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Pinnacle Leadership Associates presents the first in a series called \”Homiletical Hot Takes.\” In this episode, Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins presents a method for sermon creation inspired by a book by Paul Scott Wilson, \”The Four Pages of the Sermon.\”
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The Four Pages of a Sermon Summary – Ryan Paulson
Summary of Four Pages of a Sermon by Paul Scot Wilson · Page One |Trouble in the text · Page Two | Trouble in the world · Page Three | God’s Action …
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The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching
Paul Scott Wilson’s book, The Four Pages of the Sermon, illustrates the 4 movements of a sermon and combines the how, why, and what of sermon construction.
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The Four Pages of the Sermon
The Four Pages of the Sermon … “Sermons need to major in God and in grace. Social justice liberals and evangelicals alike tend to give us shoulds, musts, and …
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Four Pages of a Sermon – Soul Preaching
The next pattern from Ronald Allen’s book Patterns for Preaching is Paul Scott Wilson’s approach described in his book The Four Pages of the Sermon The …
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The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching
The sermon’s four pages represent distinct theological functions that the preacher can arrange in various orders, producing different models. Here, in order to …
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The Four Pages of the Sermon, Revised and Updated
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The Four Pages of a Sermon Summary — Ryan Paulson
I’m a preaching junkie. I’m always reading, studying, and trying to get better at the craft of preaching. A while back, I heard a number of people I really respect recommend The Four Pages of a Sermon by Paul Scot Wilson. I picked it up and read it… and loved it.
Below is a summary of what I would consider are some of the key takeaways from the book. It’s a methodology that I continue to use because it helps me think through the flow and different movements of the sermon. I’m committed to preaching exegetically, but also want my sermons to have life, engagement from the congregation, and to be interesting. I’ve found Wilson’s approach to be beneficial in accomplishing those goals.
Summary of Four Pages of a Sermon by Paul Scot Wilson
Page One |Trouble in the text
Examines sinfulness and its consequences, together with human responsibility for corrective action in light of God’s will.
Something is wrong in God’s world because then, as now, sin is present.
What requires grace in this passage?
Develop the trouble deeply and theologically.
Trouble at the simplest level is the burden on humans to change.
“The gospel is bad news before it is good news.” Frederick Buechner
The right question for people to wrestle with is: “What is God doing and how am I empowered to live as I was created to live.”
Page Two | Trouble in the world
The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Guide to Biblical Preaching
This review of Paul Wilson’s “The Four Pages of the Sermon” (1999) is presented in three parts. Part One gives an outline of the book’s seven sections. Part Two is a critical evaluation of the author’s opinions given from my own perspective. Part Three is a reflection of what I’ve learned from the book.
Part One – An Outline of Wilson’s book
In chapter one “Movies, Pages, and God,” Wilson begins by asserting that effective sermons must go beyond preaching a narrative style and ensure attention to
This review of Paul Wilson’s “The Four Pages of the Sermon” (1999) is presented in three parts. Part One gives an outline of the book’s seven sections. Part Two is a critical evaluation of the author’s opinions given from my own perspective. Part Three is a reflection of what I’ve learned from the book.
Part One – An Outline of Wilson’s book
In chapter one “Movies, Pages, and God,” Wilson begins by asserting that effective sermons must go beyond preaching a narrative style and ensure attention to theology and God’s actions. Furthermore, he insists sermons need to have sensory appeal. He recounts the many sermons that have left him on the verge of boredom because, “their language had little sensory appeal; there was little to see or taste or touch.”
One caution that Wilson highlights is the danger of distortion when moving from the biblical passage to the final sermon presentation, just as in the process of converting a novel to the medium of film. Therefore sermon preparation requires both visual conception and essay writing skills, with the end result aiming to ensure the effectiveness of the spoken word. Wilson utilises the analogies of movies (creative imagination) and pages (theology to shape sermon) since, “… even movies have scripts, and scripts have pages.” A third image analogy is that of a webpage which utilises both written and visual content.
From this conceptual basis Wilson then introduces the practical metaphor of ‘Four pages’. Each of these metaphorical pages aims to focus the preacher on four key aspects of the necessary theological preparation by observing, contemplating and discovering sin and grace in the text and our world. Page One looks at the problem in the text, that is, the trouble and conflict in the Bible. Page Two considers the associated problem in the world, that is, similar sin or human brokenness in our time. Page Three is devoted to grace in the text, that is, identifying what God is doing in or behind the biblical text. Page Four perceives where we see grace in the world, that is, how God is graciously at work in our world. The desired goal of using such a homiletic method is, “to sharpen presentation of the biblical and theological material in our sermons.” Wilson rounds off this introductory chapter by listing sociological and theological reasons for why change in preaching is essential.
Section I – Getting Started: Monday
In chapter two “Ensuring Sermon Unity” Wilson suggests six observations that should be made before composing a sermon in order to ensure sermon unity. These observations have been placed in the form of an acronym for convenient remembrance: The Tiny Dog Now Is Mine.
