Corporate Preaching: Reclaiming the Ministry of Proclamation as the Work of the People

Preaching Today: The Problem

Over the past half-century, traditional preaching methods in mainline Protestant churches have proven challenging at engaging younger generations of believers, specifically Millennials and Gen-Z. The conventional sermon format of the one-way monologue is increasingly ineffective, even alienating, for these cohorts who prefer inclusive, two-way conversations. Generally suspicious of hierarchy and authority while appreciating teamwork and inclusiveness, these younger generations don’t just welcome conversation. They expect it!

 

“ The traditional type of church … no longer appeals to young adults and their families.”

A twenty-something Gen-Z adult confirmed the sentiment: “For a church like ours, founded on equity and inclusion, hierarchies of authority are simply incompatible and inconsistent.” The culture of community makes a new, collaborative form of preaching not just possible, but necessary. A congregation that encourages diversity, embraces plurality, democratizes authority, and creates acts of welcome and affirmation as expressions of radical hospitality emboldens its members to direct engagement in all aspects ministry and mission, including the ministry of proclamation.

A form of proclamation by which all members of the worshipping assembly are offered opportunity for direct, immediate, and verbal engagement in the preaching moment itself, Corporate Preaching reclaims the ministry of proclamation as the work of all the people, not just the pastor.

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Preaching Today: One Context in Detail

Located since the late 1950s in the midtown of a Midwestern metropolitan area (population 325,000), my congregation occupies a spacious tract alongside a major transportation artery on which nearly 30,000 cars a day travel. Reaching the height of its vitality in the 1980s, decline followed in a way familiar to mainline Protestants. Beginning in the mid-2010s, after committing to extending radical welcome and full inclusion to LGBTQ+ individuals, there has been modest growth, but growth nonetheless.

The congregation is predominantly White (91.4%), with small percentages of Black or African American (7.1%), Hispanic (1.2%), and Asian (0.3%) members. There are more working-age women (53.7%) than men (45.1%), and a small representation of gender-nonconforming individuals (1.2%). The community is highly educated, with nearly half of working-age adults holding bachelor’s degrees or higher. LGBTQ+ identifying members make up 8.7% of the community, nearly double for the state as a whole.

Millennials and adult Gen-Z constitute just 18.1% of all community participants and only 22.0% of adults 18 and over. As the remaining 78% of other adults grows older, the congregation will become a lonely place for these adults if efforts to engage their cohorts fail. Corporate Preaching offers hope for long-term vitality.

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Preaching Today: A Solution to the Problem

As early as the 1920s, [1] the conventional method of sermon-making began to be criticized as “dull, irrelevant, and even obsolete,” [2] with the most sustained challenges coming in the 1960s [3] and 1990s. [4] Efforts to make preaching more “dialogical” or “conversational” never broke free of the sermon-as-monologue, the exception — other than fleeting experiments in Roman Catholic parishes in the wake of Vatican II [5] — being “progressional dialogue” from the Emerging Church movement. [6] Even there, the sermon retained the age-old goal of persuading hearers to adopt certain beliefs and to disavow others.

Encouraged by the example from the Emerging Church where preacher and congregation engage in dynamic, collaborative proclamation, Corporate Preaching is a form that matches that dynamism while being true to my congregation’s tradition of a narrative style of proclamation setting contemporary story alongside biblical story to shape consciousness and form a community of shared meaning. At its most basic form, the method employed is simple and straight-forward:

Planning the Corporate Sermon

• Small group bible study connecting the life of participants with the narrative world of scripture
• A written prompt to encourage reflection on experiences in congregational members’ lives in ways suggested by scripture
• Distribution of the prompt in advance, inviting the sharing of stories during the sermon
• Until Corporate Preaching becomes familiar, securing participants before hand to share stories to hedge against possible silence by the assembly

Preaching the Corporate Sermon

• Reinforce the preaching prompt through worship media and liturgy
• Model story-telling in the sermon’s introduction, followed by an open invitation to share stories
• Be patient, allowing the congregation time to acclimate to the task at hand
• Segue between participant stories with little connection or commentary
• Conclude the sermon with a doxology reprising elements of the various stories shared

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Preaching Today: Considerations for the Wider Church

Corporate Preaching in my congregation engages on average six participants per sermon, proof that the form is viable and effective. Experience shows that, with repetition, the congregation becomes more comfortable with the form and more confident in participating.

Considerations for how Corporate Preaching could be tailored for other preaching contexts include:

Planning & Preparation

• from where would speakers speak?
• for how long would they talk?
• how many would be allowed to participate?
• how would audio / video be used to engage participants, both virtual and actual?

Spontaneity & Flexibility

• Since the number of participants can’t be known in advance, worship leaders need to be prepared to adjust service elements for the sake of time

Proper Behavior & Respectful Speech

• Depending on congregational culture, rules for “conversational etiquette may be necessary [7]

The form Corporate Preaching takes follows the customary function of a congregation’s sermon-making:

• Narrative and episodic as here, linking participant stories one to the other by an idea derived from scripture
• Didactic and expository as in the Emerging Church,
• Or some other homiletic function

Any preacher adapting Corporate Preaching for another context would do well to consider how sermons function in their setting and how that function might serve to shape a more democratized and inclusive form of preaching.

In refining and applying the model of Corporate Preaching for settings where power and authority are problematic, preaching can become true liturgy, the work of all the people.

“ Corporate preaching has renewed my faith in this community ….”

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Preaching Today: Resources for Further Reading

Allen, Jr., O. Wesley. 2005. The Homiletic of All Believers: A Conversational Approach. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox.

Bleidorn, Eugene. 1967. “Dialogue Preaching: Practice.” Preaching 2(1): 10-15.

Cleator, Gerald. 1968. “Experiments in Dialogue Homily.” Preaching 3(5): 22-31.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson. 1928. “What’s the Matter with Preaching.” Harper’s Magazine 157: 133-141.

Hannan, Shauna K. 2021. The Peoples Sermon: Preaching as a Ministry of the Whole Congregation. Working Preacher 5. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Howe, Ruel L. 1967. Partners in Preaching: Clergy & Laity in Dialogue. New York: Seabury Press.

Holston, James. 1981. “Dialogue Preaching.” Restoration Quarterly 24(2): 89-97.

Leliaert, Richard. 1967. “The Dialogue Homily: Theory.” Preaching 2(1): 16-24.

McClure, John S. 1995. The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Worship and Leadership Meet. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Pagitt, Doug. 2005. Preaching Re-Imagined: The Role of the Sermon in Communities of Faith. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

______. 2014. Preaching in the Inventive Age. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Reid, Clyde. 1967. The Empty Pulpit: A Study in Preaching as Communication. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Rose, Lucy A. 1997. Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Thompson, William D. and Gordon C. Bennett. 1969. Dialogue Preaching: The Shared Sermon. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.

 

 

 

[1] Fosdick 1928.

[2] Holston 1981, 89.

[3] Howe 1967; Reid 1967; Thompson and Bennett 1969.

[4] McClure 1995; Rose 1997; Allen, Jr. 2005; Hannan 2021.

[5] Bleidorn 1967; Leliaert 1967; Cleator 1968.

[6] Pagitt 2005 and 2014.

[7] Allen, Jr. 2005, 29.