Preaching Exercise
The
first thing the professor made us do was get up from our desks and touch our
toes. Every preaching class, week after week. For some of us
students this was physically impossible at the beginning of the semester, but
over time we managed to reach down and feel the pain and hold it briefly before
rising slowly and reaching up to the ceiling. Then she’d have us do the whole
movement again and again.
A
strange exercise for a preaching class, I thought at the time. It was my only
class in seminary—and come to think of it, my only class ever, except for
Physical Education and Marching Band—that involved getting off our bottoms and
using our bodies. We preaching students came to appreciate it as a fifteen-minute
recess in an otherwise academic training for ministry. Our line of work
involved reading books, writing papers, and sitting around and talking about
reading books and writing papers. And preaching was the epitome of reading (the
scriptures and commentaries on the scriptures), then writing (a sermon
manuscript), and then talking about it (reading aloud the scriptures and sermon
manuscript to the congregation).
No
wonder sermons put people to sleep.
In
the first church I served after becoming a “Minister of the Word”—as it states
on my certificate of ordination lest there be any doubt as to the importance of
knowledge in this profession—I spent a large portion of my time each week
preparing and writing a sermon. I would skim the lectionary selections from the
Old Testament, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles; choose one or two of
these passages to focus on and read them in depth and take a few notes; read
what some other biblical scholars and theologians had to say about them and add
to my notes; think about the passages and my notes and draft a sermon in long
hand; and then sit down with the passages and my draft and my head full of
thoughts—and a deadline looming—and type out a sermon, editing and revising as
I typed.
Notice
the key physical activity in all of this—apart from opening and closing books,
pens, and typewriters—is sitting. I would sit on my backside and not use my
body. Not even a few toe-touches.
Then
I got fired. Or rather, the session, the ruling body of the congregation, voted
on whether to renew my annual contract that I had held for only one year, and
they decided, by a margin of one, not to renew my contract. As the moderator of
the session and thus a member of this session, I could have voted. Assuming I
voted for the motion to renew my contract, the vote would have been tied and
the motion passed. But, wisely, I had excused myself from the discussion and
decision and let the chips fall where they did. My tears afterward expressed
relief as much as failure.
The
moment of this vote until the end of my contract year left me with about a half
dozen Sundays in which to preach. I distinctly recall deciding that I was not
going to take the time to write any more sermons for this congregation. I read
and researched the scripture passages as usual, but I didn’t take notes or
write a draft or type a manuscript. No more sitting down on the job.
I
started jogging. I was living in a city whose blocks were one tenth of a mile
long, and I ran around a short block, three tenths of a mile each lap, ten laps
for a total of three miles. Not bad for someone who hadn’t exercised regularly
since high school.
Running
or jogging—or slogging, as it often feels—allowed me to do something positive
in the wake of having something negative done to me. It got my heart pumping,
my lungs panting, my body sweating. I discovered muscles I never knew I had. I
was very angry and sad and depressed after losing my first job as a pastor, and
my runs released more tears, more thoughts about what went wrong, and more
things I wish I’d said in my defense as well as a few remarks I wish I’d made
to offend.
Running
also turned me into a preacher: running gave me the time and space and energy
to run through all the sermons in me that were not meant for public consumption,
and left me a few words that were, I had to say, truly inspired.
Running
left me a few words truly inspired that I had to say.
Running
improved my breathing, which empowered my voice, which changed my tune both
about the exercise of preaching—and my preaching professor was right, it is a
physical exercise—and my job as a “Minister of the Word.” It’s physical labor,
day in and day out, week after week.
I
still read and research and write and talk about reading and researching and
writing. But I don’t sit down to prepare a sermon. I go out and run.
