Transcript

Go back and change his grade. Well, it's good to see you here. This is afternoon. I never liked afternoon classes. I didn't care too much for the morning classes. It's been a problem of mine through the years that I've always liked learning, teaching, that dynamic, but I never did like school. I think it was the way school began for me, coming in from the country to the town and thinking everybody there had money and influence and culture and all, which I didn't have. And so school, the social competitiveness of school, left me in a lot of pain sometimes. And so I got off to a bad start, but it was good to be associated with this school and still is, and to be here. This is kind of a big group to be a workshop or whatever. So I think I will talk a little, you talk a little, and I would be happy since I'm not around very much. If any of you want to ask me about anything I've said or should have said, or why did I say it, or anything about your own preaching that I might respond to, I'd be glad to. I think the question and answer time might be the heart of the matter. As announced in the program, I wanted to remind you of a very important matter to me in the preparation and delivery of sermons, and that is the formation of habits. Mark mentioned being from North Georgia, from Ellijay. We were right up the road at Cherry Log, but if you go on past us, that's Highway 515, and you go on past us and on past Blue Ridge, which is about six miles past my turnoff into the country. About five miles beyond Blue Ridge, still on 515, you intersect Highway 60. There's a red light there, and you turn left on 60, you go through Mineral Bluff. And Mineral Bluff, which is a small town, has one turn in it, it's a turn right, and that takes you toward Murphy in Andrews, North Carolina. Before you get to the North Carolina line, if you turn off on a road to the right, there's some harvesting fields there, but then there's the mountain. Eric Rudolph hid out in that area. If you stay on that road, none of it is paved, part of it is gravel, and part of it is just dirt. But if you stay on it until the end, you'll come to a cabin where a man lives, who is the oldest man in the world. I didn't believe it at first, but I was told about him, and I enjoyed talking with old people, have a wisdom, so I went to see him, and he's the oldest, he's the oldest. I didn't ask him his age, but I did ask him some questions about creation. I was really, in a way, disappointed in what he said, because I thought we'd get a glowing report of the morning stars singing together and all that, you know. Obviously, I hadn't read his Bible to know what happened. He was there at creation, and he said, I was talking about how wonderful it must have been. He said it was a mess, it was an absolute mess. And I asked him to explain what he meant. He said, well, everything was happening for the first time, and nobody, no thing you want to do. He said we had birds walking everywhere they went, rabbits trying to climb trees. He said he saw a robin lay her eggs and then trying to build the nest. He said it was just unbelievably bad, it would snow in July, had no seasons, and then he said the real problem, you see, was that no habits had been formed as chaos. I'm glad I went. Order begets order, and order begets freedom. I'm sure many of you have read Herman Melville's short story, The Enchanted Island, it's about a shipwreck and a woman survivor of the shipwreck. I think her husband, this has been a time ago. Her husband, I think, and her brother both died in the shipwreck, and she found herself then alone on an island, the only human being on the island. Absolutely panicky. Running up and down the island and the beach, trying to find some survivor of the wreck, she was it. Now what's she going to do? And in Melville's story, what she did was try to bring some order to her life. So she got some sticks and sharp edge rocks. And every time the sun would rise, she would put a notch on the stick. When the sun set, she notched a stick. When she found some bird eggs to eat, she notched a stick. When she caught a fish, she notched a stick. Whenever it rained, she notched a stick. And by notching those sticks, gained some control of her life and began to live. It's absolutely necessary. A lot of stuff that passes off of freedom is just really panicky. At the bird feeder out in the back of our house, beautiful cardinals come, losing a good bit of their color now. They're still pretty. And we put the food out there. Take a pack. Looking for the cat. Looking for whatever. You know, take a pack, say, free as a bird. That bird would trade that in in a heartbeat for some real freedom. She notched the sticks and gave some order to her life and she began to live. It's the same experience you have and I have when we read a novel. The reading of a novel is a delight for a lot of reasons. But one reason is it's controlled experience. There's a focus on a few characters. There's a focus upon one stream of life. And all the rest of everything is forgotten for a moment. And I get to concentrate on this distilled piece of life under control, disciplined and moves through chaos to resolution. It's delightful. It's controlled. And I benefit from that control. I'm speaking in behalf of habit. Habit is our friend. Habits are necessary for life. But habits have such a bad reputation. It's gotten to where they have to have character witnesses. And so I'm representing myself in that way. I have no profound definition of habit. A habit is a well -established behavior that seems to be more or less automatic now. A behavior that has been so well-established, it seems to be automatic. And that's when the freedom comes. I hate to ride in a car with someone who's learning to drive. Now I will press the brake. Now I will turn the wheel. Now I will flip the blinker. You know you're going to wreck because everything is consciously thought through and thoughtfully done. And you don't want to be around people when they're in the thoughtful stage. You never really do well at something until much of life is relegated to the spinal column and doesn't require your head at all. You don't have to think about it. Now it's a bit frightening because you've had the experience of driving through on a highway. There's a string of towns and each one has a red light. And after you've gone for a while and you say, did I stop for the lights? I don't even remember stopping for the lights. Did I run those lights? No, you did all right. Because you've gotten so good at it that you have left your head, your mind, your imagination free to do other things. Now I know there's some curbs on that. But that's when a person is free. It is well established to the point of seeming to be automatic. And how is that established? It's established by two things. Repetition and satisfaction. Repetition alone won't do it. Going to church every Sunday, you don't form the habit unless there is some satisfaction. But the two together create habit. And habit is a wonderful thing. I made a note of what William James said one time. Habit is the enormous flywheel of society. Habit keeps everything going, whether it's driving or anything else. As many of you know, my last year and a half here, I was suffering from Guillain-Barre, which is a paralysis. It was totally paralyzed, waist down, partially waist up. And I have a residue of that disease that is spasmodic and uncertain, and it's coming and going. I have a permanent residue of weariness in the legs. I don't go to church and preach both services anymore. I can't stand that long. I have that, you know, I live with that. But there is a common goal capacity in my hand. For instance, some