“Do you think that preachers should see themselves as professional speakers?”

"Do you think that preachers should see themselves as professional speakers?"

My friend Stuart, who teaches Homiletics, and who is himself one of the finest preachers I have heard, asked this question on his blog (Politurgy) and on Facebook, evoking a lot of helpful and clarifying responses. The question is meant to provoke thought, examine lazy assumptions, push back against answers given too quickly without digesting the meat of the question.

My own thoughts were as follows:

Sometimes what we mean by a word can be clarified by experimenting with synonyms and antonyms.

Professional speaker can mean, expert, trained, adhering to accepted standards, experienced, proficient, accomplished, efficient, effective, practised. Most of these sit comfortably with 'preacher'.

Antonyms of professional might include adjectives such as amateur, untrained, inexperienced, ineffective etc, and few of us would be comfortable with such descriptions.

Professional need not have a financial referent, but can be used to affirm the importance of excellence, effort, humility to go on improving, continuing discipline and accountability, and commitment to skill development.

Likewise professional can refer to personal commitment to the activity as art, craft, gift, talent and a focused development and practice of the skill set which characterises preaching.

Perhaps the text that best describes the tension (but not contradiction) between professionalism and vocational commitment is, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed for his own chosen purpose." (Phil 2.12 REB) 

Behind all of this for me is the won't go away question of what it is any of us think we are doing when we dare to describe what we are doing as preaching. On the string of responses on Stuart's post distinctions were made between preaching, speaking and teaching. Others wanted to ensure the word 'professional' was not exclusive of those who were 'lay' preachers, that is non clerical, non stipendiary, in any case, unpaid. 

My own concern, goes back to my earliest serious thinking about "what it is we think we are doing" when we preach." The text from Philippians 2 above helps us understand the dynamic tensions that arise in the heart, mind and conscience of one who believes they are called to preach. That desire and whatever ability we have to preach, has complex origins in this person who so desires. It inevitably also involves the communities within which the preacher belongs and amongst whom they will preach. Preaching is both calling and discipline, both gift and skill, both charisma and art, engaging imagination, intellect, affections and one's own inner life and being; and all this expressed through the media of words, personality, character and relatedness to others.

Preaching is emphatically not the same as lecturing, or class teaching, or address on every and all kinds of matters of public interest. Preaching in a Christian worship context is an activity that has far reaching claims and consequences for those who speak. But it also has claims and consequences for those who listen and respond, positively or negatively, to this person who has been invited to speak into the life of a faith community, out of the Bible as sacred text. The preached words are mediated through the earthen vessel of one who, if they are wise, recognises the foolishness of preaching, and have come to rely on the power and wisdom of God who uses such ordinary cracked humanity in sometimes extraordinary whole-making ways. 

I have no problem with the descriptor professional, if by that is meant to give God our best, and to do so at God's invitation and calling, in humility and gratitude that is earthed, foundationally, in Philippians 2.12: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed for his own chosen purpose." (Phil 2.12 REB)

It's worth finishing with George Herbert's lovely poem about preachers as "crazie glasse"!

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