OCCASIONAL CO-PREACHING WITH CHURCH MEMBERS
TO ALIGN THE MEDIUM WITH THE MESSAGE
AND BUILD DISCIPLES
What do the above sermons say before uttering a word?
While a sermon proclaims the gospel, its medium speaks in ways that accompany the words.1 The medium of a sermon can either complement, confuse, or counter the gospel being proclaimed. The traditional sermon is an individual act, and therefore a limited medium for the proclamation of the gospel that is a pronouncement and calling for all. An occasional practice of collaborative preaching – working with a member of a congregation with gifts for preaching to develop and deliver a sermon – allows the sermon medium to complement the collective qualities of the gospel message, which include mutual relationship and the priesthood of all believers. The benefits of occasional collaborative preaching to congregations, preaching partners, and pastors justify the practice as a faithful investment in building the Church.
Traditional Christian preaching, as practiced by an individual, can be an inherently limited way to proclaim a gospel message that is corporate in its origins and its best hopes. The Word of God made incarnate in the person of Jesus the Christ expresses God’s generous love for all.2 The message of Christian preaching is also a call to all, summoning all to change, faith, relationship, and community.3 The gospel message which preaching carries is collective, yet elements of the medium of traditional individual Christian preaching hide the collective nature of what God in Christ has to say and would have us do. This becomes even more clear when we experience an alternative medium that is visibly and audibly relational and collaborative.
An occasional alternative mode of collaborative preaching with a member of the congregation can overcome the limitations of exclusive individual preaching and better align the sermon medium with the gospel message. I recommend a model of sermon development and proclamation that is entirely collaborative, within a consistent partnership, from first encounter with the scripture to delivery of the sermon. Sharing the entire sermon journey allows each step of the preaching process to benefit from collaboration, and allows preaching partners to benefit from each step of the process. This occasional variation of the traditional practice benefits the faithful proclamation of the gospel in ways edifying for pastors, preaching partners, and congregations.
Collaborative preaching embodies mutual relationship, which is the form of living to which we are summoned by the triune God, as well as the purpose of the Christian Church. The Trinity reveals God’s nature to be turned toward another, engaging in relationship.4 The Church is a faithful reflection of God’s nature, revealed in the Trinity when it fosters mutual relationship and communion.5 Therefore collaborative preaching helps the Church, in the very gospel it proclaims, practice its purpose, which is the embodiment of mutual relationships as a communion reflecting God’s aspirations for us and all the world.
Consistent individual preaching compromises the priesthood of all believers and fails to adequately represent mutual relationship as central to the gospel. Individual preaching reserves reading and studying and speaking the gospel for one person at a time, professionalizing interpretation and proclamation. Occasional collaborative preaching with other gifted individuals communicates the sharing of the gospel as a collective calling and responsibility, while equipping disciples for doing so, faithful to the priesthood of believers.6 Occasional collaborative preaching can reinforce the priesthood of all believers and underscore the importance of all people in fulfillment of the mission of the faithful.
Inspired by both the centrality of relationships and the priesthood of all believers, the field of homiletics has shifted attention, in recent generations, to the dynamics of power and function in preaching, inviting collaboration in some of the ways sermons are developed and delivered.7 Inspired by the active role and responsibility of the community in preaching, some homileticians have explored collaborative methods for interpreting scripture.8 Others have explored the spirit of conversation and collaboration in the event of preaching in worship.9 For mostly practical reasons, these explorations have focused on a part or parts of the sermon journey being conversational, collaborative, or communal, and stopped short of an entirely and consistently collaborative sermon journey. The models of collaboration that have been explored and suggested can be described as either “collaborative study and interpretation” or “collaborative proclamation,” but none thus far recommend the whole sermon journey as a continuous collaboration. Moved incrementally by the power of collaboration in each step of the sermon journey, I have discovered that an entirely collaborative preaching experience is inspired and beneficial to parishioners, pastors, and preaching partners.
The occasional practice of collaborative preaching in my own pastoral life has grown out listening in bible study and worship. My collaborative practice was born in a lectionary bible study at Winnetka Presbyterian Church in 2013, where collaboration regularly benefitted my interpretation, and where discussion regularly yielded powerful witnesses to a text. I was moved to invite partners into the proclamation during worship, a practice which helped bear the light of the gospel in a way that both included and exceeded my individual capacity. I found myself moved to a new sense of faith by collaboration in preaching, seeking more ways to build its power and potential into my preaching life more regularly.
When called to serve Saint Luke’s Presbyterian Church in Dunwoody, Georgia, I developed a more concerted practice of collaborative preaching, which the congregation and I evaluated together as offering faithful proclamation, spiritual growth, and meaningful relationships. Four preaching partners and I conducted collaborative sermons during the 2016-2017 church year. Each partnership took the steps of the sermon journey together, meeting to choose, hear, and study the scripture text, and then to craft, refine, and proclaim the Word that we received. Here is the Collaborative Preaching Model that guided our work.
