Lead Time
Lead Time
PREACH! Does the LCMS Do It Right? with Rev. Dr. David Schmitt
Reverend Dr. David Schmitt has spent nearly three decades shaping the voices of future pastors, and today, he shares his wisdom on the art of preaching with us. Discover how he likens sermon crafting to cooking a rich stew, blending diverse life experiences to create messages that resonate deeply with congregations. We'll uncover how integrating personal stories and experiences into sermons not only fulfills the preacher but also opens up profound, surprising connections through the Holy Spirit.
Our conversation takes us through the intersection of literature, culture, and religion in preaching. With my background in American and English literature, we'll explore how understanding mystery and ambiguity in texts can enhance the contextual nature of sermons. We'll break down the four essential components of preaching—text, theology, evangelical proclamation, and hearer interpretation—and share a unique classroom exercise designed to align future preachers' inherent definitions with the technical teachings of the seminary.
Lastly, we'll delve into the qualities that define Lutheran preaching, including its scriptural foundation, theological clarity, and practical life application. We'll discuss the evolving differences between Lutheran and evangelical preaching and the necessity of including Christ in every sermon. From effective preaching strategies to balancing creativity with authenticity, Reverend Dr. Schmitt offers invaluable insights to help pastors rejuvenate their methods and connect more deeply with their audiences. Join us for an enriching discussion that emphasizes unity, inclusivity, and the transformative power of the gospel in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
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Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kalberg. It is a gorgeous day to be alive, I pray. The love and the peace and the passion that flows from the cross of Jesus Christ is fueling you for ministry today, with a heart of humility that just yearns to learn, just yearns to learn. And today I get to hang out with Jack. Jack, how are you doing, loving life?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. How about yourself, sir?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, great, great. I got reconnected today. Just spent a little bit of time before our podcast with, honestly, one of the most profoundly shaping professors that I had at the seminary. And when you think of going to the seminary, you know you're going to learn. You're going to learn systematic theology, you're going to learn history, you're going to learn, hopefully, some leadership principles, some bedside manner, some spiritual disciplines. You're going to talk about all these things, but a lot of guys go because they're like man I. I can't wait to tell people about Jesus, both privately and publicly, the proclamation office, the office of holy ministry and the privilege that it is to proclaim God's Word to His people in ways that are culturally sensitive but never veering from the truths of God's Word. Those early preaching experiences are remarkably formative and this man shaped me so profoundly. This is Reverend Dr David Schmidt. David, thanks for hanging out with us today. There are many, many listeners who have been blessed by you. How many years have you been at the seminary? Now? Tell that story.
Speaker 3:This is my 29th year. Come on, it is I know.
Speaker 1:And you were in the parish? How many years? Because I remember your parish stories.
Speaker 3:I was born across the street from the seminary at St Mary's, so I just your whole life is oriented around that community it is.
Speaker 1:And it's great, it's great. So let's just dig right in. What caused you to fall in love with preaching and sermon structures? Just tell a little bit of your ministry story there, david.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I guess if I had to use an analogy it'd be like cooking, it'd be like a good, good stew. Everything goes into it and it's something that can tap into deep, deep, comforting memories for people and you get a connection. So for me, as you know from being a preacher, anything can go into a sermon. I mean, you know you got the Apostle Paul in Acts 17 using a hymn to Zeus, right. So you know, miley Cyrus, whatever it can go into a sermon because the Spirit can work in really bizarre ways. And so you know you got all these other classes like you were listing all these classes and you're kind of sometimes you're wondering you know what good is this going to be? But all of that can go into a sermon.
Speaker 3:So the way in which writing a sermon or composing a sermon took pieces of life and gave them purpose not for me, but purpose for others and God's mission that was beautiful. I love that. And then the second thing is is then after you preach. So before preaching was great, because you got all the stuff that's going around and you're like, hey, I could probably use that, and you're kind of watching the Lord weave your life together. And then after preaching, when you hear what people heard, sometimes things you never said, but they heard it anyway and it's just great. It's great, so that connecting with people around Jesus that's what happens in preaching and yeah, all of me for all of you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen. Tell about your PhD, because isn't it in philosophy or literature, literature.
Speaker 3:You're right. I got a master's in literature from U of I and I focused mostly on American lit. And then I got a PhD in literature from Washington University in St Louis and then I focused on English literature and there's always been a kind of a love of well, I think that you know, when my mom reads literature, like she'll say, you know, she'll say, oh, give me some good book to read, because she's reading all the stuff that we all read, but don't tell people we read. So she's like, give me a good book to read. So I'll give her something good and she'll be like I don't understand it, I don't get it, and I'm like, yeah, I'm like, well, this is what's happening. She says, well, why didn't they just say that?
Speaker 3:So literature always, always has a quality of mystery to it and it's ambiguous. And that ambiguity and that mystery, I think is helpful at times. It trains us to not be reductive as we look at the world around us, but to enter into the mystery and be open to discovery. And so that connection of culture, religion has always been fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where do you feel that maybe people might have misconceptions or maybe a misunderstanding of what it means to preach?
Speaker 3:Oh well, I think, ask me, why are you asking?
