Proclaimer Blog
Getting physical
We are more often motivated by fear than by attraction. I probably wear the kinds of clothes I do more because I don’t want to regarded as the kind of person who wears either smarter or scruffier or trendier clothes than I do, than because I particularly love the clothes you can buy at ******* (name of store removed for editorial reasons).
So too with what preachers do physically in preaching. I suspect that if you walk up and down with you radio-mike the whole time, that’s because deep down you think you’ll be too dull if you don’t. And conversely if you remain in your pulpit or behind your lectern that’s because you don’t want to be one of those preachers who gains his impact through showmanship more than through the Word.
Both these fears are fine, of course, but the chances are that most readers of this blog (the Brits, or more specifically the English, anyway) are more likely to fear being a rabble-rousing showman than an unexciting lecturer.
At this point it’s not uncommon for someone to refer Paul’s refusal to use the accepted persuasive techniques of his day, but instead to preach simply the cross of Christ. That is indeed a relief for us, that we ought not dress up our gospel proclamation in whatever faddish trappings our world happens to find engaging right now. However I don’t think we should use that fact to overlook the obvious truth that the preachers through whom God speaks have bodies. If I stand stock-still behind a lectern that I grasp in an authoritative manner am still making a powerful culture-laden statement – it’s just a different statement from the one made by the preacher who wanders waving his arms like a windmill.
At New Word Alive I heard one speaker make an excellent point from 2 Corinthians ch.1 about the need for believers not to hide their sufferings from one another, but to share them. As he did so, two or three times he made an illustrative physical movement: first of half-turning his back and clutching something to his chest and stroking it, but then of turning round to be open to us, walking a few yards and offering his hands openly in front of him. Not histrionic, not emotive for its own sake. And it made his point infinitely more effective and memorable. I think in a few months it’s that physical act I will remember, and that act will call his teaching point to my mind.