T – One Text
T – One Theme
D – One Doctrine
N – One Need
I – One Image
M – One Mission
In chapter three “Introducing the Sermon” Wilson encourages starting the sermon with:
1.a story that is the flip-side of the theme
2.a not-too-serious experience of the general theme
3.biblical text
4.a social justice issue
5.a news or cultural item, or
6.a fictional account.
Section II – Page One: Tuesday
In chapter four “Trouble in the Bible” Wilson insists that trouble and grace remind us that the Christian message is hope. This sets the scene and focus on the people and their actions, using sensory words. In chapter five “Filming Trouble in the Bible” doctrine and image are prominent concepts.
Section III – Page Two: Wednesday
In chapter six “Trouble in the World” the point is made that trouble is a reality that we all live with and it needs to be addressed. Trouble is transcendent, immanent and personal to us all. Therefore chapter seven “Filming Trouble in the World” is an assertion to turn everyday issues into theological ones. Pointing out the trouble in the world should be done in an empathetic and inclusive way rather than condemning and exclusive.
Section IV – Page Three: Thursday
Chapters eight “God’s Action in the Bible” and nine “Filming Grace in the Bible” are about developing doctrine and making direct links to Christ where possible. It’s about finding grace even in the tough texts by asking, “What is God doing in or behind the text?”
Section V – Page Four: Friday
Chapters ten “God’s Action in the World” and eleven “Filming Grace in the World” complete the quadrant. The four functions of page four are to apply the grace of God that is seen in the biblical text to our own situations, encountering the redemptive work of Christ, contrasting the trouble we see in our world and allowing grace to be seen in light of existing trouble.
Section VI – Varieties of Sermons
Chapters twelve “Imagining a Complete Sermon” and thirteen “Reshuffling and Varying the Four Pages” round off the sermon preparation methodology proposed by Wilson by reminding readers of the bigger picture.
Part Two – A Critical Evaluation
Wilson commences by naming the metaphorical elephant in the room, there have been far too many boring sermons preached. As the beloved fictional character Huckleberry Finn observed, “[The preacher] never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.”
Wilson makes an astute point about the analogy of movies as validating creative imagination and the use of pages as a way of ensuring theology shapes the sermon. His comment on page 11, “Even movies have scripts, and scripts have pages,” echoes a quote by Humphrey Bogart’s character in the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa, “A script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.” In other words, in order to bring grace and truth to an otherwise chaotic and turbulent life a preacher needs to be able to script a sermon that is coherent and accessible to the hearers.
I personally agree with Wilson’s use of the image of a movie director as representative of the preacher’s role in crafting and presenting sermons. “Movies are a symbol of our audiovisual culture, and I am finding movie making to be better than telling stories as an analogy for preaching.” Wilson goes on to state that, “… if we imagine that we are directing a film we allow ourselves to think and compose sermons in a visual manner – which is how most of us think in any case,” and “… we will create entire worlds that address the senses, the mind, and the heart.”
When evaluating Wilson’s model of ‘Four Pages’ as sermon preparation methodology it is obvious that he takes seriously the role of engaging with the biblical text. This should be the preacher’s primary source for telegraphing the desired goal of the sermon. Anglican minister, John Pritchard, concurs, “In all of this the Bible is our touchstone, our authority and our basic raw material.” In light of the film director analogy an appropriate suggestion from actor Michael J. Fox is, “Read the book before you see the movie.”
In some ways, however, the ‘Four Pages’ model is cumbersome. It requires a four step process that may or may not suit the text being studied. Whether or not a preacher uses four or five literal days to prepare sermons the model still requires a significant amount of time. Having said that it may not be everyone’s preferred blueprint for sermon preparation but it does at least provide an efficient and robust criteria for sermon success, one which I intend to use if merely as a mental self-check of my own sermon preparation.
Still, adhering to the ‘Four Pages’ does not guarantee a sound hermeneutic. The history of biblical interpretation is broad and diverse. The González’s suggest hermeneutical pointers that create sermons that truly liberate the audience with the Gospel of grace: read the political situation, include the wider context, consider the politics of the text, reassign the cast of characters, imagine a different setting, consider the direction of the action, and avoid avoidance of the texts we struggle with. Similarly, Walter Brueggemann insists on overcoming subconscious eisegesis by lingering on the text and noticing the unnoticed. In this way he likens a good exegete to a good therapist.
From my perspective one of Wilson’s opinions that stands out is the value and necessity of a dominant image. He says, “One single image can add unity to a sermon and can make it more memorable,” and he defines an image as a word picture which differentiates from an abstract idea in that, “an image presents a specific picture created to the mind’s eye.” He is absolutely correct in stating that, “Much of human thinking is in mental pictures, and most people remember best what they can visualise.”