of you have asked me to sign a book. And for some of you, I just, you know, how you do, nobody can read your writing, just go right along. And then somebody else comes up, what did you sign my book? What happened? I am having to tell my hand, F-R-E-D. From automatic to thoughtful, I have to write thoughtfully. And then after a while, it may disappear, and I'm doing the same careless stuff as everybody else. It's a disconcerting thing to have to think about what you don't need to think about. The habit breaks down. Sometimes it's true with the feet. I'll be walking, and then I'll try to make two steps in a row with the left foot, which is not the way you do it. Some of you have noticed that. I know recently I was up on just a little three -step ladder, foot-step, foot -stool, to cut a limb off a tree. And when I started down, I stepped down with my left foot, and instead of going into my right, I stepped down and gave them my left foot and fell to the ground. I was in one of those moments when I had to say, now the other foot, now the left foot, now the right foot, and you're on the ground. Or nearly no, but it's a breakdown of habit, and it is such a waste of time. It's not just embarrassing. It's not embarrassing to me. It's a little bit embarrassing. You asked me to sign my book, and I'm writing it like I don't remember my name, but not really. What is bothersome is I am having to give time and attention to what ought to be just automatic if you have the habit. Repetition and satisfaction forms the habit. Now there are a lot of benefits to this. When your mind is free, so much of your life is relegated to the spinal cord, and you don't have to give it thought. The mind is free to imagine, to think, to solve problems, to deal with all kinds of things that otherwise would tie you up. Just manual things, skilled things, and that's why I'm talking to you about it, because I think a lot of ministers just waste a whole lot of time thinking about what this shouldn't think about. I know some ministers, you can find this hard to believe, but they are now, after 20, 30 years in the ministry, still every week thinking about when and where they're going to study for their sermon. Have some books, and some paper, and go to the dining room, and then go into the den, and then maybe go out on a porch, and go back into the bedroom, and go where is a good place to study? And here you are, making your head do all that work that has nothing to do with what you're doing. You're doing what? Preparing sermons, but looking for a place. What's a good time to study? When do you study? What's a good time? I don't know. I think sometimes I do better in the morning, but I'm still experimenting. I've only been at this 41 years, and I'm trying to figure out when would be a good... Come on now. I would imagine that many of us use, of our active adult life, 15 or 20 years of it, with things that we shouldn't even think about, because it's all automatic. By having a good habit, the time it requires to do something is sharply reduced. To have a good habit increases productivity. Summer set mom, great novelist, British novelist, used to go to his typewriter every morning after breakfast, every morning. He wasn't wandering around through the house, wondering when the muse is going to visit me, and I will be inspired, and I can write something. He went to that same chair, at that same desk, at that same old typewriter, and sat there. And just the motion of his body in that told his rest of his being. You're at the typewriter, and you're a writer. You get it? I had a roommate in college. We were roommates four years, and he spent so much time. He would line up his paper, and line up his pencils, and then trying to figure when. And no, I think I'll go into the library. No, and you see him hour or two later with his stuff, wandering around, looking for a good place. He's a sharp, brilliant person. But at the age he is now, he could have added 10 years of productivity to his life if he'd have formed a habit. And to this day, he doesn't have one, because he likes to be free. He's a captive of no habit. One habit I have, if I may be autobiographical here, one habit I have is I write one page every day. Now that's just six days a week. I don't write seven days a week. But six days a week, I write a page. In the course of the year, I write the equivalent of a book. But I don't ever sit down and say, I'm going to write a book. And much of what I write never sees the light of day. I mean, it's not worth it. It doesn't fit in with anything. But I write a page a day. Bishop Cannon used to stop me in the hall and say, a page every day? I said, no, page every day. Well, you write a lot that way. I said, yeah, all right, all right, that way, just a page a day. Why not that? I will write one page every day, which I do. I write it in the evening, always in the evening. It's not the same time in the evening, because the evening activities will throw you a bit off. But before I go to bed, I have written a page, a page of what? Well, sometimes it's just pure malarkey. I would say maybe 90% of the time. Sometimes I write up some conversation ahead. Sometimes I will write one page about a text that I'm trying to understand. David running from Saul with his little band of soldiers. And one day he looked across toward Bethlehem, which was his hometown, and he thought about that well where he used to drink as a boy. He said, oh, if I had a drink of water from that well, and one of his lieutenants jumped over, and another one did jumped over, went through enemy lines, got a cup of water from that well, came back through enemy lines, and handed him the water. And he poured it on the ground. I cannot drink the blood of my friends. I was moved by that story. It's in your Bible. Some of you wonder whether that's right. It's in your Bible. I was moved by that story, and I wanted to claim it. I wanted to own it. I wanted to assimilate it, and I wrote it the way I would tell it. One page, not two pages. I don't ever write two pages, just one page. So many things that you read in the Bible and you want to get a grasp on. Whether it has to do with next Sunday's sermon or not, that's not the point. Just find a page. You went to the nursing home. You talked to this woman who's going in and out of a kind of amnesia, dementia, something like that. Don't romanticize it, just write that up. What did she say? What did you say? What did she say? What did you say? And put it away. Well, what do you do with that page? I just put it in a file of this stuff. I'm not organizing it. I'm not doing anything with it. It may appear, may not appear in something written or spoken. That's not the point. I write a page every day. I have never said I was going to write a book. Sometimes out of those pages, a book has come, but just a page. These habits, good habits, regularity, disciplined way, is so extraordinarily fruitful. Sometimes a good habit will carry you along when your heart is not in your work. Sometimes I've had people tell me that they go to church, not particularly interested. But it's Sunday morning, and I go to church, so it's Sunday morning, and I go to church, so I go to church, and all these silly people that say, well, what good is that? Just going out of habit, hey, hey, number one reason. Well, what happened when you went to church out of habit? It was extraordinary. Your habits will carry you through the places when your heart is not in it. And if you don't think those occur, well, you know better. This is the advantage some people have who belong to liturgical churches. The regular order of worship that's read for the day doesn't depend on how many are there, how they're