465 - The "I" of the Sermon & The Spoken Word

The "I" of the Sermon
By Richard Thulin
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1989. 93 pp. $5.95.

466 - The "I" of the Sermon & The Spoken Word

The Spoken Word
By Sheldon A. Tostengard
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1989. 109 pp. $5.95.

Those of us who have experienced the winsome "I" of Richard Thulin will probably agree that no better "I" can be found to explore the use of a preacher's personal life in her or his preaching. In my days as a budding preacher, it was hardly an issue; one was almost always advised to eschew autobiographical references in the pulpit. Recent decades marked by concern about the fulfillment of one's own self, the need, however explained or justified, to "let it all hang out," the use of narrative in homiletical materials-these shifts in the preacher's world render Thulin's study for working pastors a timely and very helpful aid.

The issues are clear. If one preaches Christ, bow does one avoid preaching oneself? How do you avoid the fall into Narcissus' pond? What allows one's humility to show? How much does one dare reveal about oneself?

Thulin handles these questions with sensitivity and skill, using his own and others' sermons for examples and critique (the latter including a few "big guns" at that!). He carefully and incisively describes four types of personal story available to preachers, the features and functions of each, and the degree of the preacher's "self-disclosure allowed by each." Most of his book deals with the "personal story as self-portrayal," that type being the ,'most comprehensive form of firstperson narrative." An appendix includes three sermons, one each by Edmund Steimle, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Vannorsdall, often used to disclose the intent of Thulin's "I" in this book.

I myself would like to have him say more about the "I" of various congregations. How may one's personal portrayals work on them? How might they use the preacher's autobiographical references? As this study's fine author and preacher knows, subtleties that can confound us stalk the aisles and pews of our sanctuaries. Perhaps, he will favor us again in work to follow.

The issue of one's "I" has emerged in the context of contemporary, electronic culture. We are a "sound" or "oral" or "voice" culture, as McLuban and others have taught us. Without that culture, the issue of "I" would have gone, at the very least, in another direction. Sound or voice, to use an insight of Walter Ong, is the only route to one's "interior"-to Thulin's "I." It is this cultural shift that makes a study such as Tbulin's plausible and that Tostengard's volume works to address. The Spoken Word provides a comprehensive description of "oral" as distinguished from "sight" culture, its implications for a preacher's approach to interpretation of biblical texts (how refreshing to bear someone refer to how "oral characteristics" might shift perspectives on biblical material), and what effect oral culture might have on the design of a sermon.

The latter involves a challenging discussion covered by Tostengard's use of the word dialectic. I would have found a speciman sermon helpful in following the discussion, which takes care nonetheless to be faithful to the gospel, to the meaning of the sacraments, and to the integrity of worship. Otherwise, incisive comments grace the book and the analysis of Luther on "the spirit and the letter" is especially well-done.

These volumes are the latest in the Fortress Resources for Preaching series, prepared especially for pastors who serve parishes. Like their predecessors, they do not disappoint.

John Mason Stapleton
Trinity United Methodist Church
North Myrtle Beach, S.C.