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Giving Blood: A Fresh Paradigm for Preaching
A Groundbreaking Resource for Preaching If the church wishes to converse effectively with a culture, it must learn the culture’s language. Today, shifts in technology mean that language is increasingly one of symbols and metaphors, stories and images―not words. So what does this mean for the sermon, that long-standing, word-based tradition of Christianity? In this ground-breaking resource, bestselling author Leonard Sweet offers an alternative to traditional models of preaching, one that is fitting to a new culture and a new mode of thinking. The first book of its kind to move preaching beyond its pulpit-centric fixation and toward more interactive, participatory modes of communication, Sweet presents both a challenge and a path forward for a church struggling to maintain its relevance in a post-modern, media-saturated culture.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published March 25, 2014
60 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Leonard Sweet
158 books138 followersLeonard I. Sweet is an author, preacher, scholar, and ordained United Methodist clergyman currently serving as the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School, in Madison, New Jersey; and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University in Portland, Oregon.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 16, 2015
For more than twenty years, Leonard Sweet has been a trend-setter in the Church, someone who lives on the bleeding edge of culture and philosophical thought. Sweet either sees the cultural trends before anyone else does and the church eventually catch up (SoulSalsa, SaulTsunami and AquaChurch are excellent examples of books that were ahead of their time and have now become staples in practical theological literature) or he gives it his best guess and the church just simply adopts his concepts "because it's Len Sweet" (which, I think, A is for Abductive, Quantum Spirituality and Church in the Emerging Culture are examples of). He is certainly someone that I rely on to help me understand the coming cultural trends, although I do find myself at odds with him occasionally.
Giving Blood is one of those occasions. To be fair, this will probably be a standard textbook for preaching in 10 years. However, I do not think that it being from our most insightful futurist will be the reason for its eventual common acceptance; I think it will be because the church once again catches up to Sweet and adopts the language and concepts that he develops here. Again, to be fair, I appreciate Sweet challenging the commonly accepted approaches to preaching and turning them on their heads (it is his forte after all). I applaud him startling the reader with the realization that we have not only lost the culture wars but that the culture believes the church to be an irrelevant participant. I already knew that, however I had yet to see it in homiletics print. His effort to classify our culture as a "TGIF" (Twitter-Google-Instagram-Facebook) culture is insightful, if not (ironically) a little dated (see Michael Hyatt's Platform and Seth Godin's Tribes). And I also appreciate the gravity with which Sweet approaches the topic--he (like I) fully believes that preaching should and must be done.
Unfortunately, that's about all we share in common here. I know it's easy to dismiss my comments because I'm not Len Sweet, however I would like to think that a doctorate in homiletics and being heavily involved in these conversations count for something in this discussion. Here are the issues that I take with Sweet's book:
1) It is WAY too long. No effective preaching text should be 350 pages, even with activities (as helpful as they may be). Preachers need something that can help them this week (next week at the most). It took me nearly two weeks to plow through this (which is about 3-5 days longer than I usually spend reading a book). He repeats himself frequently throughout, which only adds to the frustrating length.
2) The vocabulary he develops is convoluted. As someone who just wrote a dissertation where I developed a new vocabulary, I can appreciate the birthpains that Sweet must have endured to come up with "narraphors," "EPIC" and other terminology. However, when you have to stop about halfway through and recap terminology and footnote previous material just to make sure the reader is still with you, your book is either too long (see above) or you've gotten too wordy. Again, in a few years, many of us will probably be using this terminology. I just hope we understand it better than we have understood the current homiletics language (such as "narrative" or...well...sermon).
3) He essentially revises commonly-accepted paradigms. I just could not shake a feeling that I had read all this before. I was seeing new terminology to explain things that I called something else. It was like Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word but I don't think it means what you think it means." Then, about chapter 7 it hit me--Sweet has discarded all preaching literature from Augustine forward and went back, of all places, to Aristotle and started all over. A bold move to be sure, until I realized that he simply took the best bits of Fred Craddock's inductive model, Tom Long's concept of "focus" and "function" statements, Eugene Lowry's narrative model and Frederich Buechner's love of storytelling and blended them together into a new model.
As I mentioned above, I suspect that this will become a staple in a few years and will become the homiletics language of many evangelicals and some moderates or mainliners. However, with the lack of an educational or discipleship component, I found it a little disappointing. Sweet did redeem himself in his preface by saying that he struggled to write this and that it would probably not be his best work. In that regard, I am glad that I read it. And it is important to discuss what Sweet puts forth. If anything, Sweet reminds us that preaching is an evolving craft, and we need to be about our Father's business of figuring out how to communicate the Father's business in creative and engaging ways.
