Vital Worship
Feature Stories ... for inspiration, learning, and group discussion
 Seminaries vary widely in whether or how much they teach body communication to help potential preachers deliver lively sermons. |
|
|
From Talking Head to Embodied Preacher
When Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga attended Calvin Theological Seminary nearly 40 years ago, professors didn’t talk about gestures, movement, or dramatization. “The only real education we received in these areas was a few sessions in interpretive reading,” says Plantinga, now seminary president.
By the time Scott Hoezee went through 20 years later, “the preparation for preaching was almost exclusively exegetical, with some attention to the shape of the sermon. This was all on paper.”
Hoezee, now director of the seminary’s Center for Excellence in Preaching, recalls that student sermons were delivered in class and captured on video. “A college speech professor might diagnose with you afterwards, looking for tics, poufing lips, or head scratching,” he says.
Though some seminaries now offer more instruction in embodied preaching, many do not. So it’s no wonder that the prospect of preaching more lively sermons sounds exciting…and a bit scary.
Be yourself
“The sermon Todd Farley did at the fall preaching conference (scroll to October 11, 2007) was very dramatic and acted out. He himself recognizes that most people aren’t comfortable with or even capable of that,” Hoezee says.
Yet he and Plantinga agree that when preachers feel free to authentically be themselves, everyone benefits.
Doing the best with what you’ve got, Hoezee explains, means using your whole person. “When we humans are excited about something, our eyes sparkle, our shoulders move, our fingers dance, and we do little jigs in the bleachers.
“If you as a preacher are really enthused about your message, why not embody that fully? It’s downright bizarre not to be full of emotion,” he says.
To ministers who worry that becoming more lively will throw worshipers, Plantinga says, “Congregations feel secure and engaged in the presence of a well-embodied sermon. There’s something mighty satisfying to being appealed to through the eye as well as the ear.
“Preachers cannot hope to be used by the Holy Spirit to move the hearts of listeners if they haven’t first been moved themselves by the message of the text. Excitement, tenderness, sorrow, enthusiasm—all these movements of the heart will have natural bodily expression…or trained bodily expression.”
Plantinga says he’s seen the results of unnaturally embodied sermons: “random grinning, white-knuckled pulpit gripping, leaning backwards while telling people to move forward with the Lord.”
And Hoezee says that although he has occasionally experienced a mesmerizing sermon from someone who rarely moves even a hand, it’s better to put your whole self into the sermon. “We don’t live as talking heads in the rest of our week, so no one is served when preachers behave as if they and worshipers are simply talking heads or souls or containers of ideas.”
 Using your chest, arms, and hands brings gestures alive. |
Small changes, big rewards
Hoezee notes several takeaways that any preacher can glean from Farley’s morning lecture.
- “When you’re giving a blessing, if you’re holding your hand up like a traffic cop, it conveys power or aggression. But if you slightly tilt your hand, and cup it, as if on someone’s head, it’s much different.”
- “Even preachers who’d rather stay behind the pulpit can do interesting things to create space and enhance their presentation. If I’m preaching about two people, Jerry is always on my right, Mary on my left. It’s very simple to practice ahead of time.”
- “I tell students all the time and experience this as a frequent guest preacher. People form an opinion in your first 10 seconds in the pulpit. Touch the pulpit lightly. Keep eye contact on the congregation, take a little breath, smile at them, then begin. If you get up, grab on, and jump into the passage without eye contact, you look nervous. And then they get nervous.”
Hoezee says the last tip, especially, is “pure gold for anyone who tries it. It’s relatively easy to do and it’s commonsense—once someone tells you.”
Watching a video of your sermon along with someone else is a good way to become more aware of your body language. Farley suggested paying attention to your body orientation, posture, gestures, foot position, and so on.
“Watch with the sound off. What can you read from your body? Where’s the energy and emotion? Now turn the sound on to check whether the way your read your gesture is consistent with what you were saying,” he advised.
Better body awareness will help you figure out your natural starting point, which Farley says will be somewhere on a scale between 0 (dead) and 10 (constant motion, loud speech). The “preacher’s zero” is somewhere in between, an “empty physical canvas” that lets him or her venture into other gestures.
 |
Push through to comfort
Farley encouraged preachers to start putting simple gestures in sermons, maybe an open hand as you offer an idea, a closed hand as you draw an idea to yourself. Practice gestures along with words.
He said many preachers give up gestures instead of working through the awkwardness. “If you push through, it will become natural. As you learn, you’ll feel like you are expressing a truth you love,” he promised.
“We won’t all be mimes or dramatists. But movement is for everyone who breathes and smiles. It belongs in your pulpit.
“We stand in front of congregations that have learned to recognize intellectual ideas. Let us move our words as well as say them—and perhaps move our congregations,” Farley said.
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.
The external links from this site are provided for your convenience and are not necessarily endorsed by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
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.
CICW web story reprint policy:
You have permission to reprint this article (or other stories in this collection) in its entirety, in print or online. Before the title of the article, please reprint the following permission statement. If you are reprinting online, please link to the website listed.
This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/