Form of the Sermon

How to preach? The form of the sermon has undergone nothing short of a revolution since the early work of David Randolph in 1969 (The Renewal of Preaching) and Fred Craddock in 1971 (As One Without Authority). Responding to suspicion of authority within church and culture and finding fresh impetus for preaching based upon the biblical school of the New Hermeneutics, Randolph and Craddock opened new avenues for preaching.

A key rhetorical assumption underneath this "new homiletic" is that language is performative. The language of the sermon does not convey objective truth. Rather, language creates meaning in the very act of preaching. Rhetoric, often understood as the scaffolding of a sermon, now becomes part and parcel of its meaning. Hogan and Reid explain this rhetorical turn in preaching in Connecting with the Congregation. This active view of language and rhetoric leads to two important shifts in preaching form.

First, form and content should be wedded in the sermon. Sermons are not logical vehicles designed to convey rational propositions, as in earlier preaching forms (the "old homiletic"). Rather, the sermon seeks to enact among the hearers the very message that the preacher proclaims. In other words, sermon form should align with sermon intent. For example, the sermon that seeks to help the congregation praise God can be organized and delivered as a doxology; the sermon that announces grace can reflect joy and freedom in tone and organizational patterns.

Teachers apply this same insight to biblical study and preaching. Tom Long’s Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible is a clear example of this approach. Long demonstrates how to move from a biblical literary genre such as a psalm or parable to a sermon constructed along the same literary lines. Mike Graves’s The Sermon as Symphony outlines a similar approach, which he supplemented with sample sermons.

Second, Craddock found widespread support for his call to replace the deductive logic of earlier preaching with inductive organization and movement. Inductive sermons move from the particulars of human experience to the general experience of the Gospel. Sermons unfold in narrative fashion like stories with a beginning, middle, and end and with surprising twists along the way. Rather than stating the meaning at the beginning of the sermon, preachers lead members of the congregation to draw their own conclusions at the end of the sermon. This heightens listener participation and ownership of the message. As Craddock says, "If they have made the trip, then it is their conclusion."⁹

This new homiletic method shares the room with biblical study’s interest in narrative. Teachers variously treat the sermon as narrative, from Edmund Steimle’s Preaching the Story and Eugene Lowry’s The Homiletical Plot to David Buttrick’s Homiletic. For each of them, narrative means something slightly different. Especially distinctive, Buttrick’s approach offers a theology and form of preaching that yields narrative-like moves and sequences within the sermon. For Buttrick, perhaps the dramatic play—with changing scenes, spotlights, and points of view—is a more apt literary genre than narrative.

Nevertheless, Buttrick also raises some reservations about preaching as narrative. While preaching helps the Christian congregation find its own story within God’s story, Jesus Christ "stands out from the story and is a living symbol to the Christian community."¹⁰ In other words, Jesus Christ, the central character in the Christian story, cannot be limited to the biblical narrative and should not be reduced to a cipher of our own stories. While embracing narrative preaching, Buttrick pushes preachers to remain open to the surprising transformation that God enacts in the world "outside" of the biblical narrative.

Narrative in preaching isn’t new to many traditions, though the additional theoretical focus has heightened awareness and attention to form. African American preaching has often taken a storied approach to scriptural interpretation. Perusal of the sermons of Gardner Taylor (The Words of Gardner Taylor) or the sermons collected by Ella Mitchell (Those Preaching Women) will bring out some of the many ways that preaching in the African American tradition employs narrative. Susan Bond offers insightful commentary upon narrative in African American preaching in Contemporary African American Preaching.

Stress upon all of these elements of the new homiletic—heightened awareness of language, the uniting of form and content, inductive movement, and deeper exploration of literary forms in preaching, particularly narrative forms—might suggest that the "old homiletic" has been buried for good. In fact, a great deal of preaching today is still propositional in nature and deductive in form. Many sermons are a hybrid of various forms.

Ronald Allen suggests in Interpreting the Gospel that at least one of four basic forms undergirds every sermon. Many preachers, from Sunday to Sunday, will shift from one form to another depending upon the focus of the sermon, the implications of the biblical text, or the nature of the situation. As Tom Long says, "Left to our own devices, most of us who preach would fall into a numbing monotony . . . too easily slipping into the habit of pouring this week’s gelatin into last week’s mold. . . . Our sermon planning, then, must provide not only for a variety of themes and issues but also for a variation in sermon styles and forms."¹¹

This is sound advice. Even though the preacher may initially find it difficult to vary preaching forms, over the long haul such periodic changes will invigorate preacher and congregation. You will find many suggestions and sample sermons with a variety of forms in Long’s A Chorus of Witnesses and Ronald Allen’s Patterns of Preaching.

9. Fred Craddock, As One Without Authority (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979 [1971]), 57.


10. David Buttrick, Homiletic, 14.


11. Thomas G. Long, "Patterns in Sermons," in Best Advice for Preaching, John S. McClure, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 37.