Vital Worship
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 Todd Farley teaches preachers to communicate through face, posture, hand gestures, and more. |
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Todd Farley on Embodied Preaching
Todd Farley shows preachers how to use body communication to preach lively sermons. His embodied preaching ideas spring from a theology of restoring arts to ministry.
“Preach the gospel. If necessary, use words.” This saying, commonly attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, brings a chuckle. We know its truth in our bones.
Most preachers can recall biblical events when God’s word was seen or acted out. Rainbow. Burning bush. Bronze serpent. Jeremiah smashing a pot. Dry bones rising up. Baby Jesus. Mud on blind eyes. Descending dove. Tongues of fire.
Even kids can read body language, whether a cocked head for hearing or fingers pinching uplifted nostrils for odors. Hands speak volumes. Consider the difference among a fist raised high, an extended arm and cupped hand, waggling fingers, or thumbs up.
Todd Farley inspires preachers to use their whole bodies to deliver God’s word. Trained in mime by Marcel Marceau, Farley is an ordained preacher and teaches communication arts at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Farley says that embodied preaching depends on recognizing all the ways God speaks, overcoming discomfort, and restoring arts as ministry in the church.
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Preach an incarnate word
“We’re very familiar with the spoken word of God. People also talk about visions, or the revealed voice of God, through nature or in their ‘prayer closets.’ The third voice of God is dramatically seen, parables acted out,” Farley explained at a preaching conference (scroll to October 11, 2007) at Calvin Theological Seminary.
Preaching on Hosea 12:10, he described how the Hebrew word damah, used for this third voice, is variously translated as parables acted out, similitude, acts of God, or physical manifestation.
“Here the text is saying that we, as those prophets ministering God’s word, become that damah to the world. It’s the concept of Christ becoming incarnate, of us having Christ within us, and that incarnate word becoming embodied in what we do.
“That gesture, that parable acted, that which is done—not only that which is said—becomes a word of God to the people,” Farley said.
Preachers and congregations sometimes behave as if God’s entire word was delivered in manuscript form. Farley reminded his audience that the reason we read God’s word now is that there weren’t video cameras or ways to record the drama or music of the original delivery.
“So we read life that has been poured into ink on a page. And we ministers take that ink, that we and the congregation read, and we try to extract it and put the blood into it that that ink may come back to life,” he said.
 Even without hearing her, you can see and feel the energy that this preacher projects. |
Create significant space
Because every minister who speaks before a congregation has a body, worshipers see as well as hear them. That’s why, when Farley talks about “a well-ministered physical voice,” he doesn’t mean only vocal cords.
The ways a preacher moves his or her head, face, arms, hands, chest, pelvis, legs, and feet all say something. So do a voice’s volume, rhythm, and speed.
Some gestures—repeated head scratching, hem tugging, chin or collar fingering, lip pursing—telegraph discomfort. Discomfort gestures detract from God’s word, because congregations start wondering why the preacher is nervous.
Other gestures, such as lunging forward when speaking of God as a gentle shepherd, make congregations wonder whether preachers believe what they’re saying.
“We think directionally and place concepts in space,” Farley said in his morning lecture at the preaching conference. He advises thinking of the platform as space on which to create significance and make ideas concrete.
If your sermon has three points, then visually divide the platform in three areas, and gesture to or move to the designated area so your congregation gets a visual outline that supports the audible sermon. If you’re focusing on a relationship between two people, make sure to always refer to one side for the first person and the other side for the second.
You can move forward and raise a cupped hand as if offering God’s promise or an idea to worshippers. You might step back, casually cross your arms, or angle your body so as to give the congregation time and space to ponder what you’ve just said.
Perhaps you’re preaching at a podium with a fixed microphone. Without a wireless mike, you can’t roam. Even then you can communicate ideas and create significant space through your head, face, arms, hands, chest, and body angle.
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Live it, breathe it
When Farley urges ministers to use gesture, movement, or drama to give lively sermons, inevitably someone asks whether this change will come across as contrived. He admits that moving from talking head to embodied preacher may feel liberating to some, awkward to others.
He advises preachers to feel deeply. If you believe what you’re preaching, and worshipers feel your sincerity, then they’ll believe it. That means bringing the text alive by reading a psalm with the passion of David. It means letting ruach, the Hebrew word for breath of the Holy Spirit, move through your entire being to transform a message from scripture into new life for your congregation.
“Make sure gestures are living from the inside—and from the chest and stomach. A gesture’s full meaning comes with breath. That’s why you need to use the chest. In French mime, the chest is the exterior expression of your emotion,” Farley said.
He demonstrated the difference by speaking of the sorrow of sin and coming to a place of repentance. The first time he stood ramrod still except for extending a hand with fingers curled and then bringing it toward his body. The second time, he hunched his body to show sorrow and breathed deeply, moving his chest along with his arm and hand as he described repentance.
“The first way looks like doing bicep curls. People may receive the idea, but there’s no heart, no emotion, no power. With the other way, the idea comes to life.
“That body inclusion creates a support of the word that says what the words do not. Using your body takes the intellectual idea and makes it manifest and visual,” Farley said.
The story continues ... Restoring the Arts to Ministry
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
 We're born expressing ourselves through every inch of our bodies. What makes us think God wants us to suppress so much of ourselves in worship? |
LEARN MORE
Don’t miss the bonus story on overcoming discomfort: From Talking Head to Embodied Preacher.
Watch and listen to online video of Todd Farley preaching and lecturing at Calvin Theological Seminary (scroll down to October 11, 2007). Order instructional videos and books from Mimeistry School of Ministering Arts, which Farley founded.
Read Todd Farley’s articles on nativity dramas and dance in Reformed Worship. Read his tribute to Marcel Marceau, the famous mime who trained Todd and Marilyn Farley. Also see Don E. Saliers’ article Body language: eight basic gestures every worship leader should know.
Register for the 2008 Calvin Symposium on Worship, where you can experience mime and movement at late afternoon vespers services and attend a Thursday seminar, Seminar 8: We Speak Because We Have Been Spoken: A “Grammar” of the Preaching Life, led by Michael Pasquarello II and hosted by Scott Hoezee. You’ll also find seminars, panels, and workshops on liturgical dance, visual arts, interactive and other ministering arts.
Help yourself to a bonanza of online preaching resources at the Center for Excellence in Preaching, including audio sermons, sermon starter ideas, and advice from fellow pastors. Mark your calendar for upcoming conferences for preachers.
Browse related stories about caring for your voice, digital storytelling, how to welcome guest preachers, and visual arts in worship.
START A DISCUSSION
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your staff, council, worship, arts, or education committee meeting. These questions will get members talking about embodied preaching and how arts minister in worship.
- What do you think of Farley’s emphasis on the voice of God which is physical or artistic?
- What opportunities do your preachers and other worship leaders have to get feedback on their body communication? What first steps might you offer to help each other feel more comfortable in authentically expressing yourselves?
- What would your worship gain or lose if you saw God’s word, worship, and faith as much about action and physical manifestation as about intellectual ideas?
- What’s most or least helpful about the way your congregation uses the arts in worship? Which changes do you dream of?
SHARE YOUR WISDOM
What is the best way you’ve found to encourage embodied preaching or minister through the arts? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Did you invite a mime, dramatist, well-embodied preacher, or other artist to show you what’s possible and set a standard?
- If you developed a process or checklist for better discernment about the three movements of art in ministry, will you share it with us? We’d also like to know about changes that resulted after you switched from arts as entertainment to arts as ministry.
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This story was originally posted on December 21, 2007. External links were operative at the time the story was posted, but may have expired since then.
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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/