Pulpit Therapy
Preaching
The Preacher's Edge
There is a quiet revolution going on right now in counseling therapy. The new technique is called "the narrative method," and it represents a radical paradigm shift in the therapeutic world. It can not only explain why narrative preaching gives us an edge but also can give us a number of new insights on sermon content, organization, and follow-through for our preaching.
In a recent "Lifestyle" article in Newsweek magazine, Goeffry Cowley and Karen Springen write, "... a small but growing number of psychotherapists are shedding ideas that have dominated their field for a century. The new approach is still far from orthodox, it's a fundamentally new direction in the therapeutic world named narrative therapy. At the heart of the new approach is the post-modernist idea that we don't so much perceive the world as interpret it."1
For narrative preachers the new counseling therapy is a description of why narrative preaching is so transforming for our congregational members and for the preachers themselves.
According to Michael White, an Australian therapist who seems to be the father of the movement, "No problem or diagnosis ever captures the whole of a person's experience. The person has other ways of acting and thinking, but they get neglected because they lie in the shadow of the dominant story."2
Four elements tend to dominate the narrative therapist's technique. First the therapist invites the client to personify the problem. Second the narrative therapist thinks of personal identity as a story that can be retold and redeemed.
The third element is unlike most approaches. Narrative therapy isn't a secretive transaction between the therapist and the client; the community is engaged in the renegotiation of identity.
The fourth element is called extending the conversation. Here the therapist writes a letter summing up the learnings of the therapy session and sends it to the counselee. These are called narrative letters. David Nyland writes: "Narrative letters enable me to have maximum impact in the least number of sessions."3
Help for Preachers
Preachers can learn a lot from these new insights into quality counseling. Over the years we have so fought "like the devil" against any personification of evil and sin that our congregants will be surprised when we identify those things that are eating away at our quality of life and discipleship and give them names and effective ways they pollute our existence. Sin, devil, evil, greed, culture, selfishness, addiction, guilt are all names for outward forces that attack us. The Scripture has a great deal to say about them and about how we can overcome them. Our sermons need to be filled with this empowerment to name those forces that are eating away at us and provide ways to overcome them. Bill O'Hanlon writes in the November/December issue of Networker, "... narrative therapists are able to acknowledge the power of labels while both avoiding the trap of reinforcing people's attachment to them and letting them escape responsibility for their behavior."4
The narrative therapist helps the client rework and retell his! her life story including the small victories and triumphs as well as the defeats. When we tell the biblical stories and stories of the saints, we can help the sermon listeners formulate their own stories as they hear the preachers and those recorded in history and the Bible. "This work is not about people discovering their 'true' nature, their 'real' voice," says White, "but about opening up possibilities for people to become other than who they are."5
We have that empowerment in the Christian faith to help people "become other than who they are" and have many stories in the Scripture of the presence of Christ actually helping it to happen.
Perhaps the newest and boldest idea in narrative therapy is the use of "extending the conversation." It has a great deal to say to us about sermon follow-up. The therapist writes a letter and summarizes the insights gained in the counseling session which is mailed to the client. "A client can hold a letter in hand, reading and rereading it days, months and years after the session."6
This throws a radical new light on how we interpret the letters of the Bible, Paul's epistles in particular, in our preaching. It is a different and new approach. Perhaps Paul wrote the follow-up letter after struggling with young Christians and provided for us nearly 2,000 years later something that we could read and gain insight from.
Certainly our sermon can be extended by offering such things as discussion groups about the sermon content, printed sermons available after the sermon is delivered, sermon summaries printed in the bulletin, feedback groups that help prepare and then evaluate the sermon, lay people who take part in discussion groups about what has been proclaimed.
