In what ways might the event of preaching need to be re-envisaged and refreshed in the contemporary church, and why?

In keeping with the innovative tenor of this question, the definitive version of this essay is the online one. Its tone and structure are consciously different from that of a conventional, old-style essay. In my search for a sermon-style for the Facebook-age, I have written this material straight on to the web, sought input online, and edited as I have gone along.

The question above principally seeks ideas ("ways"), so my approach is mainly forward-looking and necessarily conjectural. The question's final "why?" could be asking why change is necessary or it could seek justification for the essay's ideas. I begin by looking at why change is needed. Then I suggest:

• • a distillation of the accumulated wisdom on good preaching, and an empirical testing of those principles

  • setting by preachers of objectives for their sermons (not just identification of what they want to say)

  • measurement of how sermons achieve their goals

  • bold espousal of new media as a homiletical tool

  • application to sermons of secular research on how communication works

  • a plain-language definition of what Christianity is offering when the gospel is preached

  • help for congregations in understanding the preaching-event

  • a new model for the church as part of objective-setting for sermons

  • global petitioning of almighty God for a new preaching-mission for the church.

The need for change

Pope John Paul II described the liturgical proclamation of God's word as "a dialogue between God and his people". However, the present pope writes: "... the faithful ... and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them!"

This country's mainline churches are not booming and bad preaching could be to blame. British Religion in Numbers quotes a British Social Attitudes survey which suggested that frequent church-attendance among Catholics fell from 71% in 1964 to under 42% in 1997. Another survey also quoted suggested a decline between 1983 and 2012. Brieley's data on whychurch.org.uk suggests a decline in UK-wide church attendance from some 11% in 1980 to some six percent this year. Even if poor-quality preaching is not the main cause of such decline, it could have contributed to it. What helps can the student-preacher draw on? The question above does not seek a review of the literature on this subject, but I must look at it briefly.

Published advice on preaching

Tony Merida quotes Stott's Between Two Worlds saying: "The essential secret is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions." Merida adds: "That’s why I’ll keep the emphasis here, and not on elements like alliteration, the number of points one has, hand motions, clothing, or platform furniture. No one was ever saved by such things, and no one ever remained faithful to the task by focusing on them either." He thus blows out of the water almost all practical theory on preaching. By contrast, there are many authors who will go into detail about structure, delivery-style and even word-choice, implicitly suggesting that they are describing the proven way to preach effectively.

Buttrick says that sermons' introductions should generally comprise between seven (not six or eight) and 12 (not 11 or 13) sentences. There is no footnote to a research-project which tested the optimum introduction-length. Long writes about what written materials the preacher should take into the pulpit. He says: "There are three broad [sic] options: a full manuscript, notes or an outline, or nothing written at all. Many people have cast their ballots for one or another of these methods, alleging its superiority, but the fact is that all three are quite acceptable and can be equally effective." This text has no footnote referring the reader to any studies on the relative effectiveness of the three approaches, nor does the rest of the chapter cite any research to prove Long's assertion. Other literature on how to preach contains similar unsupported claims and, while they may actually be true, the lack of any mention of testing these ideas erodes the reader's willingness to base their preaching-career on them.

In the last decade, I did postgraduate research into the guides to good English, such as Gowers' Complete Plain Words. I found that the guides:

• were far from unanimous on their recommendations

• didn't support their prescriptions with evidence.

A deeper, doctoral-level study of preaching-guides is needed, but I suspect, from my reading of the above-named authorities as well as Craddock, DeBona and Untener, that they are not unanimous either. There is, for example, a range of opinion on autobiographical preaching. The points may be validly made, but who is right? Simply saying that it depends on multiple factors is to duck the question of how we are to preach well.

There is one piece of advice which I think can be given. In liturgical preaching from a lectionary, the homily should begin by summarising and explaining the readings that have just been proclaimed. It breaks the service's flow to begin one's address by talking about daily life or the news (as if the readings hadn't happened). It may be useful to mention recent events or humdrum matters during homilies, but congregations deserve to have scripture expounded to them and the logical time for that is right after they've heard them read. However, this idea ought to be tested to see if it works.

There is a risk that preaching is seen as a self-justifying art-form. A plausible goal for preaching is the salvation of souls; it's therefore too important to be left to speculative assertions and heuristic conjecture about how it should be done. What's needed is an enlightened synthesis of all the good advice on making and delivering homilies and sermons. I'd suggest that this was a research-project for the College of Preachers and its corresponding organisations elsewhere in the English-speaking world. I shall propose it to them and offer to be secretary to the project's organising-committee. The principles need not just be identified but also tested in the field.