Speaker 2:I guess, I'm just kind of well, there's a lot of diversity of how. If you went to church, let's just say, even within a Lutheran churches, you're going to see a lot of diversity of preaching styles, right, and then there may be conversations about well, this is a helpful way to preach and maybe this is not achieving what it should be achieving when it's preaching. So maybe help clarify that for people. Like, maybe there's a there's kind of a more positive way to think about the approach of what you're trying to do when you're preaching and maybe a less helpful, maybe not as productive way of achieving something when you're preaching.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really. I mean it's a very insightful observation and I think one of the insights of your observation is that preaching is contextual. I agree, it's born in community.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 3:It's born in community, and this is why you know somebody in I don't know Utica, nebraska, can't necessarily evaluate an online service in Orange County, california, because they're not part of that community. You know there's a funeral that happens for a teenage suicide in a community and the pastor has some phrase in a funeral sermon and then on Sunday he just kind of weaves that phrase into the sermon. Somebody who isn't part of that community will have no clue what's going on. And so I think it's diverse, because the people God gathers together in places are diverse. So for me, I like to talk about the heart and the art. So the heart of preaching we should all be in agreement on. You know, the heart of preaching has four things to it, and I wrote an article called the Tapestry of Preaching. I talk about four threads. The heart of preaching has four things to it. I wrote an article called the Tapestry of Preaching. I talk about four threads.
Speaker 3:The heart of preaching has four things to it. It has a text, technical exposition. Our preaching is grounded in and normed and guided by the scriptures. Right do with connecting people to these texts so that they understand what they meant and did in their original context. Then there's theology, there's the teachings of the faith that arise from these texts that have been confessed by the church for ages, confessed and defended. And how you confess kind of depends upon your context and what you're fighting against, right. And so you've got a text, you've got theology, you've got what we call evangelical proclamation, you've got law and gospel. Jesus Christ is the center of everything, it's Christocentric preaching. And then there's the lives of the hearers, hearer interpretation, where you're connecting to the lives of your people. So those four things are always present in a sermon and I would make the argument that if you're missing one of those, you really don't have a sermon.
Speaker 2:Where do you see that happen most often? Where does it get missed? Yeah, which one of those four do you think gets missed?
Speaker 3:the most often it's hard to make a generalization like that. But I'll tell you what I do in my classes. So the opening class I have the students do a mind map. Have you ever done one of those where you put a word and then you draw? So I have them put the word preach in the center of the page and then I have them do a mind map and I give them, like you know, 20 minutes to mind map so that every association they've ever had with preaching is kind of on that piece of paper. And then I have them look at that paper and I say, ok, now I want you to write a definition of what preaching is based on your experience.
Speaker 3:I want you to write a definition of what preaching is based on your experience, because what's important here is that your first preaching class does not happen at the seminary. Your first preaching class is the first time anyone spoke the Word of God to you. That's your first preaching class and I want them to see that the Holy Spirit has invested 25, 30, 45, 50 years into their formation and the Holy Spirit has given them a I call it an operational definition of preaching, has given them an understanding of preaching that has been cultivated through their life experience and it's going to be really hard to work against that, that that definition of preaching is just going to come naturally to them. So then, after they've written their definition, now I move to well, here's a technical definition of preaching, here's how we at the seminary have agreed to define it. And now I've got their life experience that the Holy Spirit has used to equip them to preach. And now this technical definition. And I ask them okay, so when you look at your definition, what aspects of the technical definition are going to be really easy for you and what aspects are going to be hard?
Speaker 3:And that's where you know some students will say well, you know this theology portion, I don't really think like that. All of my preaching has just been, you know, reading verse by verse through a text of Scripture and seeing how it relates to Jesus and to our life. But it's not really teaching us the faith in that sense. And you know, other people have trouble with their interpretation of this. So I guess the question is a good question with the hero interpretation of this. So I guess the question is a good question. I think it varies depending on what the spirit has done in the life of an individual, and it's more important that you're asking that question than that there's one single answer. Does that make sense? I think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm hearing from you that context is super, super important, that your own personal experience and having authenticity tied to that is super, super important, that your own personal experience and having authenticity tied to that is very, very important, right. And then there's also a theological component, a mastery of the theology of what you're preaching about, that it should be, you know, a sound theology, right? And then how are we applying that to the person? How is it, christ for you, right, right.
Speaker 3:Right, right, I mean so, like if you're thinking kind of in a, you know, in a grand, larger global picture of history and the history of preaching, I would say that the area that is neglected currently tends to be the theological confession reflected currently tends to be the theological confession that people will actually say you know you're preaching the text, you know I preach the text. Well, actually, we preach the faith. That's what we're preaching. We preach Jesus Christ. We preach Jesus Christ, we preach the faith.
Speaker 3:Now, it's based on a text, it's normed and guided by a text, but you know, preaching really isn't preaching the text, it's preaching the faith, normed and guided by the text of Scripture, centered in Christ, for the benefit of the hearer. So I think that recently we've kind of have this real, and I think it happened because of the battle for the Bible right and the loss of biblical literacy within our culture, and so there's a lot of reasons why we've gravitated toward preaching the text. But I would say that the area that we're kind of weak in is preaching the faith or preaching theology. Tim, did you have something you wanted to?
Speaker 1:say I mean, this should be our sweet spot in contribution as Lutheran confessing Christians.
Speaker 3:Correct. I would agree, I would agree.