An image can be drawn from the biblical text or from our world. The Scriptures are filled with numerous images utilised by the original writers from their worlds. When an image is repeated and reinforced in the text and in the sermon’s illustration the listeners then see it over and over. It stands out in their minds. Therefore for an image to be the right one it must naturally emerge and be ‘seen’ by the audience in the sermon introduction, on one or two other occasions, and in the conclusion. In doing so it adds conceptual and theological unity. It needs to emphasise the theme statement and thus become a visual and memory aid for discerning what God is doing and requires of us. Since the younger generation communicate by visual imagery rather than spoken word the biblical worldview should be presented in a renewed and fresh way as the story of God.
As mentioned in Wilson’s book, Barbara Brown Taylor uses images in her sermons. One example is her suggestion that the author of Luke/Acts as a physician adds meaning to his role as a writer using words as “Gospel Medicine” to those who read and hear his transcripts. Taylor gives significant attention to the power of image to provoke imagination and subsequent revelation. In her book, The Preaching Life, she states that imagination is the human ability to form a mental image of something not present to the senses, “The theological word for this experience is revelation, but the process, I believe, is imagination.” John Pritchard adds to this saying, “[Words] need to be visual, using images that stay in the memory because our minds are more like art galleries than libraries. They need to tell stories because stories are the common language of every culture.”
Despite the ‘Four Pages’ being cumbersome Wilson uses excellent analogies of film directing and image creation.
Part Three – Reflecting on what I’ve learned from the book
As inferred earlier, I have been impacted by the importance of ‘image’. Certainly this appears to be how our Lord Jesus Christ communicated by his instructions to, “Consider the lilies of the field,” (Matt 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32) and “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees,” (Luke 21:29). He constantly made reference to images that his audience were aware of: seeds, weeds, coins, sheep, nets, pearls, birds, people and their relationships (e.g. Luke 15). “The kingdom of heaven is like …” (Matt 13:44) is a repeated phrase in the synoptic Gospels. “Over and over again, the human imagination turns out to be the place where vision is formed and reformed, where human beings encounter an inner reality with power to transform the other realities of their lives.”
I’ve learned much from this book. Preaching sermons is a privilege and a responsibility to shape the lives of our audience. We are exhorted to “preach the word” (κήρυξον τὸν λόγον; kēryxon ton logon; 2 Timothy 4:2. See also, 1Tim 2:7; 4:13).
Reflecting of what I have read I’m reminded of a quote by E.M. Bounds, “Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life.” It is for this reason preachers must apply themselves very carefully.
– – – –
The Four Pages of the Sermon
p. 21
“Sermons need to major in God and in grace. Social justice liberals and evangelicals alike tend to give us shoulds, musts, and have-tos. We don’t get enough Easter, Pentecost, Ascension. We get Emerson under other names. We get self-reliance preached to us, and it can’t save us. Preachers avoid grace because it ‘lets people off the hook.’ But God does it. Why must we be such unmerciful servants? We need faith, hope, and love in sermons, not just conviction of sin and dereliction of duty. Yes, the addict must stop taking drugs, the tax cheat must straighten up, and the whore get chaste, but where’s the good news that the power of sin died on the cross? Good news is like a good sacrament. It will liberate. Again, I say unto you, it will liberate. Let the sermon show God’s work in the world, too. Give God a little credit for a Peace Accord, not just discredit for hurricanes. Let a congregation leave church on Sunday with more faith, hope, and love than when they came in. So frame up themes in sermons not as ‘Jesus wants us to repent’ but as ‘Jesus brings us to repentance.’ Preach some gospel. Not just ‘God feels your pain,’ but what God does to address your pain. The Bible is the church’s book, and we may choose to preach gospel out of it. That’s where our focus should be because that’s where the Bible’s focus is.”
Four Pages of a Sermon
The next pattern from Ronald Allen’s book Patterns for Preaching is Paul Scott Wilson’s approach described in his book The Four Pages of the Sermon The sermon under this structure is a manuscript with four distinct pages. Each page is a different approach to the materials. Each page is approximately 20-25% of the sermon.
Problem in the Text
The first page looks explicitly at the biblical text or the topic. Here we name the problem that gave rise to the text. Explicitly we summarize the manifestation of sin in the Bible world. We make sure to look at the text in a literary, historical, and theological mode so that the people clearly understand the text from all those different poles. That is a lot to do, but it greatly informs the congregation of the Biblical materials as well as the background behind the materials.
Problem in the World
The second page incorporates a move to the contemporary world. Here the preacher looks at issues in the present world that are similar to the problems that gave rise to the text. This is an interesting move that guarantees some “relevance.”
Gospel in the Text
The third page is another look at the text, but this time we look for good news in the text. Here we clearly identify what God is doing in the world of the Bible. We clearly show how God redeems the Bible world in the text.
Gospel in the World
The fourth page is a final return to the contemporary world. Here the preacher helps the people see and experience that same good news in today’s world. Then you make sure to help the people to continue to reflect on the sermonic ideas after leaving.