feeling, do we have a quorum or anything else. This is the worship for the day. And then there are people that show up as dead as four o'clock, but they go through that because it carries them. I think of the women who wanted to attend to the body of Jesus. And Luke says, between his death, and they're going to dress the body again, fell the Sabbath. And they observed the Sabbath, and after the Sabbath, they came to the tomb with spices. Now, why did they wait? It was the Sabbath because the order of their lives had to stay fixed. They had lost the one person most important to them. And so they didn't just go running around this and this and this. They kept the routine of life. Friday evening at six o'clock, everything shut down. They began the Sabbath prayers, the Sabbath songs, the Sabbath foods, the Sabbath gatherings, and that carried them to Easter morning. I think it was their survival. I think it was their preparation for the resurrection, just that event. A woman's husband dies, the family is there, daughters, grandkids. The burial has taken place. There's food all over the kitchen. And in the refrigerator, people sending food, bringing food. Nobody's hungry. The new widow gets up and goes into the kitchen and starts cleaning some dishes and preparing a little something for supper. Oh, mother, don't do that. We'll take care of that. She goes right ahead. She pours some milk over the dog food and feeds the dog. Mother, one of the boys will do that. Sit down and rest. You shouldn't be a... Leave her alone. She goes down to the grocery and gets a quart of milk. Mother, one of the boys can do that. How much is it? Weakened. Why don't you sit down? She goes for the milk. She has some habits. Don't take those habits away. That's the only way she'll keep her sanity is habit. And so she does. Thomas Hardy used to write about the composing nature of daily habit. It has pastoral care written all over it. The habit does and will be to the person who breaks them up. William Lynch wrote years ago about somebody who wanted to do a very cruel thing and they went into a nursing home and rearranged the furniture. It was absolutely devastating. I was housed when I went to preach for a gathering of churches, council churches, or whatever. In Newton, North Carolina, I was housed in a Abernathy retirement center. They had motels there. There was a holiday in right near one of the churches, but they put me in the retirement center. I was insulted. I was insulted. I passed around my insults. But when I went to the retirement center, I was introduced to the director, a very pleasant woman. And she said, now when you come for breakfast, wait till the others are seated because they sit in the same place every time. Don't get in one of their places. You mean to say these people are in such, oh, shut up. You don't understand. They're trying to stay alive and stay sane. This is why you do some people a real favor if your sermon has a flow to it that's highly predictable. Highly predictable. Now, I may contradict that in a moment, but let it stand like it is. You know, church is one of the last places where people can go and not feel that they'll be ambushed. But now you go to church, you can feel ambushed. You don't know, you know, what this and that. I preached in Louisville. The minister said, now you go in with the choir. I'll be in in a moment. I went in with the choir. I thought he was going to stay at the back and have a prayer or something. He disappeared. A window raised. He crawled in the window on the side of the sanctuary, wearing a robe, walked across in front of the table and came up and sat beside me. It was disconcerting. And afterwards I said, why did you do that? And he said, these people come and sit in the same place every Sunday. I just wanted to shake them up. Well, I know what he in his stupidity was trying to do, but he has no appreciation of the composing nature of daily habit. And young ministers frequently want to go in and change things up and put their stamp on things and find that they have opposition and that proverbial little woman in tennis shoes and this and that always across my path and blocking what I'm trying to do and all. You haven't expected their habits. The habit sustains a person through very difficult times. Now, it's a problem, of course. Sometimes the habit is. Someone says, but I like to preach prophetic sermons. And if it's highly predictable, same pattern, same flow, same style, then when can I be prophetic? It's in that same flow and in that same style that you can be prophetic. Because if you come out wearing a Hawaiian shirt and dancing a little jig and reading something backwards and doing other kind of cute stuff and then you want to preach a prophetic sermon, they've used up all their calories trying to figure out what in the world you're doing. Why don't you just do what you usually do and they are listening to that? Then all of a sudden, wow. Jesus went to the synagogue as was his custom, his habit. And on the Sabbath, when he was in the synagogue at Nazareth, the attendant got the scroll, opened it to Isaiah, handed it to Jesus. Jesus read from the scroll, gave it back to the attendant. He put it in the ark. Wasn't that beautiful? What we have every Sunday. He's such a nice young man. His mother and brothers and sisters are here. And didn't he read well? And Jesus said, this scripture has been fulfilled today in your hearing. And he got to talking with him. And pretty soon they were mad as bald owls and wanted to throw him over a cliff. It was a normal service. But suppose he had come in through the window speaking gentile ease and saying, they just don't get my stuff. They're so stuffy and stale and this and that. Within the habit is the freedom to be prophetic. But if you use all of your freedom showing how free you are, there's no juice left for the prophetic sermon. Nobody's listening anymore. It's sophomoric, true or false as it may be. It's sophomoric. Preaching with a certain predictability has a pastoral care effect. It also can be the vehicle for preaching prophetically so that when you do the prophetic thing, it will be prophetic and will not be couched in a lot of surprises. I recommend habit. I recommend the habit of reading. Those who've been my students know I urge you to read that which has nothing to do with the sermon next Sunday's or any. We'll just read Good Litted Tour. I'm going back and reading again right now. Cayam Potox, The Chosen and The Promise. I've read The Chosen. I'm reading now The Promise. It's delightful, very good writer, neat and clean and takes me into the world of rabbis and rabbinic schools and all. It's just really good. Has nothing to do with anything except me. I read now in my retired life. I have upped the evening reading to 30 minutes. It used to be 20. There are some benefits, you know. I read 30 minutes in the evening. I don't try to stretch that out if it's real interesting because the thing is if it's real interesting and you're tempted to read a little longer, you're not really sleepy anyway, that's a mistake. Put your marker in there when it's really interesting and you're anxious for tomorrow evening and you'll come back to it at that point. Have some things you're anxious to come back to when you're studying and you're studying something that you have a breaking moment of clarity. Now I'm getting to it. Take a break. Don't wait until you've reached the point of diminishing returns. And it's a drag in yourself. Well, I'll just stop here and start again tomorrow. You don't want to come back because it was such a dismal pitch you were in. You don't want to come back. But if you will break at the peak, at the