Sermon Salt
I just finished an article for Ministry Today titled Sermon Salt: How to Spice Up Your Preaching.
I'm posting it in two parts.
Here is a little excerpt:
A recent Fast Company article, Weird Science, spotlighted one of the most innovative chefs in America. Homaro Cantu is part chef, part mad scientist, and part inventor. And he is one a mission to change the way people perceive and experience food.
The menu at Moto restaurant in Chicago is constantly changing as the chefs use everything from a Class IV laser to liquid nitrogen to experiment with new ways of making and presenting their meals. Cantu and his rebel chefs are pushing the culinary envelop by combining foods in unprecedented ways. Their donut soup, for example, tastes exactly like the inside of a Krispy Kreme donut. And if you want, you can actually eat their edible menus.
So what makes Cantu such a remarkable chef? It is his unique combination of the fresh with the familiar. In the words of Jennifer Reingold, Cantu has a way of "imagining startlingly original ways of presenting and reconstituting food." It is about the "deconstruction of a comfortable, memory-evoking food and its resurrection in a totally different presentation."
Maybe we ought to approach the spiritual diet of our congregations with as much intentionality and ingenuity as Homaro Cantu? Maybe we need to go back to the test kitchen and come up with a few original recipes? Maybe we need to present the truth in some startlingly new ways? Isn't that one job of the homiletician?
Cheesy Broccoli
John 12:50 has always been my preaching mantra. Jesus said, "I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it."
Think of what as the meal.
Think of how as the presentation.
Maybe we should approach our preaching craft like a gourmet chef. We not only do we have to serve well-balanced meals that nourish our congregations. We have to serve meals that taste good and present well.
I like the way preaching professor, J. Michael Shannon, puts it. When he was a boy, his mother would put melted cheese on his broccoli to get him to eat it. Author Dave Stone quotes Shannon in his book, Refining Your Style.
I don't think there is anything wrong with entertainment value in our sermons. There's nothing wrong with putting a littlse cheese on our broccoli. The problem comes if we feed people nothing but cheese. It's important for us not to forget the broccoli.
There is an old aphrorism: a teaspoon of sugar makes the medicine go down. In the preaching context, a pinch of salt makes the truth a little more palatable.
Have you ever analysed the fifty-three parables Jesus told? They weren't just truthful. They were flavorful. I would suggest that they had high entertainment value for the listeners. I'm not suggesting that the church is in the entertainment business. But our sermons ought to be anything but bland. Spicing up our sermons is very different than watering down the truth. It doesn't mean we are less truthful. It simply means we are more engaging.
In her book, Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers said:
We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine--"dull dogma," as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—the dogma is the drama.
Is there anything more exciting or more entertaining than being a spirit-led follower of Christ? It is the antithesis of boredom. And our sermons ought to reflect that truth.
In the words of Peter Kreeft: "It doesn't matter whether it's a dull life or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith."
Kreeft argues that our greatest failure isn't moral or intellectual. It is an aesthetic failure.
If our sermons are going to be heard we've got to capture the imagination; target the tastebuds; and appeal to the aesthetic sense of our listeners just like Jesus did.
That's isn't watering down the truth. It is spicing it up.
Add Salt
The other night our family was at the dinner table and one of our kids almost spit out their corn after taking one bite. It's not that it didn't taste good. It was the fact that it was absolutely bland. We looked at the can the corn came in and discovered that there was no salt added.
Bland is bad when it comes to food. It is even worse when it comes to preaching.
Do we take seriously what Jesus said in Matthew 5:13? "You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?"
What is the function of salt?
We tend to think of salt as a preservative. And that is certainly one function of a sermon. It stops spiritual decay. But salt is also a flavor additive. It makes everything taste better by adding flavor! We are literally called to spice things up. I don't know anybody who settles for nourishment when it comes to food. We want food that appeals to our taste buds. We want sweet and sour. We want hot and spicy.
We all know that the fundamental role of food is to provide caloric energy. But we don't just eat for energy. We want our food to taste good. And there is nothing wrong with that! Is there anything wrong with people wanting a little salt on their sermons?
