SermonStudio

Factors Affecting "The Willing Suspension Of Disbelief"

In the course of my Doctor of Ministry program, I experienced a method of preaching by retelling a biblical story attempted by a colleague, a method that did not work for me, at least in the example that he used to demonstrate it. In the example of his method, the preacher pretended that he was Lazarus, dead in the tomb, dreamily listening to Jesus' attempts outside the tomb to raise him. As a dead man, the preacher reflected on the human struggle against several kinds of "death" we experience in daily life: the struggle to survive in our dog-eat-dog world, the struggle to sustain relationships, and the struggle against disease, addiction, and despair. The preacher, as Lazarus, spoke about how difficult it is for us to hear Jesus offering to free us from these familiar human struggles. As Lazarus struggled to hear Jesus calling him, so we struggle to hear Jesus calling us. I knew all along that Jesus would finally get through to Lazarus. I knew all along that the message would be that "Jesus delivers us from sin and death." Predictably enough, at the end of the piece, Lazarus heard and obeyed Jesus and came out of the tomb. Sure enough, Jesus delivers us from sin and death! Certainly it's a true statement. Isn't the truth enough? Ironically, since the truth was so perfectly clear, all that remained for me to focus on during the sermon was how the preacher was pretending he was a dead guy in the first century who was thinking about all the problems people face in their daily lives in the twenty-first century who was also listening to Jesus try to get him to wake up. Instead of challenging me about the ways I'm not really alive but dead, I experienced the whole sermon as a clever rhetorical game. Yes, I came away with the moral of the story, a simple didactic statement: Jesus delivers us from sin and death. But for me, once again, the truth was not enough. I could not relate to a dead biblical character talking about the difficulties of life in the twenty-first century; I did not come to care about Lazarus. I simply saw through his story. I saw the preacher using the story as an illustration, an allegory. The story became transparent to his intentions.

Transparent Intent And Willing Suspension Of Disbelief

Perhaps this sermon about Lazarus illustrates one of David Buttrick's legitimate concerns about sermons that are stories. In his book, Homiletic, Buttrick observes that "few of us are skillful enough to tell a story in such a way that theological meaning forms."1 Stories in which theological meaning is formed are difficult to create. Over the last four years of trying to learn this craft, I have found myself constantly tempted to lose faith in the stories I've been telling and resort to inserting various old-fashioned didactic ways of telling the truth. In the sections that follow, you'll see examples of the many different ways that you, too, may be tempted to lose faith in the story.

When a story is well told, listeners/viewers "willingly suspend their disbelief" and begin believing that the world and the struggle of the story and its characters is the real world happening before their eyes, so much so that they come to love or hate or cry for or worry about its characters.2 Willing suspension of disbelief happened for me in parts of the movie Mulan. If there are any signs in the story that the preacher is trying to use any element of the story for hammering home any kind of agenda, the listener/viewer no longer remains in the story, but can see through the story; the preacher's intent becomes transparent in an annoying way. The listener/viewer then becomes focused on the preacher and his or her clever plan to use the story and its characters, or the listener/viewer becomes focused on the preacher's agenda and whether the listener/viewer agrees with it or not. The listeners/viewers no longer focus on or respond to the characters in the story. Because listeners/viewers no longer feel for the characters in the story, they can no longer feel the gospel for them, and the story's ability to reach the heart and soul is impaired. And this, after all, is the reason for preaching as storytelling in the first place. So Richard Jensen reminds us: "Sinners ... don't want information about help ... Sinners want help! They want to hear a word that sets them free; that forgives their sins; that gives them resurrection life ... But, too often, our preaching just talks about the announcements Christ made. We talk about Christ's announcements as if they are in the past rather than proclaiming them as realities of the present moment of preaching."3

