The preaching triangle

Triangles are wonderful things. The little picture to the right raises more than one interesting way to think about the act of preaching.

For instance: Walter Brueggemann wrote once that preaching always creates a triangle with the preacher, the hearers, and the Bible. As all the good students of systems theory know, triangles almost always become relationships in which two gang up on the one. Brueggemann writes that too often what happens is that the preacher imagines that it is the preacher and the Bible ganging up to beat some truth into the reluctant or obstinate hearers.

Brueggemann argues that it is better and more faithful to the text if the preacher and hearer understand themselves to both be “under” the text, perhaps even ganging up together against it. For Brueggemann, the text is so set against our ways that it could never be part of a conspiracy with us. It refuses to play the “you and me against him” game with either the preacher or the hearer.

If this systems theory approach is not fruitful, here is another way to think of this triangle. In rhetorical theory, people use such drawings to help think about the rhetorical problems that give rise to communication.

We can think of the sides of the triangle as various aspects of the communication challenge. The “preacher-Bible” leg highlights the need for the preacher to understand the Bible. The “preacher-hearer” leg reminds us of the need for the preacher to understand the congregation. The “hearer-Bible” leg points us toward the need for the preaching event to produce some interaction between the hearers and the Bible. (We can start this analysis from different points on the triangle, of course.

And finally, we might see the kind of preaching we might do as being different based on which point on the triangle forms our center of interest.

The preacher-centered sermon is a form of self-expression akin to poetry. It is about the preacher whether it comes into contact with the other corners or not. A Bible-centered sermon would focus more on information and reporting about the Bible and what it says. This is a report. A hearer-centered sermon puts the emphasis on persuasion and change in the “audience.”

None of these games with the triangle is above criticism. All of them could be enriched by conversation. You may have even more interesting ways to use this triangle to reflect on preaching.

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