top, say, man, I can't get back to that study. You're playing tricks on yourself, maybe so. But I suggest a good habit of reading. I'm reading James Williams' book on raccoon John Smith. He was a Southern Appalachian mountain preacher. Very little education, but an extraordinary mind. Memorize the Bible practically. I'm fascinated by him living back there in those mountains, trying to raise crops, have a garden, children dying in infancy. He keeps at it. He's a remarkable man. Raccoon John Smith, this is his name. He was German. His father was George Schmidt, but they lived in an area where people didn't like Germans. And old George said, and from now on, it's Smith. And his son was John Smith. He was German. Pietists became Baptist, thrown out of the Baptist. Became Presbyterian, not allowed to preach. Became this, became that. It's a good book. It's an old book. It's out of print. Covers are coming off my copy. I don't know why I hadn't read that before. I was told to read it by a woman in the mountains. She said, you ought to read it. I read it. Most of the books I read are recommended by other people, are given to me by other people. I like it when people give me a book. When we were in the Bahamas, on a preaching mission in the Bahama Islands, the churches there had lost their libraries. Ministers had lost their libraries and all. But when I left, they gave me a gift. They gave me a copy of the British Methodist hymnal, from off of a rack or table there, and gave it to me. It's that copy that doesn't have the music, just the words. And I read some of that every evening. It's just poetry. It's the words to the tunes, and there are no tunes there. And I make up tunes, try to hum them and say them out. It's a delightful thing. Do you read the hymnal? Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes is about tops in the evening. I recommend a habit of study. You know what I always say. Find a time, find a place, and do it. Here is my habit for what it's worth. Now that I have been retired 10 years, this is my routine. I am through with my breakfast and preparing myself for the day at 7.30. I study from 7.30 until 9. And at 9, I go to the office, so-called, of the Craddock Center. An hour and a half each morning has such cumulative effect. You know how much time of study that is in the course of a year? It just really adds up. Sometimes we just make the mistake of thinking that these little pieces aren't really any good. When I really get a good stretch of time, and I deserve a sabbatical. When I really get a good stretch of time and have three months, six months, then I'm really going to produce just a little bit. My father said to me, Son, if someone offers you a job of honest labor, and will pay you for a day's work, one grain of corn, with the promise that they will double your pay every day, and that you can work for them three months, take the job. At the end of three months, you'll be a rich man. A grain of corn, and then two grains, come on, and four grains, and then eight grains, and then 16. I'm not getting anywhere, and then all of a sudden, it's such a mistake not to have habits of reading and study, and the discipline of the same place, same thing, all the time. I never take a newspaper, or an interesting magazine, or Newsweek, or Christian Century, anything like that, into the chair and at the table where I study. When my body hits that chair, it's an uncomfortable chair. Legs are a little long. Need to cut them off. But when I sit at that chair, at that table, my body says, study. And I don't waste 30 seconds being into it. No warm-up time, no exit time, just that's it, and when I'm up here, I'll come back to this. Nine o'clock, I quit. Next day, it's the same. Next day, it's the same. It is that way six days. That's a habit of mine. Well, don't you ever have any interruptions? Well, of course you have interruptions. But if you don't have a habit, you don't have interruptions. You're just hoping the phone will ring. You're hoping there's something. Maybe somebody will die today, and I get to have a funeral, or no. It doesn't anybody get married anymore? It's just like following a pattern of preaching, whether it's the lectionary or a schedule of preaching text that you've devised for yourself. And somebody says, well, doesn't something come up to cause you to need to vary from that? Of course. But it's a varying from that. If you don't have a habit and don't have a schedule, there's nothing to remove. There's nothing to vary from. But if there is an interruption, it has to be important enough. It has to be an emergency of such importance that it can scoot off the page, what I had planned to say. But if I don't have anything on the page, it's just like a vacuum. It sucks it in. I'll preach on that Sunday, because I had nothing. I'm saying what you already know. But I just keep running into so many ministers who are still trying to make good use of their time, but have no habits. Habits are our friends. Those of you approaching graduation, those of you fresh in the parish, what do you do on Tuesday? You used to go to class on Tuesday. Now, what do you do? Well, I hadn't really thought about it. Get some habits. You say, but I'm an evening person. Okay, 10.30 to midnight. Well, I'm not that much of an evening person. Come on, establish the pattern, follow the discipline, and it just sets you free. Just sets you free. My family always knew it. The children, when they were young, knew it. When I got up out of the chair from studying, I was free to play with the kids or go walking, helping them learn to ride a bike or whatever. I was not studying. I was with the kids. When I was with the kids, I was not studying. But when I was studying, I was studying. When I was with the kids, I was with the kids. But how many of us worry ourselves to death? We can't play a game of tennis because we should be studying. And when we're studying, I need to play a game of tennis. And neither one is done. Neither one is enjoyed because I had no habit. I think I've said that now 27 times. I'm not going to say that anymore. I might get in the habit of saying it. Repetition plus satisfaction. And people will marvel at how much you achieve. When do you do that? When do you get that done? Oh, a little fear there, no, no, no, no. When do you get that done? Well, from 7.30 to 9 every morning. When do you get that done? Well, I read from 10.30 to 11 in the evening, delightful reading. But you know all this. Probably want to talk about something else. Because it sounds a lot like discipline. I guess that's what it is. That's the habit of the sermon. That's what sets you free to be playful. Some of you have noticed that I enjoy the playfulness of a sermon. I try to stay light on my feet. But what gives me that lightness is that I have a disciplined pattern of study. And incidentally, I know what I'm talking about. And that sets you free. Well, you probably had something you wanted to ask me. If you do, I'd be glad to answer it if I can. My entire day, no, no, no. When I go over to the center, it used to be the church office, but now when I go over to the center, it's a house where I have a little office. I'm totally available to whoever calls or comes by. And I'm also on the phone making appointments with people who may have some money that I can get to run this center. Because out of the center, we provide music and storytelling and art for 800 Head Start children. These children are living. The families are below poverty. They would never have access to it. And they learn their songs in English and in Spanish. And they play these little instruments and they dance and they just have a bright, good time. They're three and