Monkeying With The Story Boards: Transparent Intent And Plot

One of the most obvious problems with preaching by retelling or dramatizing biblical stories has to do with plot. Most often, one preaches on one of the lessons just read to the congregation. If one of those lessons contains the story the preacher is about to tell, how can the story be told again without being a predictable recapitulation of the story? All along the listeners/viewers know how the story ends. How can such a story keep the listeners/viewers' interest? Those who remember Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's lively discussions of films will recall how often one or both of them were dismayed when plots were predictable. When a plot is predictable, listeners/viewers are aware that they are pretty sure they know what the storyteller is going say next. When listeners/viewers experience this awareness, they can begin to feel detached from the story; they can begin to feel like they see through its plan; the storyteller's intent is then transparent. I experienced a particularly glaring example of this at the end of Disney's animated version of Tarzan. I remember feeling manipulated by the rapid alternation between two possible endings: Tarzan stays in Africa with his friends or Tarzan goes to England, gets married to Jane, and becomes an Episcopalian. I could just see the creators of the film monkeying with their storyboards in the Disney studios. Their intent was transparent: they were trying too hard to heighten suspense. It ruined the movie for me. My attention was focused on the intent of the storytellers. I no longer cared about the fate of the story's characters.

Because the heart of sermons which attempt to retell biblical stories is to generate an emotional connection to character and is not so much about creating an elaborate plot, concerns about manipulating plot are minimalized simply because there's not a lot of plot to plot.4 Pretty often, plot will usually need to be added to the retelling of a biblical story simply because pericopes are so small in scale, but also because they do not reveal much about characters in the story (as David Buttrick rightly pointed out). But the purpose of plot in sermons that retell or dramatize biblical stories is only to create character. Whatever plot must be made up must, of course, be guided by how the character is presented in the scriptures.

Some story forms or genres appear to me to be particularly unsuitable for sermons, because their predictability can break the spell a story can weave. "The Christian Story" can be told in a very predictable manner: the sick get healed; sinners repent and are forgiven; the cross is followed by a resurrection. Listeners/viewers can drearily figure out the ending of such plots long before the sermon is over. Such stories can appear to be contrived, fake, too good to be true. Certainly the movie Titanic had a problem with predictability (it perhaps even flaunted its predictability) and yet it was able to attract huge numbers to see it again and again. However, filmmakers can draw on many resources preachers generally cannot. It can be a challenge to make the Christian "myth" a true surprise.5

However, "the Christian Story" can also be unpredictable; it can have a surprise ending; it can be a parable or parabolic as John Dominic Crossan and Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley define it.6 Sometimes the good guys don't turn out to be who we think they should be; sometimes God or Jesus forgives and loves sinners we'd rather not see forgiven and loved. The Jesuses and Christs of the canonical New Testament use many genres to achieve what Crossan calls a "subversive" rhetorical effect to undermine the prevailing worldview to make way for the gospel. The beatitudes claim that the poor and meek are blessed (not the rich and famous); prophecies proclaim that the powerful will be cast down; parables lift up the acts of apostates as examples of God-pleasing behavior; narratives describe traitorous con men being changed into humble, grateful God-pleasers; teachings suggest those who insult others are no better than murderers; and so on. Such surprise endings are fine if a story is only a minute long or so, like Jesus' parables. But simply giving a story that's fifteen minutes long a surprise ending doesn't guarantee listeners/viewers will still be interested in the story at its end. Surprise endings can also feel contrived. Still, exploiting opportunities such "parabolic truth" offers might be a good way to design plots that keep listeners guessing all along.

Now Don't Make A Spectacle Of Yourself!
Transparent Intent And The Preacher As Performer

Another form of transparent intent has to do with the actual presentation of the story or drama. If the preacher as storyteller or actor calls attention to him or herself through his or her presentation, then the preacher has failed. I recall a classmate who vigorously, desperately presented his case that people ought to come to worship. The more vigorously and desperately he presented his case, the more I began to focus on him: the way his presentation was wearing out his voice, the way sweat was forming as little beads on his forehead, the way his shirt became soaked with sweat. This also happens when storytellers or actors "overact," thinking the point of the performance is to show off their skills rather than to be a character. These kinds of presentations become transparent in a way that the listeners/viewers see either a pathetic or impressive performance of a "Hollywood Wannabe" and do not hear the gospel. The point of preaching is to convey the gospel, not to be an outlet for a frustrated actor. In her book, Performing the Word, Jana Childers talks about "unselfish performers" who completely submit themselves to understanding the physiological aspects of oral performance and to understanding the text. This reverent dedication to performance is not about "strutting your stuff." For "unselfish performers," the "what" of performance completely eclipses the "who" of it.7 The "what" in the case of a preacher is the gospel. Preachers who retell or dramatize biblical stories must be brutally honest about the practice and must always prayerfully keep the point of preaching in this manner before them and before those who work with them.