Speaker 1:And let's talk because our theology, the reason I'm a Lutheran, is because our theology is a correct exposition of Scripture and it centers me on the chief doctrine of Scripture, which is justification. That shouldn't be controversial, right, and and it always aims. Our law, gospel handles, you know, two kinds of righteous. All of our tension, phil, like this, this is in me and in in us, like I've been baked in this community my whole, my whole life and so, and I still there's refinement and I still got to continue to learn all those types of things and continue to confess the book of Concord et cetera, like I gotta be in it but like it's a part of my community and I pray.
Speaker 1:So to go to the other side unless and the other side meaning, are kind of contextual and evangelical, and you could use the word winsome, are we known right now as Lutheran communicators, as winsome, evangelical, obviously conservative, confessing, deeply rooted in the scriptures and our Lutheran confessions? Are we at the table, I guess, in the wider conversation with the church, so that our theology could be liberally spread? I don't know that we are David, anything more to say to that, and I'll land it here. I think sometimes our preaching becomes like it's not, it's very narrow. This is the Lutheran way. So I guess the question I'm asking is what makes a sermon Lutheran in your estimation, and how can we keep that evangelical kind of center?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, yeah, I think for me a Lutheran sermon has those four qualities to it. It's anchored in articulation or exposition of the Scripture. It's clear in whatever theological locus you're working with. It's clear about whatever theological locus you're working with. It's clear about your theological teaching. It's centered in Christ and it's connected to life. There's a purpose for this. That's a living purpose, and so that's the Lutheran. I think you know it used to be that the big difference between us and the evangelicals was the Christ portion. It's not that they didn't believe in Christ, they believed in Christ. They just didn't believe that he had to be in every sermon.
Speaker 3:You know if you're kind of preaching through Nehemiah. You preach through Nehemiah, right, you don't need to always run to Jesus, but you know, there's been that kind of the gospel coalition. There's been this rebirth and reconsideration of the presence and the articulation of the gospel and preaching among the evangelicals, which is good. I do think, though, it would be helpful if there was kind of a rebirth in theology, the preaching of theology, among us. I think that would be good. I don't know how to say this. I don't know how to say this.
Speaker 3:There's a lot you can tell about a congregation by how they post their sermons on their website Say more Well, if I go to a congregation and it posts their sermons on the basis of the place in the liturgical year so you know, this is the 17th Sunday after Pentecost Well, you know, they're just kind of, basically, they're just posting them in the order that they appear right, and I have never, ever, met somebody who had a dying desire to see what was preached on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, right, I mean, it's just, you know, not right. So you can post them by the sequencing in which they occur in a congregation, or you can post them by scriptural text, which is another way of doing it, or the way I would prefer is you can post them by the theological confession. So you have, on your website, you've curated your sermons. So you, you know you're uh do you have questions about prayer.
Speaker 3:Well, here's five sermons on prayer. They happened in various times during the year. They were preaching on baptism right.
Speaker 2:There you go, gotcha. So when I when I was surprised in that your four items that didn't come up in there, because we're Lutherans. Here is law gospel, so talk about that.
Speaker 3:That one's part of the evangelical proclamation. So when you're preaching the gospel, obviously there's going to be law and gospel and the here interpretation. It's going to come in the here interpretation as well.
Speaker 2:And I would say that does seem to be a distinction where there's not necessarily that intentionality. When you visit the wider evangelical space of America, right that a lot of times you'll get law only preaching.
Speaker 3:Very common. Still Christ is in there, right, so Christ is woven in the message have sometimes difficulty understanding the law to be good, to be good, design, to being something that the Spirit brings about in our life in terms of our growth. You know, because we're so used to it being condemning so that we hear the condemning law, the liberating gospel.
Speaker 3:But it's the third use of the law, the way in which you know the paranesis, the encouraging word that we tend to have, a we tend not to see, which is where the evangelicals pick it up right.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let's go deeper there, because there's an ongoing conversation in various circles about two and three functions of the law. How do you teach a Lutheran third function of the law? I mean, is it always just you can feel free to let the Holy Spirit lead you where you need to go here, but at law, gospel, now what you know, jesus has saved you. And then it can kind of become a little bit formulaic sometimes. You know here's your challenge at the end, or something like that.
Speaker 3:You know you'll like this. You'll like this. The most common, the most common function for students when they're when they're trying to figure out you know what people should do with. This is usually mission Go tell others about Jesus. So at least we've got that right.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 3:So you know, we have, when we teach preaching, we have what's called a sermon prep sheet and it's kind of a, it's a cheat sheet that makes sure you cover those four things so that you know when you get up to preach. You know, so for me, you know I'm teaching beginning preachers and there's a lot of lack of confidence, right, there's a lot of nervousness, and you know, and so, and a lot of people think that they overcome that lack of confidence by rehearsal. They just, you know, they go over their sermon again and again and again until they're comfortable with it. I don't think that's the way to overcome it. I think the way to overcome the lack of confidence is to know what you're saying. You kind of get up and you're preaching what you believe, and so we have this sermon prep sheet that helps them look at those four things.
Speaker 3:So they have an exegetical statement that talks about what the text was saying and doing in its own time. They have a focus statement, which is the central teaching of the sermon, the theology. They have malady and means, which is law and gospel for the Christ-centered, and then for the hearer portion, they have what's called a function statement. Now, the function statement is sanctification. It is third youth of the law. So every sermon has a landing point in sanctification, in the way we teach it, because of the use of a function statement. The function statement is that my hearers may and that it's either building their relationship to God or building their relationship to others.
