wfn.org | Pastors find Montreat preaching conference a tonic for the soul and

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Note #5923 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

mind
2-June-2000
00221

	Pastors find Montreat preaching conference a tonic for the soul and mind 

	Experts say effective weekly sermonizing is "just damn hard"

	by Alexa Smith

MONTREAT, N.C. - The young woman's hand shot up as soon as Barbara Brown
Taylor - Episcopal priest, preacher and prolific author - came into the
room.

	How, she wanted to know, did Taylor put together a sermon?  How many hours
did it take? What were her sources?

	So Taylor told her: a good 15 hours, time usually grabbed between 6 and 9
a.m. And never more than a week ahead, although she usually knows which
texts are coming down the line.

	"The main thing is time," she said. "And we need to quit pretending that
good sermons come out of thin air ... and insist on the time you need to
preach - especially the kinds of sermons that Douglas John Hall (another
lecturer, who argued that preachers must immerse themselves in the texts) is
talking about. Because until transformation happens to you, it won't happen
to anyone else."

	Taylor, who once served a Georgia parish for four years, told her listeners
that she has little sympathy for those who plead they have too little time:
Time simply has to be taken to produce a good sermon.

	Such nuts-and-bolts question-and-answer sessions predominated between
lecturers and preachers and pastors who gathered at the Montreat Conference
Center for "Reclaiming the Text: A Preacher's Conference," May 29-June 2. 
The event, the first of its kind and a sold-out success, featured lectures,
workshops and close-up questioning sessions with preaching luminaries
including Taylor; Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman of Columbia
Theological Seminary; Phyllis Trible, emerita professor of sacred literature
at Union Theological Seminary in New York City; the Rev. James Forbes,
senior minister of The Riverside Church, New York City; Eugene Peterson,
professor emeritus of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver,
British Columbia; and Ann Weems, writer, speaker and poet.

	It was a time for listening and grappling, disagreeing and discerning. And
dreaming, too, about doing a better job back home of what the 1,000 or so
ministers who came to Montreat do every week - preach.  Participants also
explored how to find more substantive ways to nurture their own spiritual
lives.

	Take Carrie Scott, for example. For the past 10 years, she has been the
solo pastor of the Ray-Thomas Presbyterian Church, in Marietta, Ga.  "For
me, this is time to get some space, time to reflect, and obviously, to get
some new insights and ideas, to reconnect with people," she said outside the
conference just minutes after hearing Trible deliver a lecture that touched
on Ruth, Jacob and Moses.

	"In the parish, you don't have this time ... It is always the next text and
the next text, rather than stopping and breathing," Scott continued,
referring to the sort of in-depth study that obviously informed the lectures
and worship services here. "So this is kind of like a Jubilee."

	The need for more time and more nurture was like a mantra throughout the
conference - whether the matter at hand was the difficulty of juggling
meetings and emergencies and family responsibilities, or the hunger for ways
of delving more deeply into one's own spiritual life, which leads to a
deepening of the work a pastor does in a congregation.

	That didn't come as a surprise to the organizer of the conference, the Rev.
Emily Enders Odom, the Montreat center's vice president for planning and
administration.

	"Among the clergy I know, there's a longing, a fondness for something that
is almost lost from those days in seminary when the text was everything,
when study was everything," Enders said, noting that the problem is beyond
time-management solutions. "The question is: What are we in the business of
doing?" she said. "And how do I do all those things and remember who I am -
student, scholar, disciple - and represent that faithfully to the
congregation? That is the working preacher's dilemma.

	"We tried to touch people where they needed to be touched to do the work
they do."

	The questions put to the conference leaders were candid. One pastor asked
Peterson, who was in the parish for 29 years, how to avoid the mundane when
struggling to turn a biblical text into a sermon. "The Bible is not for you
to preach from," Peterson said. "It is for you to eat. If you look at it
functionally, for preaching and teaching ... We need to be reading this,
eating this for ourselves, and you've got to find ways to do that."

	Peterson said pastors need to keep a Sabbath for "a sane, devout" pastoral
life, and also to read books and novels outside of theology. He said they
shouldn't hesitate to take days off when their spirits are sick, and urged
Presbyterians in the room to lobby their presbyteries to pay for sabbaticals
for pastors on seven-year cycles.