four years old, but it costs money. So I'm, and I'm really available if anybody has deep pockets. And then in the afternoon, a little more of that and then some physical, physical activity before dinner used to be a little running. Now it's walking, be crawling in a couple of years. But that's it. It's not so structured that, but what I have the sense of being free and available all the time. Yes. You had us read Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth because that's what our people would have been reading. And then you said, no, don't preach this basically. Last night you used a passage from Revelation and told us about the quietness or the stillness or silence in the church. This morning you said just read Revelation to them. Where are you now with the book of Revelation? And what would you do preaching it now compared to then with the left behind series and things like that? Well, where I am now is I found after that experience, I found that I could probably be more effective dealing with that in class rather than the small bites that a sermon provides. Though I have preached on Revelation rather frequently, I have taught long sessions, classes, open to the community and sometimes have a class of over 100, the book of Revelation. And we go through the left behind material and other material. We deal with that and we read the text. And I give them some aids that will help them to understand what frightens them or bothers them. But we read the text in huge portions. They get the exposure to that because I want them to understand what's in there, but also what's not in there, like rapture and things that are not in there. Antichrist is not in there, but they just, these books just dump all that together. So if you can get a good, clean picture of what's in there and now you read that, then you are equipped to evaluate these left behind or other kinds of books. But I feel it's very important, I did as the pastor, and I'm not that anymore there. But I felt it was very important to help the membership deal with what they were hearing and reading and seeing on television because there's something subtly seductive about Christian novels. Get off on either side. Well, it's just a novel, but on the other side, it's insinuating itself into the fabric of people's faith. And I think that's dangerous. So I still deal with the book of Revelation, The Good Deal. I chose it this time, for this occasion, because it was a celebration of preaching. And I took the two primary words that are the raw material of preaching, silence and sound. And it is apocalyptic material that gave me that. Both Revelation and Second Astros, yes. Bishop, you're going to ask me a question. Yes, sir, I am. What do you study? You've told us the patterns, and so I study your writings, and you're somewhat, but what do you study? I study. My study consists of, basically, the base of all my study is the study of Scripture. And I usually have two good commentaries on whatever I am studying, Scripture. For instance, the upcoming lectionary, which when I was preaching the same place every Sunday, I followed the lectionary. And next year, you'll see is Luke, and I'm getting myself, as though I were going to be preaching every Sunday next year, I'm studying Luke, carefully in detail from his preface on. But I also study theology. I call my friends and ask, I don't want to read a whole lot of books in theology. I just won't want. I have been, since I've been here, getting a good book, trying to get a good book on the conversation between medicine and religion. Because I just need to know that. So in the course of my reading newspaper and listening to the news and reading news journals and all like that, I discover gaps in my knowledge. And so one of the elements in my study would be that. So that's, those are the three primary things. But at base, I'm a student of Scripture. Pardon me. Yeah. I am in favor of the habit of preaching from the pulpit. And I would have to have a very good reason for moving. And there might be a reason in the building itself. Renovations are going on. I need to stand somewhere else. But I don't go to a convention or conference and there's some hot shot talking about how I just take a handheld mic and I go back and forth and this and that. And the people really like it and all like, not good enough reason. Communication wise, what really are you achieving? What am I achieving? Because I don't want to burn any of their extra calories as listeners watching me, observing me, listening to me. It takes enough for them to see me in my familiar place and listen to me. But now they are having to think, why is he over there? And why is it down here? And that sort of thing. That's what I call burning the calories of the listener for the wrong reason. Now I know there are occasions when coming down to the front and just talking to the folk are quite appropriate because you've got a conversation with these people. They're the congregation. And I need to be down here and talk. And when I finish my little comments, I'd like for any of you who want to say anything to stand and ask a question. Yeah, that's all right. But just think, I think I'll do that some is a burning of their listening energy is my judgment. And I'm always right. It's it is very difficult not to let what people say they like affect you. Well, and sometimes they don't like that at all. To what they say and then what they really are saying, you learn to distinguish that. But the moment you step into a pulpit, you're in a place where a law has happened, very important things have happened. Sermons were preached, funerals, weddings, the Sunday that I received Christ and all like that, something was said from that pulpit. And then for me not to take advantage, shall I say, of the history of that pulpit when I stand up there, we I think I'm a discarding of something important. Dr. Craddock, would you say something of the mechanics of preparing the message that are in place that allow you to be free in the pulpit? I'm not an Emory person from another denomination. I'd be curious what you have taught your students about the habits that you want in every construct of a sermon. Well, it's a matter, first of all, it's a matter, first of all, of the larger picture of what is the preaching season before you, the summer, three months, six months, whatever. And then you have on your desk where you study a loose leaf notebook that have those Sundays with the dates and the texts already there inviting anything that you happen to read or hear to that page. It's a magnet. What you get as you approach the particular service in the particular Sunday, you read the text carefully and make notes of every question or notion that comes to your mind when you read it. It may seem silly, useless. Some of them are informational questions, you know. What is a Sadducee? I forgot. I make a note. I just make little notes about things that, you know, I want to understand this passage. And I spend a lot of time just reading it, writing myself notes about questions that arise, reading it, where does it come in the flow of the narrative and all like that, making those notes. When I reach a certain point where I think I've gotten just reading the text about as far as I'm going to go, then I will get a second and third opinion. That would be a couple of good commentaries. And I read them to see what they have to say. That is hard to do because by this time you may already be getting a germ for a sermon and you don't want a commentary to take it away from you. But it's very important that we get a second and third opinion. I get the critical mind of the whole church to bear on this and I listen to