Making a Scene in the Pulpit: Vivid Preaching for Visual Listeners

by Alyce M. McKenzie

How can preachers ensure that their sermons continue to engage listeners in a world defined by visual media and the short, segmented delivery of information? Alyce McKenzie harnesses the element of drama and the human fascination with scenes to offer ministers a modern means of sermon development and delivery. McKenzie's core strategy is to invite listeners into scenes—whether from Scripture or contemporary life—and, once they are there, to point them toward the larger story of God's relationship with humankind. Creating such scenes unifies the whole process of preaching, she says, from the preacher's daily life observations to interpretation of scenes from Scripture, to sermon shaping, sequencing, and delivery. The process culminates in a specific understanding of the purpose of the to send listeners out into the scenes they'll play in their lives for the next week, equipped to act out their parts in ways that are kinder, more just, and more courageous than last week.

228 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2018

Reviews

[Ian Bordenave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alyce McKenzie’s book Making a Scene in the Pulpit: Vivid Preaching for Visual Learners represents the next generation of the New Homiletic, an approach to preaching that advocates for inductive or narrative sermons as a way of reaching contemporary Christians, who expect to be entertained and who don’t want to be talked down to. When a group of homileticians, of which McKenzie was a participant, met at Lexington Theological Seminary in 2007 to discuss the New Homiletic’s legacy and future, it was mentioned that episodal preaching was the next wave of the New Homiletic to deal with people’s shortened attention spans brought on by the information technology age. And voila! You have McKenzie’s Making a Scene in the Pulpit to address those attenuated attention spans. While McKenzie says today’s folks are not equipped to listen to long narratives, they still enjoy scenes, in which they can pop in and pop out like with YouTube videos. McKenzie likewise recognizes people in today’s pews are mostly ignorant of the Bible, which was not the case when the New Homiletic got its start in the 1970s. Still, she says the goal is to teach people about the Bible in a way they do not feel as if they are sitting through a boring classroom lecture. Again, McKenzie says the scene is the perfect vehicle to incorporate biblical teaching that is painless while memorable. At the end of her book, she features nine of her own scenic sermons, in which she shows herself ever the entertainer, ever the teacher, and ever the inspirer. The shortcoming I saw with some sermons were that they presented scenes that were not developed enough to stick in people’s minds. Still, Making a Scene in the Pulpit is a great gift to preachers who are looking for a homiletic form that is easy to use, yet powerful in its delivery.

[Tim Hall]

Great reminder that we live in a visual age that love story. Be a story teller of the Bible and you'll make a huge difference to those listening. Use media, graphics, objects to help tell your story. Create the scene in order to make it memorable.