In her book, Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre, Jana Childers also describes of the concept of "distance." For Childers, neither theater nor storytelling are occasions for "in your face" moralistic harangues. Such harangues are also invitations for listeners/viewers to suspend their disbelief and see through the story to the preacher.8

Transparent Intent And Dialogue

Discipline is also necessary when writing dialogue. Often one is tempted to use dialogue to "get the point across" so characters sound like they're preaching a sermon or delivering a theological lecture. Effective dialogue should seem real, should be composed of words and sentences real people use. Effective dialogue will not call attention to itself or its intent or the clever writing style of its composer. Henry Mitchell puts it perfectly: "The people hear the word as alien, and relate to the speaker in the same way."9 Mitchell makes another excellent point I had not considered: "This insight is evident in the way some people relate to youth. No matter how old the speaker is, the use of the latest youth lingo will procure her or him a bond with the teenagers."10 Still, the use of "the latest lingo" can be a precarious strategy. The "latest lingo" changes rapidly. Using last year's lingo is a signal that you know some lingo, but you aren't really keeping up with it, and that you're just using lingo to try to make a connection with youth. Kids will see through that. It's an interesting example of transparent intent. If you do use the latest lingo, it is as effective as Mitchell claims it is, but needs to be acquired from genuine and constant acquisition of it.

My Doctor of Ministry advisor Connie Kleingartner alerted me to the temptation to resort to theological discourse and jargon in a speech in one of my first project sermons. The following lines of dialogue in bold face are ones I have identified for editing. These lines of dialogue contain archaic, overly formal, polished or "melodramatic" language, overly complicated sentences, or rhyming words -- constructions not generally characteristic of conversational speech patterns.11


... now, for the first time Peter mourned. Though festooned in rich robes, King Peter was poor in spirit and he mourned and hungered for the just, balanced, righteous way things had been.

The archbishop gently said to Peter, "You were so caught up by what you thought you could be, you forgot who you were: a boy who had just lost his father. You tried to escape your grief and fears with ambitious building schemes that consumed you and your people and your land. You once said you were blessed because you built your kingdom. You are blessed instead, now that you mourn over it. For what but your mourning makes you merciful? What but your mourning makes you mindful of the plight of those down there? And what but your mourning makes you hunger for righteousness? And what but your mourning purifies your heart, washing all the bitter salt out of it in tears? What but your mourning, King Peter, makes you long for peace?"

"Peace," sighed King Peter gesturing to the angry advisors arguing at the Redwood Table, "and how shall I make peace? I'm an orphan. I have no father to teach me the way of peace that somehow he established in this land and that I have now destroyed."

"Blessed," said the archbishop with a smile, "are those who have resolved to make peace, for they will be called children of God. You have a father, Peter, a father in heaven, a father who mourned the loss of his own son, but whose own son now lives again, a father and son who now shall never die, a father whose kingdom is for the poor in spirit, is for those whose spirits are absolutely impoverished and can do nothing but beg."

"That is indeed, who I have become, a king of beggars." Peter turned again to look again upon the ravaged hillsides, the dead rock mountains like a prison wall, the grim, armed guards in the streets, the desperate faces of beggars, of exhausted men, and of well-dressed women selling their bodies for gold.

The archbishop continued, "Peter, come with me to the Church on the Hill. You've not been there for a very long time. It's like your father's inn of old. Tell your story there in prayer before the free and magical meal in which you become one with your father in heaven. It's the communion of the saints, the communion of the blessed; the communion of those who have no kingdom on earth, for the legacy of such kingdoms is at best ambiguous. Instead of striving for such kingdoms, the communion of saints has instead been given kingdom, an everlasting feast in heaven the foretaste of which, dear Peter, child of God, is in the meal in the Church on the Hill."


Although I still like the general point of the conversation, my advisor suggested that the complex, formal nature of the speeches might call attention to themselves and not to the gospel they are meant to convey.