Food for thought.
I'm posting it in two parts.
Here is a little excerpt:
A recent Fast Company article, Weird Science, spotlighted one of the most innovative chefs in America. Homaro Cantu is part chef, part mad scientist, and part inventor. And he is one a mission to change the way people perceive and experience food.
The menu at Moto restaurant in Chicago is constantly changing as the chefs use everything from a Class IV laser to liquid nitrogen to experiment with new ways of making and presenting their meals. Cantu and his rebel chefs are pushing the culinary envelop by combining foods in unprecedented ways. Their donut soup, for example, tastes exactly like the inside of a Krispy Kreme donut. And if you want, you can actually eat their edible menus.
So what makes Cantu such a remarkable chef? It is his unique combination of the fresh with the familiar. In the words of Jennifer Reingold, Cantu has a way of "imagining startlingly original ways of presenting and reconstituting food." It is about the "deconstruction of a comfortable, memory-evoking food and its resurrection in a totally different presentation."
Maybe we ought to approach the spiritual diet of our congregations with as much intentionality and ingenuity as Homaro Cantu? Maybe we need to go back to the test kitchen and come up with a few original recipes? Maybe we need to present the truth in some startlingly new ways? Isn't that one job of the homiletician?
Cheesy Broccoli
John 12:50 has always been my preaching mantra. Jesus said, "I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it."
Think of what as the meal.
Think of how as the presentation.
Maybe we should approach our preaching craft like a gourmet chef. We not only do we have to serve well-balanced meals that nourish our congregations. We have to serve meals that taste good and present well.
I like the way preaching professor, J. Michael Shannon, puts it. When he was a boy, his mother would put melted cheese on his broccoli to get him to eat it. Author Dave Stone quotes Shannon in his book, Refining Your Style.
I don't think there is anything wrong with entertainment value in our sermons. There's nothing wrong with putting a littlse cheese on our broccoli. The problem comes if we feed people nothing but cheese. It's important for us not to forget the broccoli.
There is an old aphrorism: a teaspoon of sugar makes the medicine go down. In the preaching context, a pinch of salt makes the truth a little more palatable.
Have you ever analysed the fifty-three parables Jesus told? They weren't just truthful. They were flavorful. I would suggest that they had high entertainment value for the listeners. I'm not suggesting that the church is in the entertainment business. But our sermons ought to be anything but bland. Spicing up our sermons is very different than watering down the truth. It doesn't mean we are less truthful. It simply means we are more engaging.
In her book, Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers said:
We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine--"dull dogma," as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—the dogma is the drama.
Is there anything more exciting or more entertaining than being a spirit-led follower of Christ? It is the antithesis of boredom. And our sermons ought to reflect that truth.
In the words of Peter Kreeft: "It doesn't matter whether it's a dull life or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith."
Kreeft argues that our greatest failure isn't moral or intellectual. It is an aesthetic failure.
If our sermons are going to be heard we've got to capture the imagination; target the tastebuds; and appeal to the aesthetic sense of our listeners just like Jesus did.
That's isn't watering down the truth. It is spicing it up.
Add Salt
The other night our family was at the dinner table and one of our kids almost spit out their corn after taking one bite. It's not that it didn't taste good. It was the fact that it was absolutely bland. We looked at the can the corn came in and discovered that there was no salt added.
Bland is bad when it comes to food. It is even worse when it comes to preaching.
Do we take seriously what Jesus said in Matthew 5:13? "You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?"
What is the function of salt?
We tend to think of salt as a preservative. And that is certainly one function of a sermon. It stops spiritual decay. But salt is also a flavor additive. It makes everything taste better by adding flavor! We are literally called to spice things up. I don't know anybody who settles for nourishment when it comes to food. We want food that appeals to our taste buds. We want sweet and sour. We want hot and spicy.
We all know that the fundamental role of food is to provide caloric energy. But we don't just eat for energy. We want our food to taste good. And there is nothing wrong with that! Is there anything wrong with people wanting a little salt on their sermons?
Food for thought.
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