The preacher can mix up the pages if the preachers desires, but to follow this ordering makes a lot of sense. Also Wilson sees a direct correlation between the pages and sermon preparation. On Monday he researches the text and plans the sermon, on Tuesday he prepares page 1, on Wednesday he prepares page 2, on Thursday he prepares page 3 and on Friday he prepares page 4.
Evaluation
It is an explicitly theological approach that ends with the people clearly seeing God’s work on their behalf in the real world. In many of my sermons I have unknowningly roughly followed this pattern. Since I am in the Celebration tradition of Henry Mitchell, I do tend to add a celebration at the end of the sermon which is easily added to the end of this pattern.
It is a powerful pattern and I think that all should consider it for powerful Biblical preaching.
The Four Pages of the Sermon by Paul Scott Wilson – Ebook
CHAPTER ONE
Movies, Pages, and God
My father is a minister so our family was always in church. After worship, the empty church presided over the long hour when everyone else had gone home, while I waited with my twin sister and older sister for Mom and Dad to drive us home for lunch—time I spent wandering through the building looking at the fresh drawings in the school rooms, or in the sanctuary trying out the pulpit microphone, or in the gymnasium. During the week the church was where we had choir practice or Scout meetings, and where we played hide and seek with friends while waiting for a ride home. Church came home with us and sat down in conversation with us at the dinner table, played hymns on Mom’s piano during the week, and was often on the telephone making calls that I overheard from secret hiding places; and on Saturdays, church was clacking on my father’s old Underwood typewriter as he prepared his sermon in the study. Church tucked us into bed at night and was usually up doing God’s business by the time we had spread the brown sugar on our oatmeal at breakfast. Growing up with the church never far away: I moved from loving it to hating it; from leaving it as a late teenager to coming back to it as an adult. And for many years now I have been loving it once more, loving when it is at its best and aching when it is not. I love the preaching of the church when it is good, and I love trying to make it better.
Every age must find its own way to revitalize the preaching task. I first learned the importance of narrative for preaching at the dinner table, hearing about peoples’ lives, and listening to my father preach on Sundays. Sometimes I learned more about the faith from the stories than from the sermon’s well-crafted points. Narrative theory influenced my own preaching and eventually informed my teaching. I have heard hundreds and hundreds of class and Sunday sermons, listening as often for what is missing as for what is present. Gradually I found that I moved beyond narrative, not leaving it behind, but being more attentive to those things like theology and the role of God that had taken a back seat while that new important paradigm made its mark. Yet telling stories was a helpful way for a generation of preachers to imagine how to avoid making the Word of God sound boring—a form of heresy worth avoiding.
I received an important insight when I heard several experienced oral storytellers tell stories that for me verged on boredom. These speakers did not make the common errors: plots too linear, characters too flat, or emotions too singular. Rather, their language had little sensory appeal; there was little to see or taste or touch.
Ever since childhood, when our family bought its first television set (with some discussion over whether it was proper to watch on Sundays), I have been fascinated by movies. Movies are a symbol of our audiovisual culture, and I am finding movie making to be better than telling stories as an analogy for preaching. Most of us preachers have never made a movie in the formal sense, but we have seen or held videocameras and the concept of movie making still holds mystery and intrigue, in spite of the excesses of Hollywood.
Movie making is a hobby easy to conceive. Yet movie making as a method of sermon preparation is not as easy to imagine. Instead, we unconsciously may invoke many of the hard-won lessons of essay writing and apply them to our sermon composition. Some of these lessons are good for sermons, like the rule that each paragraph should be about one idea and only one idea, and that an entire essay should have just one overarching theme. For the spoken word, however, we must discard or modify other essay rules: do not repeat yourself; use as many big words as possible; give only the facts and no extra detail; avoid descriptive material; eliminate conversations. As long as we prepare our sermons by conceiving of our task as equivalent to writing an essay, as typing, or perhaps even as speaking into a computer that turns our thoughts into words on a page, the essay concept will influence our preaching, often in negative ways, because we will unwittingly apply the rules of writing, which are not always effective for spoken presentations. We still need to use good grammar and sentence structure—thus writing a sermon manuscript can be an important discipline. However, the spoken word, not the essay, is the goal.
Given that many churches are in a period of declining membership, such a change may be important. Yet if we shift the mental image of sermon composition from essay writing to movie making, we will see a tremendous change in how we arrange our thoughts. If preaching is to reach youth and teenagers especially, it needs an approach like this movie making idea. We still need to be cautious and moderate, especially concerning descriptive passages and conversations. For instance, brief visual details that quickly paint a scene are better than long descriptions, and short snippets of conversation that allow a character to come to life are preferred to long monologues or dialogues. Thus, if we imagine that we are directing a film we allow ourselves to think and compose sermons in a visual manner—which is how most of us think in any case. More than simply telling plots, or becoming one character in a narrative, we will create entire worlds that address the senses, the mind, and the heart. When I speak of movie making to students in my classes and preachers around North America, I sense their own excitement at the possibilities. I hope that this book can communicate to readers some of the excitement that I feel.