it. I'm not in this by myself. And then having done that, I make an exegetical decision as to whether there's more here than I can handle. There's too much. This text is too pregnant for one's sermon. So what am I going to do? Give a wide-angle view and run through it quickly or draw a focus to a particular place. What my decision is there is determined primarily by the needs of the church and what they know and what they need. But I make an exegetical decision and from that I draw a sentence that I call a thematic sentence, a governing consideration that will control the whole sermon. There is no human sin beyond the grace of God. I write on my paper. That's what I'm going to say. And then I admit from that original stuff and what I've read from commentaries and anything else I've read, I admit into the sermon whatever guides, enlightens, disciplines, informs, and strengthens, confirms that sentence. And when I do all that, I scribble. I still use pen and paper like the Bible says. And I then take out of my notes the things I've jotted down and make phrases of them and just put them down the page. And usually it's about 35 or 40 of those. And then when I get them down like that, it's obvious that some of them don't quite fit. It may be pretty good stuff but doesn't fit. And then I start the listing. I'll put numbers out to the left of those. Oh, this should come first. Then I'll follow up with this. Then I'll say this and so on down to the end. And then I'll write them in that order. See if it has lumps in it, if it has disconnects in it. Now I'll eliminate and rearrange and usually do that four or five times until the material flows in the order in which I want to say it. By then I know the sermon. I don't need notes and manuscripts and stuff. I already know it. I've been working like that because the primary thing in having a sermon well in mind is its movement. How many people need to have so many notes is they're running against their own outline. It's not natural. But if you can get it to flow naturally, you'll know it. You can wake up in the middle of the night and preach it. That's what I do. After I preach the sermon, I get that paper out and write corrections. I shouldn't have ended here. I should have ended here. This would have been a better place to begin. And I write those in the margin because I want to learn from my own preaching because whatever critics, family members, relatives, and friends in the congregation who want to help you by evaluating your sermon, you're the one most qualified. And if you do it immediately afterwards, it will be helpful. Dr. Craddock, you preached last night and you preached this morning in this workshop this afternoon and you talk about letting your presence proceed from your absence and your words proceeding from your silence and getting ready for that two sermons and this workshop. Early in the week, did you rearrange, did you bank some silence or how did you prepare for what really is an exhausting two days for any of us, I think, to do that? Well, that is a good question. I've known for some time that I was coming, that I was to do it, and I was asked some time ago for my titles and texts by the worship people. I knew I also had this conversation, but I really didn't know how it would function. I thought, well, be questioned and answered this and that primarily. But I tried to deal with those two items together, silence and sound, and then how can I separate them? And it was amazing in the work of trying to separate them so I could speak at one time about silence and another time about sound, how much material would have fitted in either one. That's why I said a surgeon can't even separate the two, but I had to separate them in my mind. And so I took two different texts from Revelation. I wanted both of them to be, I wanted the two texts to be from the same book so that the kinship would be built in. But I wanted them to be different texts, not just two sermons on the same text. So once I settled on that, I just went about it as preparing two sermons on down the road. And fortunately, this came at a time after I had retired from the regular every Sunday to the same folk thing. So I had a different that hour and a half or every morning I could devote to these two things at once. The most difficult part of it was not saying last night's today and not saying today's last night. It's a very important thing in a discipline of one's life that you have not have two things together that are very similar. It's like scheduling your classes when you're in seminary. Don't take too many classes that are kind of alike, philosophy and theology and all like that. Have language in between, something as exact as mathematics that make a difference, give you a different rhythm. So I scheduled myself to study these intensely last night all by itself and work it up pretty thoroughly, have the raw material and then do the same for this morning, have it all there, and then look at them. And I would move some material from one to the other as to where it properly belonged. And that was a little difficult for me. But I enjoyed working at it. And I took the word celebration seriously, so I didn't think I should come in here with a heavy brow and a hawk nose and tell you what you were doing wrong, although I could have done that quite easily. I wanted to celebrate my own life in the ministry. I am 75 years old. I've been doing it a long time. So I wanted to enjoy the people here, enjoy the time together, and enjoy the worship and participate in that. So the ambiance of what I was doing was important to me. Yeah, Dr. Hardik, you have suggested that pastors ought to read material that has nothing to do with sermon preparation. I'm wondering if you'd also advocate a kind of study that doesn't have anything to do with sermon preparation, perhaps one alongside the other, a kind of independent inquiry following your interest in whatever interest that might happen to be from 7.30 to 8. 7.30 to 8.15. Then from 8.15 to 9, be doing sermon preparation, or if they're, if those, in the life of a pastor, if those always coalesce. Well, I don't try to slice them in the mornings. I know what kind of study you're talking about, but I don't try to slice it that way from that 7 .30 to 9. But if I am conscientious about the 7.30 to 9, the amount of progress I make toward the sermon, or what a lecture, or whatever I'm to do allows me one morning to pursue something that's totally unrelated in that 7.30 to 9. I give myself a present of that. But usually when I get into something at 7.30, I stay with that hour and a half is not very long. Although I do it an hour and a half because I have discovered in my own body, that's a point of diminishing return. I get to where I'm just staring at the page. But many times things come up that I have been interested, is not the word, I have been stirred by national condition, international politics, and the state of our country. And I'm trying to be informed. So I have spent a good bit of time stealing sometimes from the afternoon to read things that will inform me and not just go emotionally into things. But a lot of it will come up. It has nothing to do with the sermon or lecture, but you need to become more informed. Dr. Credit. I have to confess, I don't have a very good habit of working far in advance. I'm doing better about themes and whatnot. But would you talk a little bit more specifically about how many sermons you can work on? How many thematic sentences you've got out there in front of you? How many pages that you're attaching things to? Is it three? Is it six? Is it a whole year at a time? Well, different people vary. I do 13 weeks at a time. That's a