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It's a pleasure to be here to have this opportunity to share with you. It is a privilege, of course, to be associated with your name, sir, even in so indirect a way. Our time is very short, both in terms of days and minutes, so let me turn immediately to

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our theme. It seems to me necessary that I begin by putting before you the theological presuppositions which are mine as I preach. I believe that God's word is act.

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That is, when God speaks, something happens. Psalm 33, "He spoke and it came to be." Hebrews, "Christ reflects God and upholds the universe by his word." If God's word is act, then that word demands preaching.

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Not only the repeating of the acts that have gone before, but also the repeating of the acts in the sense that they are done again. One professor of homiletics said that preaching is 20 minutes in which to raise the dead. I accept that to be true, understanding that only God can raise the dead.

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He did this before, he does it again. Only God's word can do this. How then can anyone presume to preach, to speak the word that only God can speak? Well, the fact of the matter is we can't presume to do it.

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Moses should be the patron saint of all preachers. Karl Barth said, "The great question with regard to preaching is not how one does it, but how can one do it?" The fact is that we cannot.

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Only God can reproduce his word. Only God can do God's acts. We may debate with our Roman Catholic brothers about whether the church is the extension of the incarnation or not, but I think it not debatable that the sermon is to be an

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extension of the incarnation. In the preaching of the sermon, the word is to encounter the hearer. Bonhoeffer says that in effective preaching, Christ walks up and down the aisles of the sanctuary touching people on the shoulder.

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Barth speaks of the transubstantiation of the sermon. When God's word becomes incarnate in us, it happens only when God himself wills it. It is not at the preacher's command. This then should save us from conceit, since when we accomplish anything, it is God accomplishing

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it. It should also save us from defeat, because when we have done our best and still do not accomplish it, it is because it is the Holy Spirit's will. The obvious implications of this understanding of the nature of preaching are three.

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First, we must preach from Scripture. Scripture is God's special revelation to us, and he has honored it in the past, so he will honor it now. Second implication is that no preaching is possible without the Holy Spirit, and the

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Holy Spirit cannot be contained in forms. He is free. And that means that our preaching does not have to be contained in forms. We may try all kinds and styles of preaching.

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The third implication, it seems to me, is that we derive from this theology of preaching a proper view of ourselves. That is, none of ourselves is involved in preaching. All of it is God.

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And at the same time, all of ourselves must be involved in preaching, because we are seeking to be nothing less than the instrument of God, which demands of us everything that we are. Now, with that background, I would like to move to my theme for today, which concerns

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the planning of preaching. God is not Aristotle's unmoved mover. He is instead one who is actively involved with men. And God's involvement with men is in terms of meeting their needs.

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God's love, his acts in history, are in response to man's need. Therefore, it seems to me, preaching, God's act, is to be directed toward the needs of the hearer. Before the sermon is five minutes old, everyone in the congregation should be aware of the

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fact that it is germane to their needs. This principle is self-evident in education. We know, for example, that we can educate more effectively if we can relate what we are saying to our students' needs.

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I teach religion and philosophy. If I try to explain Plato's concept of the body and soul in purely philosophical terms, I will have a modicum of interest among my students. If instead I speak about the Karen Ann Quinlan case and talk about the question of the relationship

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of the body and soul in that particular case, a case which seems to have special fascination to college students, because I am speaking to them in terms of their interests and needs, they are much more likely to hear me. We recognize this principle in advertising.

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The poor young wife comes out. She can't cook a good cup of coffee. Many people immediately relate to that need. Now Mrs. Olson appears upon the scene and gives a wise word concerning Folgers.

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But the need is announced first. People see things in terms of themselves. You have had the experience of re-reading a book you read four years before. When you go through it the second time, you find a lot of things you didn't find the first

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time. Why? Not because the book has changed, but because you have changed. You come to the book in terms of different needs and interests, and therefore what you

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receive from the book is different. All preaching should speak to the needs of our people because they will hear us in terms of those needs. Now I think the significance of needs has been best made clear to us by the third force

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psychologist Abraham Maslow. I'm sure most of you are familiar with his pyramid of needs. The most basic needs for food, drink, air, sleep. Security needs for a job, adequate finances.

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Social needs, the belonging needs. Love and esteem needs, wanting to be wanted. And the self-actualization need, living up to our greatest potential. Maslow teaches us that these needs occur in all of us and they occur in all of us repetitively.

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They are never gone. It seems to me then that as we address our congregation in the preaching context, we need to address them in terms of their needs and we can apply Maslow's pyramid to the congregation in understanding those needs.

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In speaking to the average Presbyterian congregation, for example, I don't need to make reference to basic needs. More generally, I will be speaking to security needs, belonging needs, or love and esteem needs.

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On a college campus, I want to be especially aware of the need for self-actualization because college students are so oriented in this direction. God's acts in history meet need. Our preaching should meet need.

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I want to make very clear that I am not speaking of topical preaching. Topical preaching changes the pulpit into a platform. Besides that, no one can read enough to really do it well. It deals more with a theme than it does with a need.

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It deals with a subject to be explained rather than with an object to be attained. And in like manner, I am not speaking of what is usually called expository preaching, which I understand to be a systematic development of blocks of scripture, assuming that the congregation is interested in them.

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One brings a historical and exegetical analysis and then a few paragraphs of application. It's principally didactic in orientation, and I don't think it really communicates well since most people aren't really fascinated with the Amalekites. I don't even believe it exalts scripture because you don't find it in scripture.

