Three Homiletical Insights Preachers Can Learn from Howard Thurman (A Guest Post)
Dr. Edgar “Trey” Clark III is an Assistant Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. An experienced preacher and ordained minister, Trey has 19 years of ministry experience in a range of diverse contexts. His research and teaching interests include the holistic formation of preachers, Black contemplative spirituality, the history of women preachers in the global South, and theologies and practices of proclamation outside the pulpit. He’s currently finishing a book tentatively titled "Black Contemplative Preaching: Reclaiming a Hidden History of Prayer, Proclamation, and Prophetic Witness." You can learn more about the Fuller Equip program at https://www.fuller.edu/equip/
Who was Howard Thurman?
Howard Washington Thurman (1899-1981) was a leading twentieth-century pastor, author, mystic, and theologian who ministered in times of social unrest not completely unlike our own.
He served as a spiritual guide to civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Pauli Murray, and Otis Moss Jr.
He was a co-founder of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the first interracial, intercultural, interfaith church in the United States.
And he was hailed as one of the great preachers of his time by Life magazine.
However, Thurman is still relatively unknown to many today.
I first learned of Thurman through a friend who insisted I engage some of his work. While reading Thurman’s autobiography With Head and Heart, I immediately knew I had met someone that would deeply enrich my life and ministry.
Since that time, I have continued to learn from Thurman and, like my friend, introduce him to others. In this brief article, I highlight three homiletical insights that preachers in the West can learn from Thurman as we navigate the unique challenges and opportunities of our time.
Homiletical Insight #1: Rethinking Great Preaching
First, amid the celebrity culture in the United States, Howard Thurman challenges us to rethink the nature of great preaching.
Though recognized as a noted preacher in his time, Thurman did not fully equate sermonic effectiveness with technical skill or good communication. Echoing the wisdom of one of his homiletic professors, he once stated:
“The preacher is never under obligation to preach a great sermon but [they are] always under obligation to wrestle with a great idea.”[1]
In other words, for Thurman, preachers should be more concerned about the substance of the sermon than the style of the sermon—though, of course, these were not completely separate for him.[2]
While recognizing the inherently rhetorical and theological nature of preaching, he believed sermons should provide an occasion for the people of God to go on a thoughtful, Spirit-led journey of exploration and discovery.
And, for Thurman, this journey of wrestling with the great stories and ideas of Scripture and the world should ultimately help listeners encounter the living God.
In our age of ever-expanding forms of social media, there is tremendous pressure to prepare and deliver sermons that will be deemed “great” by the number of views, likes, and shares they receive from others. And, of course, we should craft sermons that can be heard and well-received for the sake of the gospel.
Yet Thurman confronts the ways in which we can easily allow substance to be eclipsed by a focus on style.
Most fundamentally, great sermons invite listeners to encounter the wonder, mystery, and greatness of a loving and just God.
Homiletical Insight #2: Reclaiming Silence
A second homiletical insight that Howard Thurman offers preachers is to reclaim silence in our noisy world.
Despite his demanding schedule and the many social and political upheavals of his time, Thurman deeply valued silence as a context to attend to the voice of God.
As a contemplative preacher, he was known for incorporating long, pregnant pauses in his sermons. For Thurman, this was not a technique or trick. Rather, he believed he was creating space for his listeners to slow down their fast-paced lives in the context of worship to focus on the voice that matters most.
Indeed, Thurman once told a group of ministers that “God speaks loudest in silence.”[3]
One Simple Practice
What might it look like to create more space in our sermons to attend to the voice of God in the midst of our many words?
One simple practice I encourage students to consider is incorporating one intentional, extended pause into a sermon. At times, this may just be a three or four second pause after a particularly important statement. At other times, this might involve offering 30-seconds or a minute or two of silence in which listeners are invited into quiet prayer or reflection based on a prompt, image, or question in the sermon.
Along with helping listeners, I’ve found pauses in my sermons can remind me to attune myself to the presence of the God of whom I speak.
Homiletical Insight #3: Resisting Binary Thinking
A final homiletical insight that Howard Thurman offers to preachers is to resist binary thinking in our sermons in the face of rampant division.[4]
Despite living during intense times of racism, segregation, and war, Thurman was committed to what he called “the search for common ground,” that is the search for community among all living things.[5] This influenced his approach to preaching as he challenged either/or thinking.
One of many examples of this is the way in which he held together his commitment to the pastoral and the prophetic. For Thurman, a focus on the pastoral provides a humanizing lens for doing the work of a prophet, and a focus on the prophetic provides a holistic lens for doing the work of a pastor.
This is seen in the way in which Thurman preached in the aftermath of the horrific murder of young Emmett Till. Thurman was able to acknowledge the gross injustice and call for much-needed change without dehumanizing the perpetrators in the process.
Today, many preachers tend to elevate the prophetic or the pastoral at the expense of the other.
However, if we are to be faithful to the lifegiving and liberating gospel of Jesus, we cannot choose one over the other.
While some seasons and contexts might require giving special emphasis to the pastoral or the prophetic, I would argue that usually both should be integrated.
One Simple Practice
A practice for cultivating this kind of integration is experimenting with developing a more communal approach to preaching that welcomes perspectives that differ from our own.
For example, engaging diverse commentary, congregational and/or community voices in the preparation or delivery of a sermon can be a small step toward increasing our sensitivity to pastoral and prophetic concerns as we relate the Scriptural text to our particular context.
These are some of the many insights that Howard Thurman offers to preachers. While the goal is not to imitate Thurman, I’m convinced that he embodies wisdom that can be applied in relevant ways in diverse ministry contexts today.
[1] Howard Thurman, The Growing Edge (Richmond: Friends United, 1956), x.
[2] James Earl Massey, “Thurman’s Preaching: Substance and Style,” in Henry J. Young, ed., God and Human Freedom: A Festschrift in Honor of Howard Thurman (Richmond: Friends United, 1983).
[3] Howard Thurman, “Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 3, 1971 February 11,” Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed August 23, 2022, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/258.
[4] Some of what follows is based on my article “Preaching as Prophet and Pastor,” Fuller Magazine, 22 (2022): 52-55.
[5] Howard Thurman, The Search for Common Ground: An Inquiry into the Basis of Man’s Experience of Community (Richmond: Friends United, 1971).
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