would not be improv. Is it fully audience interactive? Yes, most often it
is--which is what makes it such memorable fun. Can it be serious and still be
improv? Yes, it most definitely can. And it can even both both serious and fun at
the same time; the work of any professional improv actor more than demonstrates
that.

More importantly, anyone who likes to be in front of people, as most preachers do,
can learn to do good improv. The sermon as "improvisational theater." Now
THAT, in my judgment, is the recipe for an unforgettable sermon-particularly in
these times in which we live. Does it take work and a lot of practice? Yes, it does.
But one can get better and better at it over time.

Improv is not acting in the traditional sense; but the traditional kind of acting
probably will never work in the pulpit. That has to be said. But to bring the
ambiance and the skills of nontraditional theater-in the form of improv--into the
pulpit more than likely will bring preaching to a level of interest and joy that it has
not seen in a very long time.

Try it. In another place, we will discuss how one learns to do it well.

--Joseph M. Webb