Practical Applications
There are some very practical implications to this new idea of narrative method of therapy. It has certain implications for the content of what we preach. Let's be bolder again about naming not only sin in general, but the sins which are the results of the general sin. Let's talk from the pulpit about a seduction that goes on by the power which works against God. And instead of beating shame and guilt further into our sermon listeners, let's give them a way out by telling the gospel story and what Christ has done for us in particular in order that we can overcome the demonic seduction. The overarching emphasis ought to be on the power that God gives to get through.
Our sermon content certainly must include the many stories of the Bible and how these folks overcame their struggles. We ought also to be unafraid to tell our own story and the struggles, victories, and defeats we have experienced. Certainly the promise God gives that we have an Emmanuel (God With Us) needs to be told again and again as we formulate what it has been like to live with that Emmanuel equipment.
We ought to talk again about conversion. Narrative therapy simply identifies the fact that we do have considerable control over our lives and that we can change who we are and how we are. We
Christians can add: "with God's help." We do have a spirit that is available to us to bring about dramatic conversion and that ought to be named and invoked in the pulpit.
A Sample Sermon Outline
The following is a possible outline of a sermon plot and moves using the narrative method which is demonstrated in this new therapy:
1. Tell a story. It could be of one of the saints, the biblical heroes or heroines, a reformer, a religious hymn writer.
*Identify the external sins that attacked this person in his or her life story.
*Point out how he or she overcame these attacks.
*Read the Scripture and relate how we can use its advice and inspiration to empower ourselves to overcome as well.
2. Tell your own story as the preacher.
*Identify the external forces in your own life and how they influenced you.
*Point out how your faith took you through.
3. Now draw some insights:
*We all have external forces causing us pain.
*We all have a life story and may have forgotten the hopeful parts of it and the promises we have as Christians.
*We all have a communion of believers to help us through.
4. Ask the individual listeners to the sermon what their story might be.
*Ask them to identify what powers are trying to spoil their lives.
*Give some hope and encouragement because of the gospel's story of what Christ has done for us.
5. Tell your listeners that the body of believers (congregation) is part of our story.
*We can help each other bring Christ's presence to us.
*We can remind each other of the promises of Christ.
*We can affirm our strength to help us fight the outside powers.
Complete the narrative sermon by returning to the end of the story with which you began the sermon.
Empowering the Congregation
I believe this kind of preaching can empower the congregation to minister to each other and take seriously our theology of the ministry of all the baptized. Congregants are pointed to the sacraments, worship, rites, and the fellowship of believers as strengthening ways to help overcome those sins that attack us. The congregation can see itself as a support group for people who struggle with all the things that culture puts upon us during our lifetime.
There's also a therapy going on for the one who preaches the sermon! God has instituted preaching for the preacher's help as well as the congregation's. Formulating and telling our own story and the stories of Scripture certainly shape and redeem the preacher's story as well.
It's also possible for the preacher to externalize the congregation's problems and be reminded of its strength and its good times rather than just those times which are a struggle and problematic. This will help continue the ministry that is often hard work and can bring healing to the pastor as the people of God struggle to be faithful in their common ministries.
There's also a congregational therapy that must take place when we preach using the narrative method. The congregation hears the sermon and puts the preacher's faults outside the preacher onto a culture and world that is sin-filled and attacking from every side. It can also give a new view of the congregation and the task of the congregation to support a clergy who is preaching. The congregation hears a story they can identify with in the sermon and thus they redeem the congregation's history no matter how dismal it may have been from time to time. If this works well it can free the congregation of guilt for its poor track record and even convert a congregation from passivity to mission mindedness.
Berkeley, California, based therapists Jennifer Freeman and Dean Lobovits have written, "... a problem saturated dominant story tends to filter problem free experiences from a person's memories and perceptions, so that threads of hope, resourcefulness and capability are excluded from a person's description of self."7
We have a remedy for that in the preaching of the Gospel in narrative style. As Cowley and Springen described it in "Lifestyle," "Instead of looking for flaws in people's psyches, narrative therapy works at nurturing their forgotten strengths."8 You and I who are preachers have many forgotten strengths to proclaim.
