Football teams once had one coach. Sometimes the same person was the captain/coach.
But now sporting teams have multiple coaches. In rugby you have a head coach. Then you have a forwards coach, a backs coach, an attacking coach, a defensive coach, a scrum coach (not in Rugby League, of course, where, thankfully, the shoulder charge coaching position is now obsolete), a lineout coach, a kicking coach, a drop kicking coach, a punt kicking coach, a short kicking coach, a general play kicking coach…
Those of you who know that I am now way past hyperbole have probably punted me out of the park already, but you get the point I am making.
Ministry in general, and preaching or any other form of verbal communication in particular (even leading people in liturgy), requires the best we can give, always seeking to improve our gifts and skills.
There is never a place for laziness or lack of discipline. There is no excuse for not pursuing the highest levels of competence we can, by God’s grace and to His glory, in the public communication of God’s word and the leading of His people.
Wise counsellors have supervisors. Thoughtful pastors have mentors, and in some traditions they have spiritual directors. Teachable preachers seek training. In any kind of teaching ministry, most of us have undergone different kinds of skill development. Some of us have gone to speech therapists or some other form of communication tuition.
Thirty years ago I was privileged to have an able preacher offer to help me with my preaching. I was working in a remote part of Australia. From time to time I would send him a cassette tape (state of the art technology of the day) in the post with my sermon on Side A. He would return it to me with his evaluation and other newsy stuff from home on Side B.
How technology has made that task easier!
Twenty years ago I was privileged to have an eminent radio and TV presenter, who had reflected long and hard on the art of communication, come into my office every week for two months and give me private tutorials.
Those of you who marvel at my mediocrity should be mighty thankful for his help. Imagine the alternative!
I’ve done, and do, my fair share of sermon critiquing. Some of it has been at an informal level. At other times it has been a defined formal arrangement. I have always tried to establish principles of mutuality in the process. I have wanted, and still want, to keep learning and have my preaching come under the scrutiny of others.
One of the major criticisms of much preaching today is the lack of passion in the preacher - hence my earlier question. Do we need passion coaches? Do we need passion coaches for life and ministry in general and preaching in particular?
Arguments against passion coaches
1. There is too much passion around already. We are simply slipping and sliding and sloshing around in passion. Before about 1990 you couldn’t find a passionate person. You could find dedicated, disciplined, enthusiastic, committed, sacrificially self-effacing and focussed people. But nobody talked about passionate people. In fact, committed people sometimes scared us. So we came up with subtle criticisms like ‘tunnel visioned’, ‘too one-eyed’, ‘a bit of a zealot’ and ‘a tad intense’. People who seemed too driven were thought to be so by some undiagnosed psychological pathology (and in some cases they may have been). But in the last twenty years every second person you meet is introduced to you as a person of passion, a really passionate person and an awesomely passionate person. We’re drowning in passion!
2. Artificial or contrived passion is a put-off. I’ve seen a male speaker bend his knees to compensate for a barrenness of ideas. I’ve seen a female speaker flash a bit of thigh for extra attention. I’ve heard people praying as if God needs a hearing aid.
3. Passion coaches play with the peoples’ headspace. Look at the spin our prime minister is in. We never know which Julia will show up for the cameras. Will it be the real Julia or the robotic Julia? Who is the real Julia? Is she the robotic one or the ranting one? And poor old Tony seems to have been choreographed into a kind of cardboard cut-out. Focus groups and media coaches have created choreographic confusion and chaos.
4. If we produce heat without light, style without substance and smoke without spark, we will end up behaving like charlatans, showmen and narcissists.
Arguments for passion coaches
1. Despite all the passionate people who appeared overnight in the late eighties or early nineties there isn’t really much passion around.
2. Too much preaching and other forms of communicative leadership are passionless. What are we afraid of? The academic fraternity? Being called a charismatic? Getting people excited about the Gospel?
3. We need passion coaches who, by definition, can help us discern the difference between passion and histrionics.
4. If we had all the passionate people that the rhetoric seems to indicate we have then surely there would be significantly more gospelling throughout the world, not to mention significantly less starvation. Is this tsunami of passionate people passionate about the right stuff?
What we really need
Of course what we really need is to let the very integrity of the message infuse every part of our being. Then who we are and how we live will be consistent with the magnificence of the message itself. And surely then what we say and how we say it will be congruous with the grandeur of the Gospel we proclaim.
A wise, gentle and affirming old parishioner once came up to me after I had preached and said, “That was a fine sermon you preached tonight.” But before my head had a chance to swell, he sized up to me, looked me in the eye and almost chest poked me with his bony and bent old finger. With steel in his voice he continued at a very measured pace, “And that’s what it should be like every time you preach because you have the most singularly most important subject in the world to preach about.”
Has our problem with passion got more to do with our failure to appreciate the wonder of what we believe and communicate? Have we become like those of whom CS Lewis spoke when he said:
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
As Kent Hughes reflects on some preachers of the past (from pages 13-14 of John Crossway Books 1999):
There is a danger endemic to preaching, which is having your hands and heart cauterised by holy things. Phillip Brooks illustrated it by an analogy of a train conductor who comes to believe that he has been to the places he announces because of his long and loud heralding of them. And that is why Brooks insisted that preaching must be the bringing of truth through personality. Though we can never perfectly embody the truth we preach, we must be subject to it, long for it and make it as much a part of our ethos as possible.
As the Puritan William Ames said, “Next to the Scriptures, nothing makes a sermon more to pierce, than when it comes out of the inward affection of the heart, without any affectation.”
David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and sceptic, was once challenged as he was going to hear George Whitefield preach, “I thought you do not believe in the Gospel.” Hume replied, “I don’t, but he does.” When a preacher believes what he preaches there will be passion.
Photo credit: mdt1960