Why then does the title of this book make no mention of movies? Why does it speak of pages instead? What do movies and pages have in common? I would have loved to stay with one metaphor or the other, in the same way that I teach that sermons should have just one dominant image. But a book is longer than a sermon and I found a single image impossible, given the complexity of the preacher’s task in the current age. I resolved the dilemma by recognizing that even movies need scripts, and scripts have pages.
Moreover, web pages on the internet provide another model for combining movies and pages. Some web pages are so elaborate that they will run a movie clip to teach or demonstrate a particular subject or product when the viewer double-clicks on the relevant box. In other words, the webpage contains both words and pictures, information and movies, which is a good model for the sermon. Readers of this book do not need to be computer literate to understand the appeal of the web page as effective communication. Here, the web page concept offers a way of combining two essential metaphors for the preaching task, making movies and composing discrete pages of a sermon. Movies address the need for creative imagination and they model its movement. Pages address the need for theology to shape the sermon and describe how best this can be accomplished. Together they suggest a new model for preaching in this new millennium—instead of three points we may speak of four pages. Instead of a two-part structure we can use use a four-part structure.
Why four pages and not some other number? First, four pages corresponds to the number of basic theological stances found in most sermons. Second, as much as students and preachers become excited about making movies, they also become excited about the simplicity of having only four pages to write, and about the possibility of breaking sermon preparation into four manageable assignments for four days in the week. They like the practical implications of working on a metaphorical page, of knowing what the creative goals are for that page, and of having theological standards by which to measure it. They like the ease of being able to refer to what a preacher did on Page Two of his or her sermon; and of being able to talk about the flow of a sermon according to its pages, in whatever order they might appear.
Hopes and Dreams
I have some dreams for this writing project: First, I wish to encourage preachers to be biblical, grounding their sermons in the biblical text, and allowing the text to speak the sermon. Second, I want to encourage preachers to be more attentive to God, to foster hope in congregations. These goals are something to get excited about. It is as surprising as it is discouraging to discover how many sermons across denominational boundaries encourage trust in human resources and how few focus on God or encourage faith in God in more than minimal ways. This new vision of preaching promises renewal, a recovery of a profound sense of God’s grace and of the joy of faith.
Third, I wish to present in the simplest possible way ideas that have kept me loving the teaching of preaching for over eighteen years. When I began this project I asked myself, what has worked best in my teaching? I have written this book for the church and laid out the preaching path as clearly as possible, without, I hope, oversimplifying the issues. I have kept footnotes to a minimum. Readers seeking greater detail, background, and range can turn to my The Practice of Preaching (Abingdon Press, 1995). There, and in sources by other authors, students may find, among other things, detailed explanation and exercises for the exegetical process.¹ I limit my focus here to actual sermon composition, spread over several days of the week—the best means I know of stewarding a preacher’s precious resources of time and energy for faithful proclamation.
Fourth, I invite readers into a homiletics classroom to rethink the purpose and practice of sermon composition. Some of us preachers have had no formal homiletics training. Others have had instruction only in the theology of preaching or in biblical exegesis and exposition; or received lessons in sermon form and structure; or had guidance on how best to use our bodies and voices for preaching. However, no one has considered in detail how the sermon form we choose influences the theology we preach and so affects everything we say. Preachers have tended to think that sermon form is secondary to sermon content or even that form is largely irrelevant; yet, ineffective sermon form pervades and distorts the theological content like a computer virus that infects every file. Many preachers today use trusted sermon forms, unaware that the nature of the good news they preach is largely predetermined by the forms they follow. As a result, the gospel of Jesus Christ suffers. I have devised a manageable way of addressing the depth structure of sermons by dividing sermon preparation into four separate theological tasks. I offer readers a reliable way of reconceiving the task of proclamation by suggesting that the form of the sermon be conceived as four theological pages. The content of the four pages comes from the four kinds of material we can include in our sermons: basically, we are confined to talking about (1) sin and brokenness in the biblical world, (2) sin and brokenness in our world (3) grace in the biblical world, and (4) grace in our world. One could ask, of course, where history fits in, the period between the Bible and now. History, doctrine, and tradition are part of each of our four pages; only on a rare occasions should a sermon become heavily historical, thus to conceive of history as separate pages seems unwise.
The two-part structure many preachers have been taught, from exposition to application, like a deflated front tire on a car, tends to steer the entire sermon towards the shoulder of the road and a theology of human responsibility. A four-part structure that ventures an additional movement in exposition and application, keeps the sermon securely headed toward a theology of grace, highlighting the centrality of what God has actually accomplished in Jesus Christ on the cross.