Even more important than how we preach is why we preach. This is why my suggestions for re-envisaging preaching include a new emphasis on setting sermons' objectives.

Shifting the focus from technique to objective-setting

The objective to convey a particular message may be a measurable goal, but one has to ask whether church justifies herself merely by communicating or whether she is supposed to affect human behaviour in response to such communication. For all the reverence given to the act of preaching - to the place, the person, what he wears and how he is customarily listened to in silence - the content of even the most mediocre sermon would suggest that there is more for its audience to do than simply sit quietly and hopefully retain the odd historical fact or amusing anecdote. The sermon or homily should actually be seen as means to a noble end, and that end needs to be defined. It is not enough to be clear on what one wants to say (what Long puzzlingly calls the focus). One has to be clear on what one wants one's audience to do when they hear what one says (perhaps Long's "function"). Modern sermons and homilies must, therefore, be planned with an objective in mind.

Objective-setting brings me to my next recommendation, and that is that sermons' effectiveness should be measured.

Measuring success in achieving objectives

It could be said that the over-arching goal of the church's preaching-ministry is the sanctification of mankind. How, one might then ask, does one measure holiness? Isn't sanctity of its nature intangible, its extent and nature known to God alone? While I think I agree with this, I don't think it lets preachers completely off the hook of measurement. In the external forum, we can see devotion expressed in church-attendance itself, in a good spirit in church, in a healthy social life around the parish, in works of mercy and in generous giving in support of the church's work. Parishioners can themselves sense if a religious experience such as a church-service makes them feel closer to God; a sermon could call forth repentance and/or thanksgiving, or even a vocation to religious ministry. There is plenty to observe and, even, measure here, and preachers should see the prospect of such feedback as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Long describes the function (objective) of a likely sermon as being "To reassure and give hope to troubled hearers in the midst of, not apart from, their distress." Although it might be insensitive to poll such troubled hearers straight after the service at which such a sermon had been preached, one might usefully ask them a few months later whether it had actually consoled them.

Ways of involving the (predominantly lay) congregation in sermons include:

• • asking them what they want from preaching

  • having them help prepare the homily

  • involving them during the delivery of the homily by inviting (or at least not discouraging) their spoken responses

  • researching their impressions and the extent of their recall through questionnaires and focus-groups.

Untener says feedback straight after a service is unhelpful (people try to be polite) but he values it if his hearers remember his preaching and value such memories. Howe (1967) (described by Macpherson (2011)) proposes 30-minute, post-liturgical, tape-recorded feedback-meetings during which members of a congregation describe:

• • the effect of the bible-readings and homily on the listeners

    • during the service

    • on the week ahead

  • improvements to (and, implicitly, defects in) the homily.

Such discussions will certainly provide more input in half an hour than perhaps many clergy receive in a lifetime's ministry. Group-members might, however, be self-selecting and will probably not be representative of a typical parishioner. Furthermore, respondents' claims about what the sermon did for them may not be borne out in their subsequent actions.

The College of Preachers' undated and puzzlingly-titled What did you make of your sermon? allows preachers to "indentify [their] ... strengths, weaknesses and learning needs". They record their sermons, consult one or two members of their audience, listen to another preacher, and discuss that preacher's presentation. The section on preparation suggests attention to prayer, the biblical text, the congregation and the day's news. Strikingly, it does not mention any need to decide on the sermon's main message, let alone its objective. The booklet asks the listeners no fewer than 12 questions, 11 of them open questions (though numbered from one to eight, three of the questions ask for more than one thing). Properly answered, these questions would yield a rich corpus of feedback.

If it is possible to get preachers routinely to set objectives for their sermons, and if such objectives are even occasionally attained, we should expect the shape of the church (and hopefully also its size) to change radically. Imagine if the church could harness just a fraction of whatever it is that impels sports-enthusiasts to spend so much money and time, to travel such great distances, and to advocate so strongly for their teams - maintaining near-fanatical loyalty through thick and thin. Imagine if we could preach so that the people behaved like that, only about something which actually mattered. I would like the reader to picture a church thronged with people of all ages who are attending that day because the message they hear preached there is more compelling than anything modern media can offer; and then to picture, at the dismissal, those same people radiating out from that church as changed characters whose work will bear fruit; and then to envisage that fruit. That is what this is about, and it is arguably the most important task before mankind today.