Speaker 3:You could look at the focus statements for a whole year and you could figure out what kind of Christians your people would be if this is the only connection they had to Scripture over the year. Would they know about the second coming of Christ? Would they know about the resurrected body? Would they know about intercessory prayer? Would they know about the sin of omission? Right, I mean you look at the theology and you say what have I sought to confess and form people to believe over a year?
Speaker 3:But if you look at the function statement and you classify those function statements as ones that deal with your relationship with God and ones that deal with your relationship with others, you hopefully have a balance. Because if they're all ones that deal with your relationship with God, you have people who are very deep in a personal relationship with Jesus but they don't do anything in the world. If they're all related to others, you have people who are kind of active in the world, but they are exhausted and impoverished when they come before God. And so you kind of want to balance so that people's spiritual life, their relationship with God, is fed and deepened and so that their connection to his work in the world, the kingdom work that God's doing in the world through them is, you know is encouraged and facilitated.
Speaker 1:Well, you just gave me more work to do, dr Schmidt. I got to go categorize all of our sermons. Now it's going to happen, it's going to be a great project. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So what is the role? This is a leadership podcast, right? We definitely talk theology and there's varying opinions on kind of mission, vision, values, those things, that kind of norm us contextually, what's the role of pastoral leadership expressed from the pulpit in your estimation, david?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I need to be honest. My understanding of leadership theory and theology is minimal, so I'm just going to be talking from the heart. For me, I think, what happens in the pulpit is that you want them to have a good sense of your character. Who are you, and you know? Kind of. Going back to Timothy, right, are you hospitable? Are you not easily angered? Are you know? You've got all these.
Speaker 3:It's so funny, isn't it, when we look at the qualities of a pastor according to Timothy, and the only one we ever hold on to is apt to teach. Right, that's the one we're like, oh, they're going to be apt to teach. They're apt to teach, yeah, but they have to actually be nice people, not easily angered. You know they're sober-minded, right, respectable, these types of things, and so we're kind of. I think when you're preaching, you're engaging, as I call it relational leadership, not positional, but relational leadership. You're building relationships with people and you're conveying your heart. Who you are, how you operate, how you think, what type of a character you have, how you speak about others is going to be huge when you preach.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, I still remember when I was in the parish. I shouldn't share this. But yeah, I had a member whose husband was Roman Catholic and it was All Saints Day and I was preaching on All Saints and I did this thing about you know how? You know we don't pray to saints and you know why we don't pray to saints? Blah, blah, blah. And so she went home and she told her husband what I said. And then she came back and she was waiting for me after Bible class and she never came to Bible class. So I knew I was in trouble, something was going on.
Speaker 3:She says to me, she says my husband said you're all washed up when it comes to saints. And I said well, what do you mean? And then she said well, I told him. And then she started saying exactly what I said in the sermon. And then she started saying exactly what I said in the sermon and my response was to reach out and touch her shoulder and say you, with insider language that is sometimes a little bit harsh and not exactly what we would say if the other person was really sitting there in front of us.
Speaker 3:And I think it's a good reminder to me that I want to model how we witness. I want to model how we speak to others about the faith as I preach, and so it's really an issue of character, of modeling, so that when we do get into situations where we can have dialogue and we're talking with one another and building some type of coherence or collaborative vision, that they understand my character and that you know we're able to talk honestly with one another, because I haven't spoken in such a way that has shamed or denigrated or isolated or marginalized different voices that could help in decision-making. That would be my guess.
Speaker 1:You know I love being immersed in a community I've been in our context here for 11 years and to have have kind saints who come up and tell you things about yourself that you may be blind to. You know I can think of. I can think of a. One time a lady came up and said I brought my granddaughter to church and she leaned over and they were from out of town or something and leaned over and said he seems angry. I was like huh, I wasn't angry, I was passionate. But to this toddler it came across, maybe as anger.
Speaker 1:So, just like watching the face, god communicates so consistently through the face and we may be unaware there may be habits in preaching. You know that you get or I say this phrase all the time or I've got like filler words. You know like communication is hard, david, and there's this ongoing need for self-awareness and sharpening and the dialogue that takes place maybe in the message and we can talk about dialogical preaching, but maybe after the message to give you good feedback, this is not for the faint of heart. Talk about the need for kind of ongoing learning in preaching, david.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean I think before even that I think you know, as I like draw two diagrams on the board for the students, and one diagram has kind of a circle which is the church, and then it has another circle which is kind of the world, and you've got the church in the world and then in the center of the church you have Word and Sacrament Ministry and I'm like, where do you put the pastor? And everybody puts the pastor right there in the center with the Word and Sacrament ministry. I like to say what happens if we put the pastor on this small line between the church and the world, so that what the pastor is doing is he's trying to speak in a way that invites people in the world into the church at the same time as he speaks, in a way that invites people in the world into the church at the same time as he speaks, in a way that invites people in the church out into the world, out into the world.
Speaker 1:That's the dance.
Speaker 3:So it's mission invitational.
Speaker 2:Hence you have an office of public ministry right. On behalf of the church, preach to the whole community. I've heard a lot of talk about what would it look like for a pastor to think of himself as a pastor to a zip code rather than just a congregation. It's a parish right. It's a parish model.