Finally, I hope that students will learn to love preaching and that cynical preachers will fall in love with preaching again; that their efforts to grow will be richly rewarded with a renewed sense of the power of the Holy Spirit speaking through their labors; that their congregations will grow in faith and ministry. Creative communication can facilitate the hearing of God’s Word. Untutored imagination is worth very little: as a product of free-association thinking, it lacks direction and purpose. It is also hit and miss: sometimes it works and sometimes it fails, and the preacher is not able to predict the result. However, given appropriate theological structures and guidelines for the sermon, we can use our imaginations in effective and reliable ways for the service of God.
The sermon’s four pages represent distinct theological functions that the preacher can arrange in various orders, producing different models. Here, in order to present them for purposes of homiletical practice, I offer them first in one order that makes theological sense and fosters hope. Later I offer other ways to arrange the pages. I am convinced that beginning students do best to concentrate on one primary method that is theological and adaptable to many forms, rather than to learn many diverse methods of varying strengths, and learn none adequately.
I hope that experienced preachers will receive this book as an affirmation of some of the best practices they have been using and will also find here an invitation to improve other sermon practices.
Two Deep Dreams
What if people in the church pews on Sunday were to view the content of our sermons as movies that they are seeing in their minds as we speak? What if we were to evaluate our past sermons as biblical and theological films, if we were to play the videotapes in our homiletics classroom—not the videotapes of us standing in the pulpit actually preaching, but the videotapes of the pictures we are presenting through our words—what would we learn? I see two big recurring problems. The first problem is that preachers need help making pictures and appealing to a full range of the senses. At one extreme are text-centered preachers whose language is so far from being concrete that the only drama congregations experience is that of pages being read and turned—there is nothing for them to see besides the preacher in the pulpit. On the other extreme are preachers who equate creativity with focusing the videocamera from place to place or zooming from person to person—there is much to see but nothing connects. The Holy Spirit must work hard with both kinds of sermons to be able to speak to the hearts and minds of needy listeners and a needy world. Our question should always be, what can I do better to help the work of the Holy Spirit?
The second major problem in many of our sermonic films is the apparent absence of God. Appropriate theological emphasis is lacking, especially as seen in joyless sermons. Recent changes in sermon form help us to be better communicators but they do not reach the deeper theological problem: congregations need to be led to a reliance upon God. For this, the movie metaphor alone cannot be the solution. Lack of joy in preaching requires a solution that unites form and theology.
The Metaphor of Four Pages for Sermon Evaluation
Anyone who has read sermons from history knows how notoriously difficult they are to compare and evaluate; this is one reason that scholars in biblical studies, theology, and even history generally ignore them. Even sermons in our own time seem to operate by their own rules. When we seek to have a conversation about them, we observe whether a point form or narrative form is dominant, and we may have deeper discussion on how a text, doctrine, or story is used. However, we lack common language to move beyond these comments. When it comes time to make comparative evaluations from one sermon to another (something I discourage with class sermons) or to assess theologically the ability of sermons to encourage faith and empower action, it is as though a bell rings in the corridor to mark the end of class and the conversation is over.
The four pages I have devised identify four basic kinds of theological focus; this allows us to talk about any sermon theologically, which we have not always been able to do well in the past. Of course, I use page here not as a literal page but as a metaphor for theological function and appropriate creative endeavor. Four pages are four distinct moments of preaching. We can discuss and analyze each of the four pages with clarity and thus describe with some accuracy what needs to happen on any page. We can use the pages to sharpen presentation of biblical and theological material in our sermons. Further, the pages can be a guide to greater creativity and imagination, for they provide specific focus for creative endeavor that helps prevent imagery from becoming excessive, stories from going astray, and doctrines from becoming mere turbid or turgid discourse.
We can also arrange these four pages in a sequence that ensures, as much as this is humanly possible, that preaching fosters faith in God and joyful lives of service and mission. The sequence in which I present them is somewhat arbitrary, given all of the possibilities. However, since I must present them in a sequence, I choose one that makes the best theological sense, given the purposes and objectives of preaching.
Content of the Four Pages
Page One I devote to trouble and conflict in the Bible—in other words, as preachers, we consider the Bible in its own time. On Page Two we look at similar sin or human brokenness in our time. Page Three returns to the Bible, this time to identify what God is doing in or behind the biblical text as it opens the story of good news. And on Page Four we point to God graciously at work in our world, particularly in relationship to those situations named on Page Two.
Visualizing the four pages in sequence can help us to compose our sermons and prepare a script for the movie we will make. To conceive of the four pages as having an organic or theological flow from one to four, is to conceive of a four-page sermon model. Not every sermon need follow this movement from trouble in the biblical text and our world to grace in the biblical text and our world. A colleague consistently follows this pattern: Page Two (trouble in our world), Page One (trouble in the biblical text), Page Three (grace in the Bible: what God did), Page Four (grace in our world: what God does). How we arrange the pages, and whether or not we use all of them in any one sermon, these four theological functions present the basic options available to preachers. Later, once each page is understood and demonstrated, we can reshuffle the pages and vary them in other ways. Though I favor one sequence as normative, I present not one option, but as many as the number of possible variations and arrangements.