quarter. And I have the pages there with the text written at the top, the date, and then anything about that date, if it's the anniversary of something or Lincoln's birthday or whatever. I just want to know, because not that I will deal with it in a sermon, but I want to know what's the mood of the people. If it's Friday night high school wrestling, I need to know that, because that's a biggie in Ponca City, Oklahoma. So if I'm preaching there, I need to know they're having wrestling matches. But with only 13, I go 13 like that, I reread those texts every once in a while to have them in my mind. For instance, if I'm going to drive to Atlanta, before I leave up there, I may read a text that's coming up on down the way and think about it on the way to Atlanta, because I don't have to think about my driving or once in a while I have to get back up on the road, but I think about it. And I have a little notepad and I'll make a note to myself, something on the side to hold, you know, I'll write a name or an idea, a notion or a word to be filled in more when I get to where I'm going. But it's like a garden. They don't all grow at the same rate. Some of those, the 13th one down the line, you know, may get neglected for quite a while. But if you will hang them on the pegs of your mind, when you're watching the news, when you're listening to a program, when you're watching some, you know, even the weather channel of whatever it might be. Now, where was that? Oh, yeah, that's the ninth Sunday from now. You know, write it there. When I get there, it may all turn to ashes and be worth nothing, but I want to save it because there's nothing more uninspiring as a blank page. So you want to get some stuff on that page. But from my habit, I do 13 at a time and I always worked with the music master and choir director. He's what they are and want to talk about. We drink some coffee and go over it and he takes notes and this and that. He does not have to acquiesce in any way in the preparing of music. He just want, he just needs to know whether this sermon is celebratory. This is lament. This is controversial. This is so and so and so and so. He needs to know it's not a private thing. So I have to have some ahead. Yeah. No, I don't add them except every four weeks. I'll add four weeks to the other end. That's been my habit for the last six years. See, before that, I was a seminary professor and I was a guest in pulpits and that's the worst kind of preaching in the world is being a guest in a pulpit. You don't know who's died, who got married. If the dog was run over, how many kittens the cat had in the basement of the church, you don't know anything. You're just in there all of a sudden morning and they want you to be real brilliant and all like that and saw the air like Shakespeare. But if you're the pastor, you get to be the best preacher they ever heard because you know what's going on. Well, for six years, this little church chair log, which I started, I guess you could put it that way. I preach the same people every week. Students here would say to me, yeah, but if you had to preach the same people every week, it'd be different. It was my preaching improved. The continuity, the accumulation of thought, the learning little inside jokes and how people respond to this and that. Nobody can preach like a pastor can. Other folks can come in as firemen and have a suggestion about how to paint the steeple or start something else and all. But to do the preaching, the pastor's the best. So every four weeks, I had four. So I keep it ahead that way. Dr. Cranett over here. Oh, there you are. Okay. This is a more of a crystal ball question. As you think about the future of preaching, what do you see on the horizon? Well, that's an interesting thing. It's hard to predict because there's so many varieties of things going on now, just lined out preaching, you know, read a line and comment and read a line and comment in some places that got real popular. Almost no scripture and not much sermon in some churches where the minister sort of the MC of a parade of things in the worship service. And that in some places is popular. I would predict, however, that there's going to be an increase of the use of scripture reading and preaching in the pope of the church. Some churches are feeling cheated now that they don't know their Bible. I thought I was regularly in church and I don't know anything about the Bible. Why don't I? I've been here every week. Why don't I know more? So in the teaching and in the preaching, I think that appetite will be satisfied. I know I come at that with a kind of prejudice and so I think that's the way it ought to go. But there are some interesting variations in churches. You know, you got the mega church and the struggling neighborhood church and all. If they just won't envy each other or try to imitate each other, fix them in you that feeds and satisfies those people. But I think it will increase in the quantity of scripture. If I were beginning a church somewhere called to pastor a church or sent to pastor a church somewhere more younger, of course, I would choose four to six people of the congregation and pay for their getting very good professional training in public reading and have them read scripture about 10 minutes before at the beginning of the service every week. Not that any of it is going to stick necessarily, but you're creating a world. You're putting something in the memory bank and this is going to have a formative character, formative force in the life of people. I think we're going to have a larger amount of scripture shared in the worship of the church. That's not that much of a success. Do I? No, take the take the mic again and the do I prepare now like I did then? Or vice versa? Did I prepare then like I do now? Yeah, my I've stayed too long. Well, in general, friend, I would say yes. I would say yes. There are some things I did back then like the the language of excess hyperbolic language and preaching. I still have on my desk to pursue further because I never really got through working through that as a theological matter through Bart and through Steve Webb, University of Chicago and others who've dealt with hyperbolic speech and its function and dysfunction and all like that. And I got into it and had a deadline to present and I did as far as I could, but I still have it on the calendar that I want to pursue it further. There are a number of things like that. You know how it is. You pursue to the point of delivery, but you know, I'd like I need to go back and do some more. But the method is pretty much the same. Craddick. I'm curious about the the other side, the people who have to listen. And I'm interested in some habits of listeners. The newest prayer book in the Church of England, Common Worship, has attached to it as several recommendations for people as they approach and experience and then digest a sermon. One of the things they said in the commentary is pray for the person who's entering the pulpit and pray for the person after they leave the pulpit. Pray for the community that's heard and then talk about what you heard at Sunday dinner or lunch. They explicitly say, do not talk about the preacher. Talk about what you heard. Interesting distinction. I'm wondering what kinds of habits you might invite those of us who listen to sermons to engage in as well. Well, that's a very important point because there's been an increase of attention on the listener in homiletics in the last 25 years. Some of it not real thoughtful, but well intentioned good. And I go to a number of churches and have workshop on listening to preaching. And the preachers are not allowed to come. It's for the lay folk. Part