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Scripture is to be a lamp to our feet, which means we do not sit and contemplate the lamp, but rather we shine the lamp into the shadowed places of our lives. The word is given to us for our needs. I also fear expository preaching as it's usually defined because I think it tends to intellectualism

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and coldness. David Martin Lloyd-Jones says in his book, Preachers in Preaching, that that kind of preaching produces church members who are hard and cold and often harsh and self-satisfied. I quote him directly, "I do not know of anything that is more likely to produce a congregation

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of Pharisees than just that." Going back to the Bible does not mean, I think, expository preaching at least as it is usually defined. It rather means bringing the Bible into application to the needs of men.

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All sermons then can be summed in three sentences. Henry Adams wrote these sentences. They're not original with me. The first sentence should be a question.

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Here we discover the need. The second sentence an affirmation, God's answer to that need. The third sentence an invitation, how the need is to be met. The verb either in the imperative or the subjunctive moods.

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Relevance, truth, and response. Not a topic, not just the next ten verses in the chapter, but a need. When that is met, the people come after you after you have preached and say, "May I speak to you about that privately?"

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The first thing to remember then in planning preaching is to plan your preaching to meet your people's needs. The second thing I would suggest is preach so that you won't come between your God and your people.

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That is, be a creditable witness. Aristotle said a long time ago, "We believe good men more readily than others." I think we all recognize that to be true. A test was recently conducted in which identical paragraphs were given to two groups of people.

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They concerned atomic submarines. One paragraph was reported to be from the writings of Hyman Rickover, father of the atomic submarine. The other paragraph was reported to be from Pravda, the communist news source.

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People were asked which paragraph they most believed. You know the answer to the question before I even suggest it. We tend to believe the people that we like and trust. That's the reason they use pretty girls to advertise Mack trucks and athletes to advertise

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razor blades. An engineer could speak to us more wisely, but we like the girls and we like the athletes. So preach in order to be liked. I do not mean, of course, that you preach peace when there is no peace.

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I am not suggesting that you prostitute yourself in any way. What I am saying is that you will be heard better if you are liked by your people. You will bring a learned theologian into your pulpit who will dazzle them with theological footwork.

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But they'll like your preaching better because they like you better. The Anglican preacher of the 18th century, Richard Cecil, said, "It's one thing to love preaching. It's another thing to love the people to whom you preach."

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What I am suggesting is we are to love them enough to let them love us, to show a compassion like Christ's. Here incidentally is where I part company with those preachers who claim that the excellence of their preaching and its prophetic dimension is testified to by the emptiness of the pews.

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I don't accept that because I think Jesus to be the greatest preacher of all time and the common people heard him gladly. I am referring here to what communicators would call the principle of the assumption of similitude.

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You will find it spelled out in Larson's Persuasion, Reception, and Responsibility. The principle is this. People don't like to be alone. People like to be like other people.

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People want people to agree with them. You see this, for example, right now when everybody is busy selecting a political candidate. They choose the candidate with whom they find the greatest oneness. Therefore I am suggesting that in your preaching throw every bouquet you can, just like Paul

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did. Pass out a compliment every time a compliment is in order. Be attractive. Be likable.

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Love people through your preaching and let it show. This is best done through transparency. Open yourself. Let the vulnerability that is yours become theirs.

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Let them see the similarities between you and them. Indeed, if there are places, and there will be, where you radically differ from your people, they will be more willing to accept that difference because of the areas of similarity they have found than that difference if that's all they see in you.

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There's an exception to this. Always be careful when making yourself vulnerable to fundamental congregations. Now by fundamental I'm not referring to their theology, but rather their attitude. Congregations which are authoritarian in nature generally believe in the doctrine of the immaculately

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conceived preacher. When you take your clothes off in front of a bench of Pharisees, you are going to be hurt. You can anticipate it.

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Now there are lots of nuts and bolts about the planning of preaching that I'd be happy to talk about, and maybe we can do that at lunchtime. Right now what I'm trying to say is that in planning your preaching long in advance, and preaching should be so planned, plan it in terms of your people's needs and plan to speak

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to those needs in such a way that you as a person will be revealed to them. For example, if you discover in your people a great need with regard to overindulgence, well then you might approach it, if you're built like I am, like I did. I preached a sermon called "A Fat Man Looks at a Thin World."

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Now there I was able to state the need, to apply the answer, and to make an invitation, and at the same time to be very, very open about myself. I was able to speak to a need in a transparent way. If you find your people need security in witnessing, they feel lonely in witness, then go to Romans

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1 and take a text like "I am not ashamed of the gospel," but when you preach it, preach the text like this. When I was a little child, I was not ashamed of the gospel. I would sing "Jesus Loves Me" at the drop of a suggestion.

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When I became a high school student, then the gospel became an offense to others and I became ashamed of the gospel. Then when I got to college and seminary, I realized God's grace as being infinitely beyond anything I had ever imagined, so I became ashamed of having been ashamed.

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And then, as spiritual maturity came, I became unashamed again. The opportunity you see to speak to witnessing and to people's need to be with others in witness by making yourself available to them. Dare to do this.

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Apply psychology to your preaching. It's good stewardship and if you make a mistake, your Savior knows it's an error of your head and not of your heart. My theology, you see, sets me free to do that.

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This is a time for experimentation in preaching. The days of broadness and sanctuary are gone. We're trying new things in music and art and literature and we ought to try new things in preaching too.

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We serve a God who acted and a God who acts. Therefore, in our preaching, we must be as free as the Spirit. Run risks. Do our best.

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The past is gone, at least for a little while. It will return again. It always does. It will come to rest like some great stone upon our groins.

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But until then, let's have some fireworks, some laughter, and some tears. Tomorrow I will try to model for you what I mean. Thank you. [Applause]

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>> Thank you, Dr. Teal.