This book has me thinking about what place love has in a sermon. As preachers preach, a conversation happens between real people who have real stories, real hurts, real hopes and real dreams. The more our pulpit sermons directly address the real people in the pew, the more likely it is our sermons will lead to real spiritual transformation.
The author puts it like this: “There is another love necessary for preaching to reach its full potential for societal transformation –love for those to whom we preach” (xiii)
In Luchetti’s words the preacher must find a way to “listen to the people talk” (17) because “the best preachers are not the best talkers but the best listeners” (20). Listening is crucial in the enterprise of preaching because without listening to God’s people we cannot be empathetic preachers. By empathetic, Luchetti means,
“The art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions” (11).
Luchetti believes “the best preachers are empathic shepherds who incarnationally go out to the fields where the sheep dwell; their words are sheep-scented” (19). But this task of empathetic preaching is difficult because it is counter-cultural.
While humans are wired for empathy, “We live in a culture that discourages empathy, a culture that too often tells us that our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe and entertained” (4). Notice how individualistic those values are. If these are the values of our society an empathetic preacher may stick out like a sore thumb. Empathy is rare in our world but Luchetti believes it is the “potent cure” to many of our societal ills.
I personally agree with Luchetti. I agree with his argument especially since I work alongside a Pastor who oozes empathy everywhere he goes, including the pulpit. For this Pastor, empathy is like a switch that cannot be turned off. Thus I’ve seen first-hand the positive results of a Pastor who preaches empathetically. Every sermon he preaches somehow connects with the real lives of his listeners. People feel heard when they hear him preach!
While with me empathy does not naturally work itself out in the same exact way, I also desire to be a Pastor who is close to his people. Who listens, who cares, who can understand, who loves. For me, this is partially what makes being a Pastor such a unique position and why I love my calling to it.
Pastoring isn’t bossing, or CEOing, or even managering. Pastoring is shepherding. The shepherd must always be close with the sheep. A shepherd is one who is in the fields with the sheep, guiding and tending towards health, growth, safety and rest. Eugene Peterson’s descriptions in his book The Pastor: A Memoir put it exactly as I’d like to, but much better.
If all of this is true, what do we make of guest preachers and celebrity preachers?
My knowledge of my own congregation does not directly transfer to any other congregation. Certainly there are overlaps. We are all human and God is the one who produces the fruit. If in our sermons we “give them God” (68) then people will experience the communion of God. But I wonder if we don’t also need a “theology of guest preaching” as an appendix to this conversation?
If empathy is so important why do we have a culture within our churches of wanting to listen to popular or even famous preachers and looking to invite them in as often as possible? How should a local church member listen to and engage with famous (yet personally unknown) preachers on the radio, TV or internet? Should congregants be listening to their local church Pastor differently than they would a national Christian celebrity? If so, why and how? I am not aware of any good resources on this topic.
Guest preachers are necessarily ignorant of what is happening in the churches they preach at, are they not? What happens to a church (or an individual) who is fed on guest-preaching often or for long periods at a time? How healthy is spiritual food that is mass-produced? What spiritual nutrients and outcomes are left out of this equation?
Increasingly we live in a culture that looks for preachers who are more entertaining than they are empathic; more eloquent than understanding; more bold than loving, and worst of all: more famous than faithful.
But if empathy is more important than eloquence, how should we best promote guest preachers (or not?) to our congregants so that in the hearing of God’s word God’s people hear a word specifically for them?
Questions & Hope 