A new way of praying about preaching

Books on sermon-writing advise preachers to prepare prayerfully for their sacred task. I suppose this needs to be said, even though a person called upon to preach should already be accustomed to praying before eating and any other undertaking. It may sound a quaint observation but, if God's people are faithless, he can sometimes withdraw his favour. I don't know how we could ascertain the extent to which late-20th and early-21st century preachers have prayed before preaching, but a lack of such devotion could have meant that their words have been less persuasive, thus losing congregations. Maybe preachers have been baffled and confused by the hints, tips and pseudo-linguistics of the preaching-books. Therefore, before embracing new practical strategies for creating sermons and homilies, preachers perhaps need a new approach to prayerful preparation. This may not just mean doing more of it, but also doing it differently. Preachers' groups and associations could usefully seek God's will on how they might renew the way that they involve him in their work. The results (hopefully prophetic) could be shared through media such as the College of Preachers' website.

Reaching people through new media

Not only is secularism competing with Christianity in ideological terms, but young people's time is absorbed by the use of new media. Conventional preaching scarcely happens in such media, so most modern sermons go unheard by the young and the not so young. At least some churches' rubrics require the sermon or homily to be given during a conventional service, customarily held in a church, often on a Sunday-morning. Such events are seldom thronged with the online generation. We therefore need our superiors' agreement to allow preaching to make at least occasional excursions away from pulpit, ambo and sanctuary.

Some conservative-minded leaders will resist this, perhaps on the grounds that the gospel-message would be distorted or trivialised by its appearance on, for example, mobile telephones. The counter to this, I suggest, is to recall how the church has actually embraced the use of radio, film and television in recent decades. Taking preaching online is merely a development of this. Furthermore, preaching has been done in much less dignified and safe places than church or TV-studio. Braver preachers have taken to outdoor public platforms such as Tower Hill and Hyde Park in London. This has even included Catholics.

Electronically-delivered preaching has the advantage of being available worldwide, but it also means that people will hear the word without necessarily having any closeness to, or contact with, a Christian community, such as a parish. I would suggest that this is a risk worth taking for the sake of spreading the gospel. Online sermons can always suggest to their virtual congregations that, as well as praying and studying alone, they seek out other Christians nearby. Since messages need to be tailored to their media, electronic preaching is likely to look and sound different from a person standing up, reading out a sermon in a church. Just as Christian leaders need to be prepared for congregations' existing in places other than ecclesiastical buildings, so must they expect visual and audio effects that don't look or sound churchy.

The church may have become so accustomed to not getting its message through to the masses that it needs to brace itself for what could happen if it ever succeeded in modern media, many of which are interactive. For the online generations, "Why not telephone to make an appointment to come and see me one weekday afternoon next month?" may not be a satisfactory reply to a pressing question about faith.

At the time of writing, both old and new media are taking an interest in the practice of making video-recordings of people being drenched in cold water. This is customarily done after the usually willing victim has made a speech, sometimes (but not always) about the charitable cause for which the practice is supposed to raise funds. It's quite possible that the craze has partly deviated from its original purpose, but, in terms of visibility, it is massive. The charitable cause is not one of the world's largest benevolent organisations, yet its profile will have been significantly raised, probably at minimal cost. Compare the way in which this bizarre practice has spawned such interest and participation with the atmosphere in church half-way through a Sunday-sermon, and one sees the distance we have yet to cover.

The trouble with writing about communications-technology (like this) is that it can too easily be perceived as mere fascination with gadgets and flashing lights. To try to dignify things, let me describe a parallel I found in reading Ong. He describes how writing (at first by hand and then my machine) enabled people to store ideas in a medium other than mnemonically-styled speech. The movement of the written word from paper to portable screen, and the forthcoming availability of all human knowledge to all mankind always and everywhere, ought to be a liberating thing for the preacher. Not only can his congregation read scripture, but they can do so using something in their pocket which can show them multiple translations and online commentaries. The preacher's own words (written and spoken) can accompany them everywhere and for all eternity. Technology is thus a springboard to better preaching, not the competitive threat it appears to some to be. Seminary-courses need to have been re-designed to take advantage of this though, as I suggest below, a course in objective-setting and progress-measurement would be even more important.

The generation in charge of the world, including most ecclesial organisations, is mainly a technically illiterate one. It is time for the technical literates in the church to stop asking permission from people who do not even understand what they are being asked to permit. A generation, maybe two of them, is existing increasingly in cyberspace, and homiletics must follow them there or perhaps never encounter them.