1. Geoffrey Cowley & Karen Springen, "Rewriting Life Stories," "Lifestyle," Newsweek, (April 17, 1995), p. 70.
2. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
3. David Nyland & John Thomas, "The Economics of Narrative," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 39.
4. Bill O'Hanlon, "The Promise of Narrative," "The Third Wave," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 24.
5. Mary Sykes Wylie, "The Promise of Narrative," "Panning for Gold," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 44.
6. David Epston, "The Promise of Narrative," "Extending the Conversation," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 31.
7. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
8. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
Transition
As we move from the preacher to the sermon, consider Donald T. Campbell's list of potential sources of error on the part of the listener:
1. There is a good possibility that the average congregant will tend to shorten, simplify, and eliminate details from the message of the preacher. The longer the sermon, the greater the leakage.
2. The central section of the sermon is the least likely to be remembered.
3. A listening congregant is likely to omit detail and round off the remarks to obtain a general idea of what the preacher is saying.
4. People tend to interpret messages on the basis of their past experiences. If a preacher's past sermons have been uniformly ambiguous and uninspiring, new ones will be decoded in a similar manner.
5. Congregants are likely to modify a new sermon to sound like previous messages - "we have heard all this stuff before" - which may be far from the truth.
6. In general, the listener will qualify remarks or sermons so that they conform to the listener's prior expectations.
7. The listening congregant tends to alter messages so that they are in closer harmony with the listener's own viewpoints and attitudes.
8. It is quite natural for persons to listen to a sermon or a conversation in evaluative terms. However, many listeners judge messages merely as positive or negative, brilliant or stupid.
9. When listening to a sermon with a group, persons tend to distort the message to conform to others' interpretations. Being part of a group often causes filtered message reception, or "groupthink."1
Keep in mind these warnings as we now take up the construction of the sermon based on audience reaction.
1. Donald T. Campbell, "Systemic Error in the Part of Human Links in Communication Systems," cited in Myron R. Chartier, Preaching as Communication, Abingdon Preacher's Library, ed. William D. Thompson (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), pp. 52-53.
In a recent "Lifestyle" article in Newsweek magazine, Goeffry Cowley and Karen Springen write, "... a small but growing number of psychotherapists are shedding ideas that have dominated their field for a century. The new approach is still far from orthodox, it's a fundamentally new direction in the therapeutic world named narrative therapy. At the heart of the new approach is the post-modernist idea that we don't so much perceive the world as interpret it."1
For narrative preachers the new counseling therapy is a description of why narrative preaching is so transforming for our congregational members and for the preachers themselves.
According to Michael White, an Australian therapist who seems to be the father of the movement, "No problem or diagnosis ever captures the whole of a person's experience. The person has other ways of acting and thinking, but they get neglected because they lie in the shadow of the dominant story."2
Four elements tend to dominate the narrative therapist's technique. First the therapist invites the client to personify the problem. Second the narrative therapist thinks of personal identity as a story that can be retold and redeemed.
The third element is unlike most approaches. Narrative therapy isn't a secretive transaction between the therapist and the client; the community is engaged in the renegotiation of identity.
The fourth element is called extending the conversation. Here the therapist writes a letter summing up the learnings of the therapy session and sends it to the counselee. These are called narrative letters. David Nyland writes: "Narrative letters enable me to have maximum impact in the least number of sessions."3
Help for Preachers
Preachers can learn a lot from these new insights into quality counseling. Over the years we have so fought "like the devil" against any personification of evil and sin that our congregants will be surprised when we identify those things that are eating away at our quality of life and discipleship and give them names and effective ways they pollute our existence. Sin, devil, evil, greed, culture, selfishness, addiction, guilt are all names for outward forces that attack us. The Scripture has a great deal to say about them and about how we can overcome them. Our sermons need to be filled with this empowerment to name those forces that are eating away at us and provide ways to overcome them. Bill O'Hanlon writes in the November/December issue of Networker, "... narrative therapists are able to acknowledge the power of labels while both avoiding the trap of reinforcing people's attachment to them and letting them escape responsibility for their behavior."4
The narrative therapist helps the client rework and retell his! her life story including the small victories and triumphs as well as the defeats. When we tell the biblical stories and stories of the saints, we can help the sermon listeners formulate their own stories as they hear the preachers and those recorded in history and the Bible. "This work is not about people discovering their 'true' nature, their 'real' voice," says White, "but about opening up possibilities for people to become other than who they are."5
We have that empowerment in the Christian faith to help people "become other than who they are" and have many stories in the Scripture of the presence of Christ actually helping it to happen.