Transparent Intent And Pastoral Trust

Finally, sometimes one listener/viewer will "willingly suspend their disbelief" while another will not, depending upon one's relationship with the preacher. A bond of trust must exist between listener/viewer and preacher for stories to work. If a preacher shows little pastoral interest in members of a congregation nor seems to have a stake in its overall fate, the pastor's storytelling abilities can quickly be perceived as trying to show-off. It's risky to tell the truth by making up ways to retell biblical stories; pastors who are respected for their work and dedication will more likely have more freedom for innovation.12

The sermon that follows is based on a story that the congregation will have just heard: the story of the rich man and Lazarus. For this sermon, I created a character who incarnates some theological concepts my congregation of primarily middle- to upper-middle-class people often find attractive: God blesses the obedient with success; the misery of poverty is God's just punishment for the depravity and laziness of the poor. The rich man takes this worldview beyond the framework of the biblical story to the biblical/creedal story of Jesus who descends into hell to make "a proclamation to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:18-20). The attractiveness of the rich man caused many in the preaching group to pity him and/or identify with him ... at least until they realized that to do so was to set themselves against Jesus.

* * *

The Rich Man And Lazarus
Go To The Other Side
A Sermon for Proper 21
(Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle C)
based on Amos 6:1-7 and Luke 16:19-31
preached at Grace Lutheran Church,
Green Bay, Wisconsin


The rich man wakes up. He's been having a nasty nightmare, one of those nightmares you consciously feel yourself trying to get out of, but nothing you see yourself doing in the nightmare ever works. It is one of those nightmares from which you awaken with the fear you felt in the midst of it still lingering in your mind.

The rich man rubs his eyes as if to wipe away the fearsome sights he'd seen in the nightmare. He's much consoled to look about his bright room that had a commanding view of the city and in which stood a massive bed of carved ivory. It's the Sabbath morning. Out of his strict adherence to the Law of Moses, his slaves rest on the Sabbath, but he'd been able to find many desperate people to work for money on the weekend to dress him in his fine Egyptian linens and purple robe and to wait on him as he feasted luxuriously so that he never had to lift a finger on the Sabbath, again, out of strict adherence to the Law of Moses.

The rich man is a Pharisee, a minority among those who worshiped the God of Israel in the time of Jesus. The Pharisees believed that God gave humankind rules for clean living, rules that included the Law of Moses, but also other rules based upon it. The rich man believed, as did most of his fellow Pharisees, that if you followed God's rules for clean living God blessed you; God blessed your every venture in life; God gave you sons and success in your vocation. And so it was. The rich man's father had had six sons and a successful business in which the rich man had shared and that the rich man had grown large enough so that his five brothers all lived quite comfortably.

People said to the rich man: "You must live right!"

After the rich man is dressed and has eaten, he leaves for the synagogue. At his gate, on this fine Sabbath morning, he finds only one beggar. The rich man did what he could for beggars. He had table scraps carried out to them. If they were able to walk, he sent them on errands and paid them for their efforts. But secretly, the rich man had thought of a way to discourage beggars from lounging around too long in front of his fine house. His gate faced south and bore the full blast of the desert sun. He refused to plant anything anywhere near the gate so that there was no shade in which beggars could idly lie; just gleaming, white hot stone, as hot as Hades. Eventually, the beggars who thought to try begging at his splendid house moved on unless they'd been thrown there and were unable to move, in which case ... well, you can imagine.

Beggars, the rich man thought, are beggars for a reason. To him their sicknesses, their disabilities, their drunkenness, their inability to manage to keep jobs -- these were all signs of laziness, signs of sinfulness, and their miserable fate, therefore, was God's punishment. It clearly said in the Law of Moses, the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28: "If you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees ... then ... curses shall come upon you and overtake you" (Deuteronomy 28:15). However, "if you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments ... the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).

As a Pharisee the rich man diligently, scrupulously obeyed the Law of Moses and more, and he believed God had blessed him with prosperity, and so he truly felt unassailably blessed and good.

The beggar baking at his gate on this fine Sabbath morning is a particularly repulsive one, one with oozing sores the dogs seemed to like to lick. This beggar had been lying there all week too weak to walk, or even to shoo away the dogs that ate most of the food scraps before he could get to them.