Feedback from the four entirely collaborative sermons at Saint Luke’s in 2016-17 highlighted the value of the practice, validating the medium of collaboration and the value of partnership with a layperson from the congregation. The power of a different medium came to light immediately, as members of the congregation shared “I loved this, and I had no idea someone like me could preach with someone like you,” and “seeing a man and a woman preaching together is new and I thought it was moving.” Hearers attested the value of each preaching partner’s perspective and witness. Congregational feedback also amplified the potential of this form of preaching to present different points of view in the same sermon: “I was struck that a sermon could reflect two viewpoints in conversation, it felt new and interesting.” One astute observer even spoke about the experience theologically, noting that “it was great to see you both side by side, pastor and layperson, representing the priesthood of all believers.” The medium, it would seem, is indeed part of the message, and the medium of collaboration speaks in different ways that are helpful to the proclamation of the gospel.
Responses of preaching partners noted the value of the experience in their spiritual journeys, the relationships they developed with each other, and the value of sustained relationship and partnership with the senior pastor of their church. One partner shared with me, “I will never forget this experience, nor my mentor on the journey!” Developing stronger relationships between church leaders is a significant result of collaborative preaching, worthy of the investment.
Collaborative preaching has also served to enrich and enliven my preaching life. Collaborating on a sermon is more difficult and laborious, commanding a pastor’s time, careful discernment, sensitivity, humility, accountability, creativity, and trust. These are virtues worth cultivating in all preaching we pastors do. Collaboration serves to highlight the limits of my own perspective and ideas. I am now better formed to ask questions of a text from a different perspective, and to think about where other insights to a text might lead me. I am becoming a more faithful and more versatile preacher because I now practice collaborative preaching occasionally.
The preaching partnership is a rich and nuanced experience, and should be carefully and trustfully cultivated by the pastor. Important considerations in developing an occasional practice of collaborative preaching include: 1) deciding if collaborative preaching is for you, 2) clearly communicating the practice and rationale to the congregation, 3) selecting preaching partners with care, 4) selecting texts with good potential for the partnership, 5) initiating the partnership with covenant, relationship, and expectations, 6) adapting to the movements of the Spirit in the collaboration, 7) identifying an appropriate form for the sermon as the witness of the partnership to the scripture, 8) setting the collaborative proclamation appropriately in your worship space, 9) rehearsing the collaborative sermon together in the worship space, and 10) refining the process iteratively with the benefit of feedback from partners and parishioners. Attention to these considerations will help establish healthy collaborations for fruitful sermon journeys.
I anticipate future explorations and improvements to my own practice of collaborative preaching, including the areas of congregational leadership, leadership development, empowerment of underrepresented or marginalized voices in a congregation, and collaboration with more than one partner at a time. I intend to explore and develop these untapped potentials of the collaborative preaching I conduct as it becomes a regular occasional practice in my preaching life. I also seek to help other preachers discover the spiritual riches of collaborative preaching.
Preaching collaboratively can help underscore the gospel as given to us all to share. Building an occasional practice of collaborative preaching yields significant benefits for congregations, preaching partners, and pastors. I recommend this particular collaborative practice that has brought fresh energy, perspective, and meaning to the congregation I serve and to my own preaching life. I believe that collaborative preaching makes new spaces for the Spirit to work upon pastor-preachers and the congregations we serve.
Collaborative Sermons at Saint Luke’s Presbyterian Church, 2016-17:
1 Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media: Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964) 7. McLuhan claims the way we receive communication influences the message in ways that may go unnoticed. Marshall McLuhan argues that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, even becoming essential to the substance of the message.
2 Christ’s ministry expanded the attention of the faithful, working through relationships with outcasts and sinners, shifting the scope of God’s ultimate concern beyond the circles of social and religious convention toward all. The Apostle Paul clarifies the scope of Christ’s collective commitment: “Jesus died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Corinthians 5:15 NRSV).
3 The risen Jesus commissioned the disciples collectively for proclamation of the gospel: “[Y’all] go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with y’all always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). The Church has inherited this commission, as the continued reflection of Christ’s commitment, purpose, and work for the world, functioning collectively as the Living Body of Christ. Paul uses the image of the body of Christ in his letter to the churches in Corinth: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
4 Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God With Us (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) 1.
5 Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998) 181.
6 Reformation calls for attention to “the priesthood of all believers” provide further arguments against a pattern of preaching by one single individual. The priesthood of all believers recognizes the equal right and potential of all people of faith to spread the gospel, but it does not proffer that all are made or gifted the same, nor that everyone should preach the Word. See Martin Luther, “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” Hanover Historical Texts Projects, trans. Karl Adolf Buchheim and Henry Wace, last modified December 31, 1996, accessed January 30, 2017, http://history.hanover.edu/texts/luthad.html. Also see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960) 4.3.6-7.
7 Dietrich Ritschl, A Theology of Proclamation (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1960) 22. Ritschl was one of the first in the field to identify the structural flaw of the traditional preaching medium, which isolates the preacher and makes preaching a “dispensing of power.”
8 See John S. McClure, The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership and Preaching Meet (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995) 24. Also see O. Wesley Allen, Jr., The Homiletic of All Believers: A Conversational Approach (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005) 39.
9 See David J. Lose, Preaching at the Crossroads: How the Word – and Our Preaching – is Changing (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013) 103. Also see Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005) 229. Also see Lucy Atkinson Rose, Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997) 39.
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