Speaker 1:The best use of an understanding of parish is. My church is in a location I am the pastor in this town city. Whatever right I am for the community, that's a radical shift. Right. There's a hospitality that should come across in our preaching. There's a charity putting the best construction on like it would be very because there's about 40% LDS in my context here, it would be very unwise for me to consistently be and people know where a lot of the distinctions are and we're not going to shy away from it. We'll have classes et cetera that talk about that, but for me to like publicly get up and say all those Mormons, I can't believe you know I can't believe the people just down the street.
Speaker 1:They're going to these temples. You know we should take down those. Some preachers have said you should knock down those steeples and replace them with a like that's no, that is not being a pastor in a parish. Anything more to say about hospitality in the pulpit, david.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're spot on and that's why it's. You know, you're rubbing shoulders with both your members in the world and you're doing it in such a way that's seeking to invite both of them into different spaces. And I think we, you know, particularly given our cultural climate, we have a tendency to dissociate these and to kind of think that if you're ever standing on that line, you're going to be marked with impurity or you're somehow confusing things. I don't think you're confusing things at all. I think what you're doing is you're speaking in a way that's tapping into cultural needs and inviting people to reconsider, to think things through a different way, even as you're inviting your own people to kind of come out of your safety zone. You've got something to share and God's kind of pushing you out there and inviting you to speak to his people.
Speaker 1:It's an election season, right, and it's so easy. I mean, I have you know, majority of folks here would probably title themselves, identify as Republicans or whatnot in the East Valley suburban community, but man politics becomes a god, and so I have to, as a preacher right now, be speaking into that and preaching, you know, very specifically, and or teaching right and left hand, kingdom, role of government, all of those types of things. Any words of wisdom, though, for how Lutheran preachers should engage the preaching task, especially in light of the election and the political polarization reaching task, especially in light of the election and the political polarization.
Speaker 3:I think you're right on target with. You know our theology Help people understand what their vocation is, what their roles are, rather than articulating you know how they should vote. I think that's a different issue, but you're asking them to consider what God is calling them to do and to think about how God is calling them to act and to use the liberties that he has given them in this country, contrasted to other countries, right, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, let's go into um sermon structures. David, this is your. I want to spend. I want to spend some time here. Let's get super practical. Uh, here we have a lot of pastors that may be in a rut.
Speaker 1:You know, like I always do, gold melody is something like that uh you've got aspiring preachers who have been formed and they've heard sermons that went this way right, and that's great. Praise be to God. But what I loved the most in your class was all the different inductive deductive models that you kind of taught us. So let's get into inductive deductive preaching and maybe three to five kind of sermon structures that maybe a lot of our listeners I've never heard that before. Yeah, let's go deep there. David, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean the whole concept of sermon structures. When I came to the seminary 29 years ago, when I graduated from the seminary, I was given one structure and it was law, gospel, right, so you start out with a law, then you preach the gospel and if you're really, really, really on edge, you might suggest they do something Right. Yes, I had one sermon structure and it just it got kind of stale, right, you know, and it kind of felt predictable. Stale, right, you know, and it kind of felt predictable. You know, I once, oh gosh, I don't know if I well, yeah, you're kind of edgy, so I guess I can say this yes, back when I was in the parish, al Berry was president of our church body and one of our conventions had a resolution that we would move toward celebrating the Lord's Supper every Sunday, and one of our conventions had a resolution that we would move toward celebrating the Lord's Supper every Sunday, and one of the pastors in our district had made that move and he was telling us how great it is to celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday because at the end of every sermon he can invite people to the Lord's table and that this is just like.
Speaker 3:This is magnificent. This is the way it should be, that this is just. You know, it's wonderful. And he pictured this beautiful moment of people longing to come to the Lord's Supper at the end of every sermon. So we rotated where we did our circuit meetings. We had a circuit meeting at his church and we always celebrated our circuit meetings. It's open with the Lord's Supper and worship. So we had had that and one of his members was there to put away you know the elements and all that stuff. So I ran up there and you know I said to her, I said oh, I said your pastor said that he always mentions the Lord's Supper in every sermon and without blinking an eye, she said to me, she said yeah, that's how we know.
Speaker 1:He's almost done without blinking an eye, she said to me. She said, yeah, that's how we know he's almost done.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure, predictable. It was not wrong of him to do what he was doing. But notice how confused he was. He thought that doing this brought them to this place where they were longing to come. But because he did it in the same way every Sunday, it communicated something completely different to the hearers, and for her it was just like oh, there's a short one today, right.
Speaker 3:And so the value of a variety of structures is that it gives you more freedom to be targeted in what the Lord's calling you to do each occasion when you preach, that you can be much more intentional. You don't have to feel like you know you want to go this way, you know it's a text I want to work verse by verse through, but I really have to do law, gospel. So the value of sermon structures for me is that it gives you freedom to appropriately address the needs that God is bringing before you when you preach. But yeah, there's a lot of different sermon structures. I think one that I like that I think is helpful is the relational structure. It's Andy Stanley's structure where you kind of start with me, so you start with a personal story. That kind of brings the topic to the table, but it brings it to the table in a very personal, intimate way. And so if you're thinking about rhetoric this is ethos You're building your character as somebody who can speak about this, because I myself have experienced it. Then the next one is goes me, we? So now you begin to say, and you have kind of like transition, like, and isn't that true? For all of us can see, yeah, we're connected to this issue, but in very different ways. And so we become a community that kind of all has a longing for some word from God upon this issue, because we've been touched by it. And then you go from me to we, to God, and this is where you now turn toward the scriptures with open hearts and ears to hear how God offers a word for us in the midst of this. This is where your focus statement, the main teaching of the sermon, will come, and this is where you're preparing us to see how that main teaching is centered in God's work for us in Christ.