Embracing communication-theory

Old communication-theory was that we transformed our thoughts into code and sent that across a medium; our audience or interlocutors would then decode the message and end up with thoughts identical to ours. Neat though it is, this theory doesn't match real life, if only because misunderstandings occur and sometimes our encoded messages are not received at all. More recent theory suggests that communication principally takes place in the mind of the hearer (or reader), as it responds to the speaker or writer's stimulus. The coding and decoding is incidental; it is principally communication in terms of what occurs inside the recipient's consciousness. When it comes to preaching, we have to add a dimension to this model, and that is the supernatural. If a sermon or homily is being used for genuinely religious purposes (rather than as a means of making practical announcements or political points), its subject-matter will include the life of the Trinity, and the third person of that Trinity will be poised to work in the minds and hearts of the speaker and the spoken-to.

Incidentally, I'm not here discussing the difference between deductive, inductive and dialogue-based preaching. Whichever of these styles the preacher adopts, the new communication-model suggests that the true location of the sermon-event isn't in the air between single mouth and multiple ears, but in the minds of the congregation. My conjecture is that, not only should all communicators begin by identifying their desired outcome, but they should view their task in terms of what goes on in their hearers' (or readers') minds as opposed to what comes out of the speaker's mouth or writer's pen.

There will be a corpus of research on how various types of communication get their message across. For example, spoken messages can benefit from the addition of visual material such as bullet-points, diagrams and photographs. A handout can help listeners follow the preacher's argument and recall it later (assuming that recall is one of the sermon's objectives). Once a goal has been set and a message indentified for a sermon, the preacher needs to be free to employ such means of communication which do not just make his message seem hip and modern, but which have been proved to work. Modern media allow the same message to be propagated through several channels and, even more inconveniently, a church with an out-of-date website can appear moribund.

Sermon-theorists point out how referring a congregation to a handout during a service means that the assembly changes from being something communal (held together through the spoken word) into a group of disparate people, reading something at different speeds and in different ways. This can be seen as destructive of a group-dynamic. However, what if spoken preaching alone isn't enough to hold the attention of those present? One then has a room-full of people each in a daydream of their own. If they had the preacher's script or notes in front of them (or a suitable image on the screen behind him), the congregation might at least look even if it doesn't listen.

The stand-up talk with no dialogue, no visual aids, and no handouts is now so quaintly rare in most areas of western life as to be a useless anachronism. No 1960s rubric could have foreseen how 21st century folk were to consume and share ideas. We must rewrite the rubrics or simply let them fall. My recommendation in this area is for a deliberate application to sermons of secular research on how people are best communicated-with. A particular matter for research would be whether references to current news-stories and/or sporting events can help a preacher convey his message or whether they distract the audience, causing their minds to dwell on secular matters rather than the divine message.

Defining what we are offering

Akin to being clear about what we want our preaching to achieve is also being clear about what it is we are offering. If one were to engage an advertising or public relations agency to promote a particular message, the staff of that agency would probably need to spend much time and energy helping us, the client, decide what it was that we were selling or otherwise offering. This is because, characteristically, clients are experts at making what they make rather than at explaining what they do or explaining why someone might need what they produce. The secret to knowing what the client is really offering isn't to be found in the factory where the product is made nor in the list of its ingredients. It's not to be found even in how the client describes his offering. The key to knowing the nature of the client's offering is identification of which needs it satisfies among the client's customers. The recommendation here, therefore, is for the development of a statement of Christianity's product-offering; and this needs to be expressed in language understandable by the non-theologian.

Training to be preached-to

In my 40 years of church-attendance (all of it admittedly as an adult), I have seldom been told what the homily has sought to achieve, except in the vaguest Vaticanese when I have read the relevant documents. In most people's weeks, the sermon will be a unique experience in terms of how the people are physically arranged and are expected to behave. Perhaps only school-children, accustomed to assemblies, will be used to the format. There may be a case for occasionally explaining (in speech and/or writing) just why we all have to sit still and listen the way we do. This might be done at the start of the liturgical year when the lectionary is swapped over and, perhaps, the adornments changed. Central to such catechesis might be the possibly alarming idea that the point of preaching is to get us to do something.

A new ecclesiastical model

A new style of preaching will inevitably produce a new type of church. The predominantly non-verbal re-ordering of sanctuaries doubtless changed the way the Catholic church worked, as did the introduction of the vernacular and a simplification of the clerical dress-code. As we get ready to re-envisage and refresh our preaching, we need to describe the sort of ecclesial assembly that we want to result from the changes. Pope Francis has called for a scruffier, noisier, materially poorer and yet more welcoming and evangelistic parish-model. His predecessor wanted to get the lapsed back. A new, perhaps clearer vision for the church should produce the preaching needed to realise it.

Letting the Spirit lead

I have written about the need for a new approach to prayerful preparation for preaching. The contemporary church also needs collectively to seek God's help in re-envisaging and refreshing the event of preaching. Why? Because of the divine command.