The rich man slams his staff into the sides of several of the dogs that morning to keep them away from the beggar long enough so the beggar could eat. The rich man thinks he's excused for doing that bit of work on the Sabbath, because he'd done it to help another human being in distress.

The beggar, whose name the rich man had heard was Lazarus, thanks the rich man for his merciful generosity and reaches out to touch the rich man's robe. The rich man snatches his robes away, because if he were to have been touched by one who was so repulsively unclean, he would not be allowed to enter the synagogue without incurring the extra cost of ritual cleansing.

At synagogue, a guest teacher has come who the rich man dislikes the moment he sees him. The guest teacher looks as unkempt and suspicious as a beggar. Though the guest teacher reads well, he reads only from the prophets whom the rich man had always suspected were just angry and jealous men who couldn't hack a real job, who did nothing but complain about the government and who only wanted hard-working folks to feel bad about living a comfortable life. The rich man had secretly wondered if the other prophets whose writings did not make it into the scriptures had not written more beautiful and cheerful things. The guest teacher starts reading Amos:

Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches ... who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.
-- Amos 6:1, 4-7


The guest teacher rolls up the scroll and begins urging the Pharisees to sell all their possessions and follow him, because it's impossible to serve God and wealth. A good deal of grumbling and snorting goes on as the guest teacher speaks, and no one gets up and follows him as he leaves the synagogue during the closing announcements about the changes to the harp improvisation schedule for the week.

Upon his return home, the rich man notices that his paid staff are shoveling up the remains of the beggar named Lazarus. The rich man points to the little puddles of bodily fluids left behind and commands that they, too, be cleaned away following all the regulations for the elimiantion of biohazards. As the rich man steps beneath his splendid arched gateway he promptly collapses.

After having plummeted down to the fiery pit of Hades the rich man rubs his eyes, looks down at his ruined linens and purple robe, and wonders if this might be a nightmare. The rich man lifts up his eyes and sees Father Abraham far away, with that filthy beggar Lazarus at his side. This is impossible! the rich man thinks to himself. This must be a mistake! That beggar was a sinner; he'd never been to synagogue! That beggar had never obeyed even half the laws of Moses I have! That beggar was a sinner and his misfortunes in life were God's punishments that are supposed to go on forever. Me ... out of strict adherence to the Law of Moses, I gave ten percent of my income faithfully my whole life long and now I'm burning in hell? It makes no sense!

The rich man begs for mercy to his Father Abraham. He begs his Father Abraham to send Lazarus back to witness to his five brothers so that they don't end up in Hades.

Father Abraham's responses are not comforting. Father Abra-ham says that the rich man's brothers already have Moses and the prophets. The rich man quickly interjects that Moses and the prophets won't do any good for his brothers, but that maybe some spectacular miracle would help. "Maybe," says the rich man, "if someone returns to them from the dead! Like, like me maybe...."

Abraham thinks not.

A few weeks later, the rich man sees a man approaching him through the flames, approaching with a great crowd of people behind him. As the man gets closer, the rich man notices that he barely has any clothes on at all and that he's been beaten and gashed and that he's bleeding and, from the looks of his ankles and wrists, it appears as if he'd been crucified by the Romans as a criminal of some sort. The rich man is quite sure that this is a gang of thugs about to come to beat him, when he recognizes the man as the guest teacher in the synagogue who had indeed, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and had descended into hell.

The guest teacher, beaten and bedraggled and wretched as he is, reaches out to touch the rich man, who draws back. The guest teacher speaks: "You are forgiven."

"Forgiven?" shouts the rich man. "I am forgiven? Forgiven for what? And who are you to forgive sins? You're nothing but a common criminal! Who forgives sins but God alone? And in my book right now, God is the one who needs forgiveness, not me, because I have followed God's law to a tee to earn my everlasting reward and then I get this?"