Speaker 3:Then you move to the you section, which is very personal and directed toward the members, and it's all. Everybody has the same goal. There's the same response that God you know, regardless of where you're at on the topic. Here's what God is calling you to do. And then what I love about his relational structure is the last one is we, but I call it us. Relational structure is the last one is we, but I call it us. The last one now asks us to envision ourselves as a community that supports one another in accomplishing that goal. So if the goal is that you pray for one another, then we have to think about as a community, how are we a community that inspires people and encourages people to pray for one another? What are we doing at the opening of our meetings that might encourage that? What might we do in our outreach and all this kind of stuff? So I like that structure. I think it's built on interpersonal communication and it's a fun structure to use and it's just a.
Speaker 1:It's a, it's a fun structure to use. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's actually our go-to over the years and it can become kind of predictable too. So we have to, we have to spice it up. But what, what I really value about it is people have to. This goes to young people, to older people. They have to like you before they listen to you. Right, just like in parenting, just like a teacher. The kids have to know that I really like listening to this person, so I'm gaining.
Speaker 1:You know there's a sociological function and I have to earn. Let's go deeper here. I have to earn the right, by the spirit's power, to get the ear and the heart. You know God's got to work on the heart. But to get the ear of a person for I don't know, 15 to 25 minutes, however long the proclamation experience is, I don't just come in and like get it immediately. You have to, because there's always new people there that are, that are hearing, and the person who's listening to me for a long period of time they're coming in with distractions and whatever you know. So you've got to earn that right. One of my favorite tools is, you know, the self-deprecating humor, whatever that just kind of I am one with you, I sit with you. I don't know that we spend enough time building rapport with our listeners. Anything more to say about the me function of the message?
Speaker 3:there, david. Well, I think you are spot on, and I honestly think this is the big difference between modernism and postmodernism that modernism, your subjectivity was a liability. In modernism, we wanted you to be an expert and we wanted you to be objective. And so the pastoral ministry, the pastoral office, would be interpreted as he's an expert on theology. He has a degree in theology, he understands Greek and Hebrew and Latin and German, so he's an expert and he is objective. He's able to distance himself from any personal prejudices and so he can speak to us objectively. And so, therefore, he's got this truth that from the material you share with me, I want you to actually believe it, I want you to experience it, and I'm not really as interested in your degrees, I'm interested in your experience. Mormon really fits with the cultural shift that we've had, so that people are much more interested in a relationship with you for listening to you.
Speaker 2:And I think what's challenging about that is kind of both worldviews are kind of exist side by side right now, and so you may find yourself having to talk to two audiences. On that. You have to, maybe, for one audience, speak very objectively and for another audience, speak very subjectively, right?
Speaker 3:Right. And so in this particular sermon structure, the me and the we sections are very subjective, experiential, but when you get to the God section, that's where you can be more objective, more clear and deductive right, and so you're kind of attending to both audiences that are present at the same time. I would agree with you on that it's a nuanced task, it's not a one size fits all.
Speaker 2:So I think preaching can go off the rails if you do one and not the other right and just assume that your audience is monolithically kind of in that one mode of thinking Right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not. It's just not preaching Jack Right, it's something else entirely.
Speaker 1:Well some people might argue that you could have a purely objective preaching Right, and I've seen that Right, so I don't yeah, it's not no-transcript this, but you could say the evangelical Christ centered, long gospel preaching, with around the sentness of the church, obviously contextualized in the lives of the hearers and the lives of hearers as they relate to their neighbors who are far from the Lord. Those two are definitely, you know, externally facing. But then you've got the text and theology. This is what the church actually says to herself, right, the history of the church. So it's very balanced. If we lose one of those four we're going to miss. I'd love to get we're coming down the homestretch here last few questions but love to get your take on the role of story. You know, story one of my favorite is story suspended. It creates a little bit of intrigue and you can kind of lean into maybe the four pages of a sermon you know, yeah, anything more to say on the role of story.
Speaker 3:Well, I love story and I guess when I teach narrative preaching, the main thing I want the students to realize is that narrative preaching is not a technique, it is theology. It's the way God has chosen to do theology. We have gospels, we have narratives, so it's not like we're saying, oh, we've got, you know, this Christian message. Now let's take this cute technique of story and try to use it to communicate the message. No, you're just doing what God has already done. You know he's already communicated through story. And so story preaching is a theological way. It's a way of doing theology among your people and the beauty of story.
Speaker 3:I like to think about this. I draw a diagram and there's two things that you hold together in tension creativity and creedal. So when you're doing storied preaching, you're creative and creedal at the same time. If you get too creative, the creedal needs to come in and kind of say you know what, you're kind of going off the rails here. But if you get too creedal, you lose the creativity and you're not really telling a story as much as you are just reading the scripture and commenting on it, right? So there's this credo creativity that needs to be handled there.
Speaker 3:And one exercise I do with the students is I have them look at various ways the creation story is told in scripture. So we look at Genesis 1, we look at Genesis 2, we look at Job 38, psalm 104, psalm 8, john 1, acts 17, passages from Jeremiah. It's just like all of a sudden, you discover that God's Spirit has been inspiring people to tell the creation story in beautiful, different ways. I mean, you know, in Job you've got God. Or in Proverbs 8, I think it is, you've got God, like you know, an architect drawing a line of circumference around it.