Perhaps the newest and boldest idea in narrative therapy is the use of "extending the conversation." It has a great deal to say to us about sermon follow-up. The therapist writes a letter and summarizes the insights gained in the counseling session which is mailed to the client. "A client can hold a letter in hand, reading and rereading it days, months and years after the session."6
This throws a radical new light on how we interpret the letters of the Bible, Paul's epistles in particular, in our preaching. It is a different and new approach. Perhaps Paul wrote the follow-up letter after struggling with young Christians and provided for us nearly 2,000 years later something that we could read and gain insight from.
Certainly our sermon can be extended by offering such things as discussion groups about the sermon content, printed sermons available after the sermon is delivered, sermon summaries printed in the bulletin, feedback groups that help prepare and then evaluate the sermon, lay people who take part in discussion groups about what has been proclaimed.
Practical Applications
There are some very practical implications to this new idea of narrative method of therapy. It has certain implications for the content of what we preach. Let's be bolder again about naming not only sin in general, but the sins which are the results of the general sin. Let's talk from the pulpit about a seduction that goes on by the power which works against God. And instead of beating shame and guilt further into our sermon listeners, let's give them a way out by telling the gospel story and what Christ has done for us in particular in order that we can overcome the demonic seduction. The overarching emphasis ought to be on the power that God gives to get through.
Our sermon content certainly must include the many stories of the Bible and how these folks overcame their struggles. We ought also to be unafraid to tell our own story and the struggles, victories, and defeats we have experienced. Certainly the promise God gives that we have an Emmanuel (God With Us) needs to be told again and again as we formulate what it has been like to live with that Emmanuel equipment.
We ought to talk again about conversion. Narrative therapy simply identifies the fact that we do have considerable control over our lives and that we can change who we are and how we are. We
Christians can add: "with God's help." We do have a spirit that is available to us to bring about dramatic conversion and that ought to be named and invoked in the pulpit.
A Sample Sermon Outline
The following is a possible outline of a sermon plot and moves using the narrative method which is demonstrated in this new therapy:
1. Tell a story. It could be of one of the saints, the biblical heroes or heroines, a reformer, a religious hymn writer.
*Identify the external sins that attacked this person in his or her life story.
*Point out how he or she overcame these attacks.
*Read the Scripture and relate how we can use its advice and inspiration to empower ourselves to overcome as well.
2. Tell your own story as the preacher.
*Identify the external forces in your own life and how they influenced you.
*Point out how your faith took you through.
3. Now draw some insights:
*We all have external forces causing us pain.
*We all have a life story and may have forgotten the hopeful parts of it and the promises we have as Christians.
*We all have a communion of believers to help us through.
4. Ask the individual listeners to the sermon what their story might be.
*Ask them to identify what powers are trying to spoil their lives.
*Give some hope and encouragement because of the gospel's story of what Christ has done for us.
5. Tell your listeners that the body of believers (congregation) is part of our story.
*We can help each other bring Christ's presence to us.
*We can remind each other of the promises of Christ.
*We can affirm our strength to help us fight the outside powers.
Complete the narrative sermon by returning to the end of the story with which you began the sermon.