of it is prayer for the preacher. Part of it is to discern ahead of time what is the text and topic going to be and read on that. Read that passage several times before Sunday. Anticipate. Even guess the direction the sermon will go. Not only be prayerful during the delivery, but notice things about the minister that you may need to attend to. The minister needs ministers. Our minister seemed very tired today. I think our minister is not well. Our minister was unduly excited and nervous. I wonder what it is to pay attention to that so that you can be a blessing to the minister. But the point that you just made is a part of what I always urge. And that is to talk with somebody before Sunday evening about what you heard. And I also say to the minister, talk to people who didn't hear you about your sermon. That is go to the hospital and say, well, Bessie, you don't do anything to keep from hearing me, won't you? Well, I wanted to talk to you about what I said this morning because you and I've discussed it. I know it's important to you. And I will tell her what I said in the sermon. It maximizes the use of your time, stewardship of your time as a preacher. But to talk to somebody about it. See, for so long the sermons were sort of enter sanctum and the people used only preferential language. I liked it. I didn't like it. I liked it. Didn't say something substantive about it. And out of that, frequently the minister will be called. We were here having a light supper and discussing the sermon this morning. Did you or did you not say? That's good. That petrifies some ministers, but they get used to it. It's a good thing. But I think that what you have said in the prayer book, that's a very excellent idea. And a new minister going to a church needs to have at a fellowship dinner or an informal time or the church school hour, a conversation about what I do when I preach, what I would like for you to do when I preach. It'll be very important and very helpful, I think, especially while they're trying to get the old sermons, the minister before you out of their mind and turn their ears to you. Because especially if there's a change of gender in the preacher, you have to give people time to get used to the visual difference and the audio difference and not be impatient with them. So instructions, conversation to them about listening, what listening involves. It's a very, very good idea. Dr. Craddick, I've been impressed and intrigued with your packing words up to bring along to occasions. And I've kind of pressed that for my own life over a number of years. And I'm troubled by the fact that the people bring their own words too. And it's like my bag of words doesn't fit their bag of words. I have some people, for example, that I think their words come from the 30s and 40s, maybe 50s. And I'm trying to be a student of Fred Craddick and be real current today with something that's relevant and so forth. Could you speak the fact that we don't always speak the same language? Well, that's quite true. It's quite true that everybody's life is layered and they have at those different layers, the memories of a previous culture, previous music, previous words and all like that. But if you would bring them out sometimes and just talk about them, like I talked about some of those words from my childhood, every once in a while I'd use a word and say, was that from the 70s or 60s? Anybody here remember, they would begin to think of their own vocabulary as exchangeable for something different. But it's buried in there and you can talk to them and it'll come out. But there'll always be that difference and there'll be colors and emotional auras around words that you have no knowledge of, no control of, you have no idea. You can just get up in the pulpit and say, I was lying there in the grass chewing a little stem of bbota grass and watching these fluffy clouds go by. Some kid starts crying, you wonder what's the matter now? Well, a kid had a cat named Fluffy and it died that week. Well, when you said fluffy clouds, you had no idea about fluffy. So there'll always be a kind of a negative, I can't listen anymore, every time you speak. But you can minimize it by being open and honest about your vocabulary. Because we all have a dated vocabulary as much as we try to be cool. I try to be cool with our granddaughter and she says to me, you are like so not cool. And that's true. But if you do it with a sense of humor, the young people and the older people will appreciate it and bring to the conscious level their vocabulary and maybe toss away a word or two that nobody ever says anymore, maybe claiming you and that's good. I regret it, by the way, that the definition of good living today for many people is keeping up to date. That's a mistake because nobody is really up to date. You can get state-of-the-art equipment, install it in the study, tomorrow you need to trade in. So at what point does that get to be a windless thing? But much of it with a sense of humor and imagination, you can meet them halfway, their words and your words. But some of it you will never know, never had any notion at all why they felt the way they did. The singing of certain songs, there'll be people get up and leave. That was the song sung at So-and-So's funeral. When I heard that song the day my husband left, it's amazing. I was chairman of the jury in a trial murder case down into Cab County and we had our first session as a jury and went back in there just getting acquainted, getting started, listening into each other and all like that. And this one woman spoke up and said, well that man's guilty of sin, no need to talk anymore. I said, well we haven't even heard the fins, we haven't heard much. How do you get that? Why don't you just notice how he sits, sits there in the chair like this and his arm over the back of the chair, my ex-husband used to sit just like that. Now she was serious and I said and he was guilty and she said he was guilty. But there's so much, there's so much beneath it even in music that it's hard to do anything about. You just don't know. One last question because I've been holding the mic. Did you or would you have any different words of instruction for women preachers than you would to men preachers? Or would you today have any words of advice in regard to preaching? Well I think for some time women as pastor and the preaching pastor of a church, for some time that will be a new experience for men in congregations. So I would simply encourage patients for them to get accustomed to the different pitch of the voice, the different visual experience and not rush them or force them or push them and and take every reaction in a negative way because their first reaction will be a false reaction. For instance they listen to you preach, they've had an old man in the pulpit for 27 years, now you're the minister, a young woman, I use the term loosely there. Hey you know about the third or fourth Sunday one of the people coming out saying we really like your talks but but we're used to more Bible. Now they're making it a content difference. If you analyze your sermon it probably has more Bible in it than your predecessor but they don't know how to account for the fact that we're getting something different. So they say we're used to more Bible. His sermon probably didn't have much Bible in it at all but that's just the way they think. Be patient with that kind of mishearing is what I would say but I don't at this juncture think of any reason for any difference just quality work and discovering if you're a clarinet or a flute or a trumpet. Well it's supper time. We don't have any closing ceremonies do we Beth? We don't need any rebuttal from you.