Speaker 3:I mean, so there's just this. So that's that credo. Creativity, right, there's the credo, nature of you know God creating out of nothing. There's a whole bunch of teachings that come out of creation, but then there's the creativity on how you tell that creation story. And so, as pastors, when we're standing on that line between church and culture, we're using the gifts of our culture, its arts, its ways of telling things, and we're using them to creatively retell the story that holds everything together, the story that saves right.
Speaker 1:Tell the story that holds everything together, the story that saves right? What would you say to the pastor who says you know, I don't want any of me to be in the story. You know, personal story, my primary function, and there may be some of these brothers and the faithful trying to be faithful, but the preaching comes across as very monotone. I'm going to read it and you can read a sermon and be very, very compelling, to be sure, but I really want to remove me and I want to remove pretty much all emotion because I don't want to be accused of being a pietist or a motivist or something like that. What would you say to that brother who really shies away from the arts, the creativity, much at all, david.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess I'd first want to understand why. Right, because I think there's a spectrum and our goal in preaching is to be natural to who you are, right, natural to who you are, and that's the thing that is important. I tend to be emotional, loud, that just tends to be me. So people call me Screamin' Dave, right? So you know, that's what they say when I preach. But that's who I am, I mean I'm, that's who I am. I mean I'm natural who I am, because what, what I want to do is I want to be authentic and I want to be transparent. I want you to hear the message. And how do I get you to hear the message? By by having you see through me rather than having you.
Speaker 3:You know, you, you, you're going to be there in the pulpit and if you, you know, if I were to speak in a monotone way, that would just make my presence all the more vivid for people, because they'd be saying why does he not care about this? Why doesn't he speak like he naturally does? I mean, is this boring to him? Does he, you know? Is he just waiting for this to get over? So you know, but there are, and this is where the spectrum is so that you know somebody who might not naturally be expressive. They might be saying, oh I, you know I don't want to be expressive at all in my preaching, but if that's natural to who they are, then good, you're doing the right thing. I don't need you to get into the pulpit and be all expressive because everybody's going to look at you and say, oh, either he's off his meds or he's just not. You know he's faking it right. So you got to be natural who you are. But you know this idea that your emotive nature is not part of the preaching thing that's.
Speaker 3:You know the Apostle Paul, when he was writing to the Galatians, remember how he said oh, how I wish I were with you so I could change my tone, right. So the Apostle Paul knows that. You know the embodiment of a message. You know Walther in Law and Gospel, the very first page, he says I don't want you to stand in your pulpits like lifeless statues, but be living witnesses of the words you proclaim. So the goal is to be natural to who you are. Now, if being monotone and speaking in a you know, soft voice or whatever is natural to who you are, great, then do it. But for someone who. That's not natural. If I were to do it, that's going to draw attention to me rather than help you see through me. That would be what I'd say.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. There are so many proclaimers who want help with memory just embodying, integrating and then any tools to help our proclaimers improve their memory skills as they become better proclaimers.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, this is my big thing, let's go. I think that the problem is how we arrive at the manuscript of the sermon. Arrive at the manuscript of the sermon. A lot of guys, you know, will write their manuscript sitting at a computer. And we've spent years in education training you to write for reading, not write for speaking. So we've gotten rid of contractions. We have long, complex, compound sentences, all of that kind of stuff. We don't have fragments. So we've trained you to write for reading, and so you write this manuscript and then you think the way to get ready for preaching is to read it again and again and again and again, and all the while you're marking it up. Why? Because it's not written to be spoken, right.
Speaker 3:So the secret for me is to do what we call oral composition. So you've got your idea. You know, you know this is my idea. I've got this story that I'm going to tell, or I've got these three examples from scripture I'm going to use. Once you've got that, stand up and talk it out loud. Once you've got that, stand up and talk it out loud. Talk it out loud once, twice, three times, four times, maybe six times, until it sounds the same.
Speaker 3:Now you've got something to write down. Now what? How fast you're speaking, how slow you're speaking, you're using gestures, you're going to talk about the Pharisees and then the Sadducees, and those things serve as cues for helping you remember in an embodied way, and so it's really a matter of doing oral composition and what you preach is going to flow much more smoothly. But it's hard to do that all at once. So I always encourage guys when they're trying it, I say just do your introduction this way. So just do your introduction this way, practice it, see what it feels like and then the next time maybe add the introduction in your first point or something like that. And you know, I just just what happens is you know if you've done half of your sermon this way and half the other way, you see the difference. You feel it when you're preaching, because you're able to look at people and engage with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We do collaborative sermon writing, David.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I've told you about this.
Speaker 1:A number of so around. The big idea, seasonally sensitive, it's fantastic. So we end up with like a master manuscript, but our preachers get it three weeks you know the outline. They get it like three weeks in advance and this is a discipleship tool as well as a proclamation, just working smarter rather than harder tool. And then they get a respective amount of time to make it their own, to put it in their own voice, to practice it, to make it sound very, very natural. And it's been cool to see the exponential growth because there's a safety of okay, our confession is already in there.
Speaker 1:The God section has been put together, a lot of our long-time pastors. They've gotten in. We're starting to use logos now a lot more for a lot of our oh my gosh, it was such an amazing tool for our exegetical work but then they're allowed to just kind of put it in their own voice. But there is that early fear of and it's an appropriate fear of I really could say stuff here that is heretical. So there is that appropriate fear of. I don't want to stray away too much from it, but I have to find myself in it.