What I am presenting is also to some extent beyond method: here are tools we can use to analyze, evaluate, and improve the theology and creativity of sermons, whatever method is followed. Well-meaning preachers often inadvertently communicate bad theology, or communicate theology badly; or they fail adequately to represent the Bible, our contemporary situation, or God. Often congregations encourage preachers to improve their preaching, assuming that they know how to make the necessary changes. Preachers may be told: preach more narrative, or preach more doctrine; yet these instructions do not necessarily result in sermons that provide what is missing. I hope that preachers will employ the functions of the four pages as a means to evaluate their own sermons and to determine how best to improve their labors.
Not every sermon corresponds to four physical pages. One sermon literally may be ten pages long and may never get beyond theological Page One; another may begin on Page Two; another might skip Page Three or Page Four. As preachers, we should be able to go back over recent sermons and determine quickly what page or pages need more attention. We need not discount our previous sermons as ineffective vehicles of God’s Word if some of these functions or pages are missing. Still, if one or more of these pages is consistently absent, or is consistently not given adequate focus and development, at least from a biblical and theological perspective, there may be room for us to grow.
The Four Pages in sequence present a model and thus may seem like yet another misguided attempt to use form as a solution to deeper homiletical problems. Moreover, four pages may seem short to those who preach for thirty or forty minutes, and long to others who preach for less than ten. But whether the sermon is long or short is not the point, and form on its own is not the issue. I am not speaking of four literal pages. The four pages are four biblical and theological functions that I am proposing to divide the sermon, whatever its length, into four consecutive tasks of roughly equal duration that I claim are ideal for proclaiming good news. This approach is simple: the work of writing the four pages is spread over the days of the week. It is biblical: the Bible is our authority to preach and cannot be wisely by-passed. It is imaginative: it defines and assigns specific creative tasks for each page and day. It is theological: it recognizes that preaching must be rooted in and strengthened by dialogue with tradition and it provides a framework and methodology for accomplishing this. It is pastoral: it links local and global needs with the love of God who claims all people as beloved children. It is evangelical in the broadest sense: it embraces concerns in many churches for spiritual renewal and the joyful proclamation of the gospel. Here preachers may find opportunity for a renewal of preaching, whether they are ordained or lay, experienced pastors or students in an introductory preaching class in seminary.
Our culture is becoming increasingly reliant on oral and aural media and less on the written word. Thus, to advocate a page-centered approach to preaching may still seem odd. To speak of the sermon as four acts, or functions, or episodes, or moments might better reinforce the auditory nature of preaching. Still, the page is not about to die soon: as long as computer printouts are needed, and as long as preachers need to jot notes, the printed page will be present. More important, faithful preaching is never off the cuff, and the need for well-prepared sermons is more urgent now, in this period when too many churches are experiencing declining membership, than it ever has been.
The purpose here also is not to argue whether the sermon should be composed on paper and delivered from a manuscript. Four consecutive pages are an ideal norm for communication of good news, for the following reasons. Two initial pages identify the trouble in the Bible and our world. Two additional pages identify what God graciously has done and is doing in relationship to that trouble, again in the Bible and our world. Certain theological and imaginative functions are appropriate to each page. Such a model makes efficient use of preparation time because it provides a valuable structure for thought and for organizing material. One does not need to waste time wondering where various kinds of material belong. Once one has composed the sermon, its simple structure can be an aid to memory in delivery. Ironically, the four-page model facilitates getting the sermon off the page and into the lives of God’s children as we prepare for the coming week.
Sociological Reasons for a New Approach to Preaching
Why do we need this four-page approach? Numerous factors in church and society have changed the nature of ordered ministry and put pressures on preachers. A number of important sociological shifts can be identified:
1. Great upheavals have taken place in society since earlier times when the Bible and the preacher had uncontested authority. Postmodern society has no shortage of information and poses challenges to most authority, including that of the church, Scripture, and the preacher. In this climate, truth is perceived as relative. What used to work in preaching is no longer necessarily effective.
2. Time pressures on individual and family life have increased, reducing the amount of time and energy people have available for the church. Volunteerism is down. Education programs of the church reach fewer people, increasing the burden on the worship service for both instruction and spiritual encounter.
3. The nature of ordered ministry has changed. The preacher faces increased pressures and is less often conceived as the central executive officer. Key decisions are often shared in time-consuming committees and there are important benefits to this. But more people expect to be involved in making decisions, in leading worship, and in leading other church events, all of which requires coordination of busy schedules. Administrative tasks at the level of the local and regional church have expanded to include difficult personnel issues and exhausting and costly legal disputes. On top of this, married clergy are expected to take more of a role in the rearing of their families than in previous eras.
4. Less time is available to preach the sermon in some denominations because the service involves more music, more Scripture readings, more frequent celebration of Communion or Eucharist, and the increased participation of laity and children.