	But the question kept coming back: Is it discipline that enables pastors to
do a better job of preaching - or maybe letting go of some other
congregational expectations?

	Hall, who contends that pastors need time to immerse themselves, biblically
and theologically - was forthright when asked what duties a minister might
drop in order to devote more time to the necessary immersion. He admitted
that he'd spent only two years in the parish himself, and said he was
sympathetic. Then he went on: "I am going to say a radical thing: Why are we
doing all these things?

	"Pastors ought to concentrate on the great tradition of teaching eldership,
being the rabbi of the congregation," he said. "(Ministers who are able to
be) the rabbinic interpreter is what is most  missing in the church today.
Most things pastors do can be done just as well by other people, even
sometimes better."

	Hall upped the ante by arguing that the future of the church depends on the
development of theologically educated leaders who pass on the wisdom of the
tradition to the people, and said that essential work is hampered when a
pastor's schedule is overloaded.

	The Rev. Brant Copeland, of First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee, Fla.,
speaking of some of the sermons preached through the week, said: "Getting
the kind of time it takes to produce a similar product, that's been a
dilemma in my whole ministry. It takes strong self-discipline to do this
(when you're expected) to be a counselor and an administrator and a social
activist.

	"Some of that is surely self-imposed, but not all," he said in an
interview. "Congregations are ambivalent about what they expect from
ministers, and they want generalists who are able to do lots of things
pretty well. And when they're in crisis, they want you to be able to do
(some particular thing ) really well."

	Hall was straightforward in his message to the preachers who attended the
four-day conference: The renewal of the church depends on a rediscovery of
the Bible and speaking its messages to congregations. "The only real
renewals in the church that have ever taken place have been when there's
been a rediscovery of the Biblical message. How we go about that is another
question. I suppose that's what we're meeting here about."

	Taylor told the Presbyterian News Service that another way of looking at
the dilemma is to ask: What is the blessing in struggling with a text, in
plumbing its depths?

	"Preparing to preach was always the most focused, most rewarding ... times
all week," she said. "It was a beloved task, not a struggle. I love it. And
you know what can happen when a sermon goes well. It is not just a piece of
communication, but a spiritual discipline you are engaging in with the
community. It was one of the most rewarding things I did."

	She noted that nothing could make her happier than being locked in a room
with a few commentaries, a Bible and copy of Kittle's Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament. "I never had a problem being inspired," she said.
"Now, shaping the inspiration ... sticking with one idea rather than three,
that could be a problem."

	Taylor said putting a sermon together is "work, work, work."

	"I do my part," she said, "but the sermon doesn't happen in my mouth, but
between their ears. And what's going on in there, I don't have a clue: What
pasts, what parents, what griefs or hurts. If two or three people say it
mattered, that's enough. ... I've lowered my expectations."

	Expectations - many self-imposed - are what the pastors talked about. The
Rev. Maggie Lauterer of First Presbyterian Church in Burnsville, N.C., said
the conference's lectures and workshops gave participants a kind of
spiritual nourishment they don't get enough of. She said she is part of a
Monday-morning lectionary group, and often wrestles with the text for the
rest of the week, trying to "slip inside of it" so that her listeners will
be able to "crawl into the story" with her, and look around.

	But it all has to be crammed in between pastoral care and community forums
and Session meetings and the like.

	"It is such a responsibility that God has laid on my shoulders ... to break
the bread of life for them every week," she said, "and I don't take that
lightly. I know these people come to be fed; what if I don't feed ‘em?"

	After listening and lecturing and answering questions, Brueggeman took a
question from the Presbyterian News Service: How can a pastor do it all?

	"The dilemma is exactly what Douglas Hall talks about," he said. "The
message of the Bible is so difficult and so demanding, but it is our only
source of vitality." He said overcoming the culture's messages of fear and
despair and greed are a struggle for preachers, too, and it takes work to
get at the alternative story the texts tell.

	It is also hard, Brueggeman said, to set limits on other pastoral duties -
when a pastor wants to do well, and when congregations are paying the
pastor's salary.

	"It is a struggle for a preacher in our culture to vocalize what the Bible
says to us," he said. "I'm a preacher. And it is just damn hard."

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