Speaker 1:So for me, I love talking about the memory map. We memorize all of our not all of our vicars memorized entirely, and it's definitely not word for word. It's the way I think about. I'm coming into this room, I'm talking about these things and I've I've worked it out and this you know, having preached now for 16 years. There's a, there's a level of comfort that that comes into it. Okay, I've told stories. I've told many stories about myself, about scripture, so that doesn't take as much work. I'm going to spend a lot more time Like what is a theological confession here for the church.
Speaker 1:Put that into my own voice. But yeah, I love the memory map or memory palace, if any listener, just go to the memory palace. So my favorite book on that is by Jim Quick called Limitless. Limitless is a really, really helpful book. He's not a theologian but a memory expert like the tools, the tricks to memorize names quickly, all of those things. So, man, there's always more to learn there. Anything more to say David.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ryan Tenetti. He just joined our faculty teaching preaching. He has a book I think it's called Preaching from the Heart, something like that which is dealing with the memory palace also. So good.
Speaker 1:Praise be to God. All right. Last question Time has flown here, being a 29 year presence in our seminary. Sometimes you said edgy, sometimes we'll say edgy things. I love our seminary. I'm an advocate for the teachings of the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod. I think we have the guts to do this very, very well from our districts to our circuits, to our congregations, and we have so many amazing, amazing leaders in our church body. But we still have room for growth. So if you just look ahead, what do you pray? The LCMS looks and feels like a decade from now, in 2034?. When people from outside look at our church body, what do you pray? They say David.
Speaker 3:Well, I would pray that they have just a small glimpse of Revelation 21, of all nations before the throne, in their own language, praising God and singing thanks to God for what Christ has done for them. I mean, I think that's really, you know, when I think about mission and America and the way in which we have become a seedbed of so many cultures. And my desire is that we would approach these different cultures with a belief that when the gospel is preached to them, they will have a gift to bear that nobody else would have because of how they've perceived the world, how they perceive their life and what Christ has done, and so that we don't tell them what to say, but we listen to hear what they will say. Right, that would be my prayer.
Speaker 2:What do you think might be some of the things that a church body would need to do in order to pull that off?
Speaker 3:Be patient and communicate the gospel before expecting changes in life. I think you you know it's the gospel that brings about change, right? So you know we just have to be open to crossing some borders and to sharing a message, because the Spirit's going to work through that word and you know we need to build relationships where the Word can be heard and then be patient in those relationships to see what the Spirit would do and then to treasure, to kind of come expectantly with our hands open to see what you bring Not talking about your offerings here, you know to see what gift God has for us in that change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear. Just to summarize a lot of what the conversation is oriented around we're the church exists for the community, for the world. We're hospitable, we're kind, we're bold. We will not shy away from the clear confession of Christ and Him crucified, but we do it in such a way that it draws people near the Holy Spirit. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit right, the connector, the comforter, the creator and sustainer of our faith.
Speaker 1:And there's, I pray, that, like a lot of the disagreements in our church and even kind of the external or small little tribes within our church body. They just kind of I don't have time for that anymore. I'm in a location with brothers and sisters, but brother pastors in different contexts, maybe in my circuit, who have their church kind of focuses on different things, maybe a different set of values, but the main value is justification by our common confession and I want to treasure them. I'm not going to pridefully try to distinguish myself as better than them, but I'm going to speak well of them and whatever the Midwest group is or whatever kind of the tribe that I've rolled in, I want to learn from that group and I think, unfortunately, david, we've had a season where we become much more tribal in the Lutheran Church. I hope the conversation today, like we should all be able to agree.
Speaker 1:Preaching is very, very important. A clear confession of Christ is very, very important. Preaching in a winsome way that draws people nearer to Christ is very, very important. So you, as a proclaimer, a teacher, one who treasures the Word of God in this day and age, our exegetes and those that are in the trenches just trying to help pastors, be faithful. Your voice really, really matters, david, and I want you to know how profoundly you impacted me. And still your work continues to impact me and impact many, many proclaimers in the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod. Praise be to God. Any final comments, david?
Speaker 3:No, I guess that's the. You know, the art and the heart. We should all agree on the heart. We're going to differ on the art, we're going to differ on how we do it, but we are in agreement on what we're trying to do, and that's the beauty of it so good.
Speaker 1:Hey, how can people connect with you, David, if they desire?
Speaker 3:Oh, just email me at the seminary Schmidt D, no, it's D Schmidt, no, schmidt D at CSLedu. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, Schmidt D, that's with two Ts.
Speaker 3:S-C-H-M-I-T-D. Yeah, I don't have any big social media presence. I kind of you know, still email.
Speaker 1:It's great. It's great. Well, you're going to be. For those of you in the Pacific Southwest District, dr Schmidt will be sharing. He'll be doing a workshop as well as some preaching himself for the gathering. It's going to be amazing, jack, great work. As always, this is Lead Time. Sharing is caring, like, subscribe, comment. Wherever it is you take in these conversations, we pray this was invigorating for you. Even if you're not a preacher man, we should all stand. We really need wonderful, wonderful proclaimers, hospitable proclaimers, clear confessors from pulpits and platforms in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day, david. Thank you, jack, wonderful work.
Speaker 2:God.