Empowering the Congregation
I believe this kind of preaching can empower the congregation to minister to each other and take seriously our theology of the ministry of all the baptized. Congregants are pointed to the sacraments, worship, rites, and the fellowship of believers as strengthening ways to help overcome those sins that attack us. The congregation can see itself as a support group for people who struggle with all the things that culture puts upon us during our lifetime.
There's also a therapy going on for the one who preaches the sermon! God has instituted preaching for the preacher's help as well as the congregation's. Formulating and telling our own story and the stories of Scripture certainly shape and redeem the preacher's story as well.
It's also possible for the preacher to externalize the congregation's problems and be reminded of its strength and its good times rather than just those times which are a struggle and problematic. This will help continue the ministry that is often hard work and can bring healing to the pastor as the people of God struggle to be faithful in their common ministries.
There's also a congregational therapy that must take place when we preach using the narrative method. The congregation hears the sermon and puts the preacher's faults outside the preacher onto a culture and world that is sin-filled and attacking from every side. It can also give a new view of the congregation and the task of the congregation to support a clergy who is preaching. The congregation hears a story they can identify with in the sermon and thus they redeem the congregation's history no matter how dismal it may have been from time to time. If this works well it can free the congregation of guilt for its poor track record and even convert a congregation from passivity to mission mindedness.
Berkeley, California, based therapists Jennifer Freeman and Dean Lobovits have written, "... a problem saturated dominant story tends to filter problem free experiences from a person's memories and perceptions, so that threads of hope, resourcefulness and capability are excluded from a person's description of self."7
We have a remedy for that in the preaching of the Gospel in narrative style. As Cowley and Springen described it in "Lifestyle," "Instead of looking for flaws in people's psyches, narrative therapy works at nurturing their forgotten strengths."8 You and I who are preachers have many forgotten strengths to proclaim.
1. Geoffrey Cowley & Karen Springen, "Rewriting Life Stories," "Lifestyle," Newsweek, (April 17, 1995), p. 70.
2. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
3. David Nyland & John Thomas, "The Economics of Narrative," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 39.
4. Bill O'Hanlon, "The Promise of Narrative," "The Third Wave," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 24.
5. Mary Sykes Wylie, "The Promise of Narrative," "Panning for Gold," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 44.
6. David Epston, "The Promise of Narrative," "Extending the Conversation," Networker, (Nov/Dec, 1994), p. 31.
7. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
8. "Rewriting Life Stories," p. 70.
Transition
As we move from the preacher to the sermon, consider Donald T. Campbell's list of potential sources of error on the part of the listener:
1. There is a good possibility that the average congregant will tend to shorten, simplify, and eliminate details from the message of the preacher. The longer the sermon, the greater the leakage.
2. The central section of the sermon is the least likely to be remembered.
3. A listening congregant is likely to omit detail and round off the remarks to obtain a general idea of what the preacher is saying.
4. People tend to interpret messages on the basis of their past experiences. If a preacher's past sermons have been uniformly ambiguous and uninspiring, new ones will be decoded in a similar manner.
5. Congregants are likely to modify a new sermon to sound like previous messages - "we have heard all this stuff before" - which may be far from the truth.
6. In general, the listener will qualify remarks or sermons so that they conform to the listener's prior expectations.
7. The listening congregant tends to alter messages so that they are in closer harmony with the listener's own viewpoints and attitudes.
8. It is quite natural for persons to listen to a sermon or a conversation in evaluative terms. However, many listeners judge messages merely as positive or negative, brilliant or stupid.
9. When listening to a sermon with a group, persons tend to distort the message to conform to others' interpretations. Being part of a group often causes filtered message reception, or "groupthink."1
Keep in mind these warnings as we now take up the construction of the sermon based on audience reaction.
1. Donald T. Campbell, "Systemic Error in the Part of Human Links in Communication Systems," cited in Myron R. Chartier, Preaching as Communication, Abingdon Preacher's Library, ed. William D. Thompson (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), pp. 52-53.
