by Rev. Jessica Wachter
I begin every sermon at my church plant in the same way: “We believe Jesus is truly present herein the Scriptures we heard read, in the bread and cup we will share in together later on, and in every single person in this room. So, this sermon time will be a conversation, not just me talking, because Jesus might have something important to say to someone else here through your words.”
I was not trained in dialogical preaching in seminary, except incidentally at my summer internship. I spent six life-changing weeks at the Haywood Street Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina, a United Methodist church plant centered on the welcome of unhoused people. The planter and senior pastor, Brian Combs, would preach a sermon that incorporated questions expecting actual, out-loud responses. Brian’s preaching and people’s thoughtful contributions enthralled me. For years after, I served traditional congregations with little interest in innovative worship practices. Once I got my dream job of planting a church with unhoused and marginalized people, I began preaching conversationally— and I learned it’s a lot harder than it looks! Three years into it, I finally, tentatively, am starting to feel like I have found my groove.
If you are serving a more traditional parish, I hope you won’t tune me out. here are lots of settings that could benefit from this type of preaching, at least on occasion.
I quickly learned just throwing out a text and asking for open ended responses isn’t effective. People need guidance to begin to orient themselves to a text, especially people who are new to Scripture. I can’t yield the whole sermon to the community, because as a trained preacher, I know things about the text I need to share. Conversely, simply preaching the whole thing myself and making congregational response tangential (with shallow questions like, “Who has seen X movie?”) is okay but ultimately misses the gifts that conversational preaching can bring.
Here are some of my favorite questions, depending of course on the texts of the day:
- How do you like to pray?
- How do you think X character in this Scripture passage was feeling?
- In what tone of voice do you think X character said these words?
- How does it feel when someone listens to you well?
- When have you or someone you know experienced God’s presence during a tough time?
- What do you think about this piece of art?
Asking the community a question and being quiet, waiting for a response, makes me feel vulnerable. I have yielded control. I have already, in my preparation for this sermon, written fewer words than I otherwise would have in order to make space for others to speak. In , I am modeling collaborative leadership and teaching myself both to be braver and to be quiet. I am teaching everyone that my voice is not the only voice that is important, that unhoused people and young adults and kids and people with mental disabilities and with criminal records all can be theologians.
People might say weird or irrelevant things. For instance, when I asked people to share how it feels when someone really listens to you, someone blurted out, “I love talking to people!” I have learned to listen and then simply move the conversation along when that happens. Slowing down long enough to hear even the weird answers models for the community that we will be a people who practice listening to each other, even when things are a little strange. This is a radical thing in our individualistic, noisy society.
Preaching conversationally also gives me, as the preacher, quick feedback about how the sermon is landing with people. If people are silent in response or confused about the question, I have learned I may need to change course or simplify. I do not need to wait until the sermon is over to have an inkling of how people are receiving it.
I often hear really insightful responses that may or may not cohere with my expectations or with what I envisioned to be the main point of the sermon. For instance, while we were discussing Jesus’ agony in the garden, a parishioner suggested Jesus’ main source of pain was the betrayal from his friends. I had never thought about in quite that way. That parishioner offered an additional perspective that the sermon needed; my preaching in that sermon on Jesus’ passion was too individual, too focused on Jesus and his inner life only.
In another sermon on Hagar, I asked people how they thought Hagar felt when Abraham sent her away. “Guilty,” one parishioner responded. “Guilty?” I said incredulously, feeling frustration rising in my chest. What did Hagar possibly have to feel guilty about? But I decided to stay curious, to hold fast to my conviction that Jesus is present in every person and can speak through every person. This parishioner is marginalized economically and in a number of other ways.
“She should have stood up for herself. She should have said the things that had happened to her were wrong, even if they were going to kick her out anyway,” this person continued. I finally understood. This parishioner was saying it is wrong to collude in one’s own oppression. As a person with more worldly privilege than this parishioner, I will be thinking about these words for a long time. I am not sure I would use the same words in talking about Hagar, but the words don’t have to be my own. The sermon is a communal creation, liturgical in the best sense of that word, the work of the Spirit through everyone.
I hope there will be more conversation in the wider church about dialogical preaching in the years to come—best practices, the impact it has on a preacher and a congregation, etc. And I would love to continue this conversation with anyone else interested in having it.
Jessica is an Episcopal priest and church planter at Journey Church in Fulton, Missouri, a congregation with parishioners who are unhoused and housed, young and old, abled and differently abled, believing and questioning. She is also a part-time vicar at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Portland, Missouri.
