This post from colmery (HT: transforming sermons) is fantastic and needs no comment from me:
Preaching, gentlemen, is an art. And before one can be a true artist, he must know how to appreciate art itself. In order to become great preachers, we must learn to embrace the beautiful, complex web of nuance that comprises the sphere in which communication lives and breathes. Everything we do is communication, every comment we make and every look we give sends a message. Every comment we don’t make and look we don’t give sends an equally powerful message. And if we are called to communicate the gospel, should we not become connoisseurs of communication?
I’m not advocating an embrace of secular means of public speaking. The cross is foolishness, and at times the presentation will seem so as well to a world based on power, prestige, and self-importance. Yet, ignoring the art of communication in the midst of preaching is the same as ignoring the art of musicianship in the midst of playing a song it motors its way along, full of motion but devoid of life. Communication is the way in which we convey our passions, our ideas, our souls. A well-turned phrase is at once incredibly specific and emotionally engaging. Do we not feel this way about the gospel we preach? Is it not our goal to both explain it clearly and explain it so that it rips into the hearts of both us and our hearers?
The ultimate goal of communication is sincerity. Authenticity. The ability to let the context of the immediate situation fade away until the hearer only experiences the very soul of him who is speaking. Let us fall in love with the art of crafting a sentence, the beauty of arranging thoughts, the passion that accompanies hewing a sermon from the rock of scripture. Good preaching is accomplished when a man speaks the word of God. Great preaching occurs when a man takes the scripture and sculpts with it, paints it, divides it properly and lays it in front of the people along with his own life.
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