The premise of Donald Sunukjian’s Biblical Preaching is that sermons should be the preacher’s way of saying, “Look at what God is saying to us.” Thus, he argues that the “Bible is God’s voice, spanning the ages. The role of the biblical preacher is to echo that voice in this generation,” which means he is to present the “true and exact meaning of the biblical text…in a manner that is relevant to the contemporary listener” (9-10).
Sunukjian thus divides his book into two parts, the first of which deals with “what God is saying” and the second of which deals with what God is saying “to us.” Part one includes four chapters and covers the basics of biblical exegesis. Sunukjian’s method is not surprising but his insistence on adherence to the meaning of the text is refreshing in this day and age. The heart of his process is that the preacher should articulate, through three separate outlines, the meaning of the passage (what happened), the truth-value of the passage (what happens), and the application of the passage (what is happening). By the time the preacher has articulated these things, he ought to be able to develop a pithy “take-home truth” which both captures the essence of the text and grabs the attention of the hearers.
Part two of the book, then, includes twelve chapters and advances the assertion that good, biblical preaching must offer both relevance and application. Relevance is when the people see how the text connects with their lives and it should therefore occur throughout the sermon; application is when the preacher draws out specific implications of the text for the listener’s lives and it most often happens near the end of the sermon. With this in mind, Sunukjian concludes his work by offering detailed advice on how to develop and deliver sermons which are faithful to the text and relevant to the listeners.
The central strength of Sunukjian’s book is his passion for the primacy of the Word of God in the process of preaching and his equally strong insistence that the task of the preacher is to discover and display how that Word speaks “to us.” I find this emphasis, and order, so refreshing in a day when many preachers are minimizing the Word in favor of entrepreneurial creativity.
Second, I very much appreciated Sunukjian’s explanation of the meaning and importance of relevancy in preaching, and its relationship to application. In a day when the word “relevance” is often used to mean “satisfying consumer desires,” I was pleasantly surprised to hear him present it as helping modern people see how the ancient Word of God relates to their lives today. And to be sure, a sermon that does not do this is not worth preaching or hearing. I do think he could have said a bit more about how this must first take place in the preacher before it develops in the sermon, but alas, one can only say so much in one book.
Finally, while I appreciated many of the things Sunukjian said about the process of developing and delivering sermons, I found his method of outlining to be both cumbersome and impractical. Frankly, I think it’s a bit much for the preacher who must balance praying, studying, teaching, leading, counseling, raising a family, exercising, and so on each week. That said, the convictions that led him to the processes he suggests are worth adopting and somehow integrating into our various processes as preachers.
As for my personal reflections on this book, first, Sunukjian writes in the introduction, “The purpose of the sermon is not to impart knowledge but to influence behavior—not to inform but to transform” (12). This is fairly standard language, and I do get the point, but I would prefer to state this in a slightly different way. Specifically, I would prefer to say that the purpose of preaching is to glorify God and transform lives which is founded upon, but not equal to, a right knowledge of God.
The endgame of preaching is neither the preacher nor the results of his preaching, but the exaltation of the being, will, and ways of God. God himself is the blazing center of preaching and all of the other details revolve around him. This implies that a right knowledge of God really matters and that, in fact, one of the central purposes of every sermon is to impart such knowledge. One can only love God as she ought if she knows God as he is. I completely agree with Sunukjian that a certain kind of emphasis on knowledge only creates Pharisees but this doesn’t mean we should de-emphasize knowledge itself but rather that we should rightly teach the connection between knowledge and love. Where there is no right knowledge there can be no love, or to use his word, there can be no transformation.
In the course of my ministry, I have come across many preachers who have brushed aside sound doctrine in favor of a number of other things and I fear that minimizing the place of right knowledge in the process and goals of preaching lends support to this tragic error. Thus, although it’s clear to me from the whole of his book that Sunukjian values the place of knowledge in the practice of preaching, I think he could be a little more careful with how he states his case.
Second, I was deeply moved by this paragraph: “Biblical preaching is the best thing we can do for our ministries, and it’s the best thing we can do for our own personal lives. To drink deeply of the Word of God, to saturate ourselves with its truths, to have our lives changed by its transforming power, and then to stand before God’s people, proclaiming with joy and confidence, ‘Look at what God is saying to us!’—who could be called to anything greater?” (15) When I read this passage, I was sitting at a table in a retirement home waiting to attend my grandfather-in-law’s funeral. I literally said out loud, “Amen!” I just couldn’t help myself.
Biblical preaching has produced more fruit in my personal life than almost any other thing because my process begins by going to the Word and studying it as deeply as I can, not because I have to write a sermon, but because I so desperately need to be more like Jesus. And as our gracious God uses his Word to shape my life, somehow a sermon is born. And somehow as God speaks “to me,” I come to see how God is speaking “to us.” Oh what a beautiful thing! What a high privilege! It’s literally bringing tears to my eyes as I write.
No comments:
Post a Comment