The guest speaker replied, "Isn't it silly to imagine you could somehow have done enough to earn the unimaginably miraculous gift of everlasting life? The law is good, but not that good. The law is good, but it obviously hasn't made you good. Have you really loved your neighbor Lazarus as much as you loved yourself? Weren't you eager to separate yourself from him and those like him and their depressing diseases and hunger? You wanted only to be cheerful and secure. Didn't you refuse to plant trees before your gate so that those like Lazarus would be discouraged from begging there?"

"How do you know what I think?" objects the rich man.

"Say it isn't so," the guest teacher replies.

The rich man is silent.

The teacher gently persists, "Is such a trick truly the sign of a good man?"

The rich man is silent.

"You tried to isolate yourself from the plight of the poor; it was as if you tried put an ocean around yourself; and though your actions were always quite legal, were they and your thoughts really profoundly moral?"

"No," the rich man finally, begrudgingly admits.

"Then," Jesus says, again reaching out his filthy hand with its oozing, gaping sore, "that you may know that it is by the grace of God that you are saved, accept the forgiveness and welcome I have lived and died to proclaim: accept my forgiveness for your eagerness to be rid of all thoughts of the poor among you; accept my forgiveness for your eagerness to always feel you were right and good on your own terms and not on the terms of Moses and the prophets."

The rich man looked at Jesus for a long, long time.

One wonders how you will respond.


Chapter Notes

1. David Buttrick, Homiletic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p. 334.

2. The phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria." In the midst of this piece of literary criticism, Coleridge describes how he and William Wordsworth came up with their two divergent approaches toward writing poetry. Where Wordsworth wanted to write poems that gave "charm of novelty to things of every day," Coleridge wanted to write poems in which "the incidents and agents were ... in part at least, supernatural." Coleridge did not limit the meaning of "supernatural" only to "incidents and agents" that were "divine," but also included "incidents and agents" that were not found in the "real world." The challenge of composing works using supernatural incidents and agents was to attempt to "transfer from our inward nature a human interest and semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." For Coleridge, transferring "human interest" from "our inward nature" to these kinds of fictional incidents and agents caused readers to "suspend their disbelief" that such incidents and agents were merely fictional. Without "poetic faith," presumably such fictional incidents and agents were in danger of being dismissed and of having no significant message to impart. Just so, the poetic license demanded by preaching by retelling or dramatizing biblical stories, demands a similar transfer of "human interest" from "our inward nature" to keep listeners/viewers from dismissing such stories as if they had no significant message to impart. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Biographia Literaria," comp. and eds James Harry Smith and Edd Winfield Parks, The Great Critics, 3d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1967), pp. 526-527.

3. Richard Jensen, Thinking In Story (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 71-72, 76.

4. Another significant form of preaching less oriented toward developing a conventional plot is modeled on the forms of storytelling in the Old Testament. According to Jensen in Thinking In Story, storytelling in the Old Testament, true to its oral roots, is more episodic, less focused on achieving a chronologically oriented plot. Jensen uses Garrison Keillor's storytelling as a modern example of episodic storytelling, of "stitching stories together." The structure of such a sermon depends upon the idea of a "living center," a different perspective of which each of the stories stitched together reveals. Jensen refers readers to Eugene Lowry's book, How to Preach a Parable: Designs for Narrative Sermons. In this book Lowry describes several patterns by which to stitch biblical stories together with stories from real life in a sequence

based on conventional story plots. Jensen, Thinking In Story, pp. 23-24; 121-138.

5. I'm using the word myth as it is used in Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998), pp. 12-16.

6. Anderson and Foley, pp. 12-16; John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval (Niles, Illinois: Argus Communications, 1975), p. 59.

7. Jana Childers, Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 96. See also Jensen, Thinking, and Henry Mitchell, Celebration and Experience in Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), p. 44.

8. Childers, pp. 37-39. See also Richard Jensen, Telling the Story (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 138-144; Jensen, Thinking, p. 115.

9. Mitchell, p. 80.

10. Mitchell, p. 81.

11. Jensen, Thinking, pp. 20-21; Thomas Troeger, Ten Strategies for Preaching in a MultiMedia Culture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 18.

12. Lucy Lind Hogan and Robert Reid, Connecting with the Congregation: Rhetoric and the Art of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), pp. 47-67; Katie Day, Difficult Conversations (Baltimore: The Alban Institute, 2001), pp. 29-41.