5. Historical-critical and literary approaches to biblical texts, combined with increased use of the lectionary, have helped many denominations move away from preaching verses of Scripture taken out of context and recover more complete literary scriptural units. But in using these approaches and relying on the lectionary, preachers may have been lulled into a false complacency, as if the goal were to preach the biblical text as a literary unit, or develop a fascinating image or metaphor from that text, or preach the biblical plot, or introduce listeners to some character in the text, when in fact these things are not goals but means to serve preaching God. Recovery of an historically reliable text, or a literary interpretation of it, is no substitute for discerning for yourself what the text says about God.
6. At the same time, theological approaches to the Bible have been in decline since the biblical theology movement came under criticism and only now are showing signs of recovery, for instance, in the work of Brevard Childs.² Preachers have lacked guidance in how to preach Jesus Christ. Some preachers sought to remove the offense of the gospel by becoming politically correct and avoiding the offense of Christ. Others avoided the authority of Scripture by pursuing the historical Jesus behind the text, as if the original form of the text were more central for preaching. Still others thought that in preaching the biblical text they had already preached Christ.
7. Important gains have been made in homiletics with narrative: biblical stories now stand on their own without being reduced to propositions; stories now communicate people’s experience where previously generalized reflection on experience was common; and many individuals and groups who had been excluded from positions of privilege in society and were previously silenced are now being heard. But homiletics itself has given much less attention to explicit theological matters than is warranted.³
Theological Reasons for a Change
Preaching has been dominated by sermons constructed in three points; but I would argue that four pages rather than three points is a more appropriate structure for this new millennium. I propose the four pages as a worthy norm for sermons for one key reason: God is missing in many of our sermons. It may be that God is missing from the center of our own lives at times and we need to pay more attention to caring for our mind body and spirit in the midst of daily life. But I want to focus on the results for the church when God is absent from our sermons. Sermons are less joyful than they ought to be. Given the good news of the gospel and all that God has accomplished on our behalf in Jesus Christ, joy seems reasonable to expect. Why then are sermons often glum not only in the so-called liberal or mainline traditions, but also in the so-called conservative or evangelical traditions, where the emphasis ought to be on joy? Churches on opposing ends of the theological spectrum have real differences, yet they are distressingly alike in this regard.
The preacher who focuses mainly on improved individual relationships with Jesus Christ is little different from the one who preaches social justice week after week. Each puts the burden of responsibility on the congregation; each lists essential shoulds, musts, and have-tos, and appropriately indicates the trouble facing humanity for failing to meet God’s will. So far so good, but sadly, both tend to stop there. Congregations have little problem getting to Good Friday and the cross with such preaching. They do not get as easily to Easter and the empty tomb, or to Pentecost. From a theological perspective, self-reliance is a sure recipe for disaster. God’s grace alone is what saves us. Yet many preachers persist in preaching messages that proclaim our condemnation as humans, for they sentence us to the limitations of our own accomplishments. For preaching to change, preachers need to get God in the viewfinder of the videorecorder as they prepare their sermons.
The Four Pages of the Sermon, Revised and Updated: A Guide to Biblical Preaching
Doing justice to the complexity of the preaching task and the questions that underlie it, author Paul Scott Wilson organizes both the preparation and the content of the sermon around its four pages. Each page addresses a different theological and creative component of what happens in any sermon. Page One presents the trouble or conflict that takes place in or that underscores the biblical text itself. Page Two looks at similar conflict–sin or brokenness–in our own time. Page Three returns to the Bible to identify where God is at work in or behind the text–in other words, to discover the good news. Page Four points to God at work in our world, particularly in relation to the situations described in Page Two. This approach is about preaching the gospel in nearly any sermonic form. Wilson teaches the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of sermon construction, all rooted in a theology of the Word. This completely revised edition guides readers through the sermon process step by step, with the aim of composing sermons that challenge and provide hope, by focusing on God more closely than on humans. It has been largely rewritten to include an assessment of where preaching is today in light of propositional preaching, the New Homiletic, African American preaching, the effect of the internet, and use of technology. A chapter on exegesis has been added, plus new focus on the importance of preaching to a felt need, the need for proclamation in addition to teaching, and developing tools to ensure sermon excellence. New sermon examples have been added along with a section that responds to critics and looks to the future.
By Paul Scott Wilson (paperback) : Target
Book Synopsis
Doing justice to the complexity of the preaching task and the questions that underlie it, Wilson organizes both the preparation and the content of the sermon around its four pages. Each page addresses a different theological and creative component of what happens in any sermon. Page One presents the trouble or conflict that takes place in or that underscores the biblical text itself. Page Two looks at similar conflict–sin or brokenness–in our own time. Page Three returns to the Bible to identify where God is at work in or behind the text–in other words, to discover the good news. Page Four points to God at work in our world, particularly in relation to the situations described in Page Two.
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