Giving Blood is one of those occasions. To be fair, this will probably be a standard textbook for preaching in 10 years. However, I do not think that it being from our most insightful futurist will be the reason for its eventual common acceptance; I think it will be because the church once again catches up to Sweet and adopts the language and concepts that he develops here. Again, to be fair, I appreciate Sweet challenging the commonly accepted approaches to preaching and turning them on their heads (it is his forte after all). I applaud him startling the reader with the realization that we have not only lost the culture wars but that the culture believes the church to be an irrelevant participant. I already knew that, however I had yet to see it in homiletics print. His effort to classify our culture as a "TGIF" (Twitter-Google-Instagram-Facebook) culture is insightful, if not (ironically) a little dated (see Michael Hyatt's Platform and Seth Godin's Tribes). And I also appreciate the gravity with which Sweet approaches the topic--he (like I) fully believes that preaching should and must be done.
Unfortunately, that's about all we share in common here. I know it's easy to dismiss my comments because I'm not Len Sweet, however I would like to think that a doctorate in homiletics and being heavily involved in these conversations count for something in this discussion. Here are the issues that I take with Sweet's book:
1) It is WAY too long. No effective preaching text should be 350 pages, even with activities (as helpful as they may be). Preachers need something that can help them this week (next week at the most). It took me nearly two weeks to plow through this (which is about 3-5 days longer than I usually spend reading a book). He repeats himself frequently throughout, which only adds to the frustrating length.
2) The vocabulary he develops is convoluted. As someone who just wrote a dissertation where I developed a new vocabulary, I can appreciate the birthpains that Sweet must have endured to come up with "narraphors," "EPIC" and other terminology. However, when you have to stop about halfway through and recap terminology and footnote previous material just to make sure the reader is still with you, your book is either too long (see above) or you've gotten too wordy. Again, in a few years, many of us will probably be using this terminology. I just hope we understand it better than we have understood the current homiletics language (such as "narrative" or...well...sermon).
3) He essentially revises commonly-accepted paradigms. I just could not shake a feeling that I had read all this before. I was seeing new terminology to explain things that I called something else. It was like Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word but I don't think it means what you think it means." Then, about chapter 7 it hit me--Sweet has discarded all preaching literature from Augustine forward and went back, of all places, to Aristotle and started all over. A bold move to be sure, until I realized that he simply took the best bits of Fred Craddock's inductive model, Tom Long's concept of "focus" and "function" statements, Eugene Lowry's narrative model and Frederich Buechner's love of storytelling and blended them together into a new model.
As I mentioned above, I suspect that this will become a staple in a few years and will become the homiletics language of many evangelicals and some moderates or mainliners. However, with the lack of an educational or discipleship component, I found it a little disappointing. Sweet did redeem himself in his preface by saying that he struggled to write this and that it would probably not be his best work. In that regard, I am glad that I read it. And it is important to discuss what Sweet puts forth. If anything, Sweet reminds us that preaching is an evolving craft, and we need to be about our Father's business of figuring out how to communicate the Father's business in creative and engaging ways.
August 12, 2014
Title: Giving Blood
Author: Leonard Sweet
Publisher: Zondervan
Year: 2014
Pages: 368 (I read an e-book version on my Nook reader. My page numbers may be a bit different. I apologize in advance for any troubles this may cause.)
[Disclaimer: I was provided with a reader's copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for my fair and unbiased review. I am happy to provide that very thing in the following blog post.]
Twitter: @lensweet
I once preached a sermon about the Bible. I think it might have been from John's Gospel, but I don't really remember. The sermon had something to do with the Scripture, the Bible, the Word of God--however you want to refer to it, that was the topic. It might have been about Jesus. I might have even trekked into the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and wrestled a bit with his idea that in his mouth the Word of God tasted like honey, but in his gut it was turning him inside out, upside down, and sending him scurrying off to the bathroom.
I don't really remember all the particular details of the sermon except for the end. I recounted a story about a tradition (perhaps apocryphal) that when young Jewish children first hear the Torah or first read it, they are given honey to eat. It is, so the story goes, to remind them of the sweetness of Scripture. So I preached my sermon and finished with a reading of Scripture. I then moved down to the floor where I had arranged a table with two or three jars of honey and some plastic spoons. That day, instead of an invitation hymn or prayer or announcements I simply invited the congregation to silently walk forward when they were ready. One by one they came forward and received a single spoonful of honey--pure, sweet, glorious, raw honey. It was a beautiful moment.
It was one of the best sermons I ever preached and easily one of the few, without referring to my journals, that I remember. It was a stroke of genius.
One time I went to hear a friend preach. He had just taken a position with a new congregation and it was his first sermon. I don't remember all that much about what he preached that day or what passages of Scripture he used, but I do remember that at all of us in the room had been supplied with a small can of PlayDoh! and that at some point he had us take the PlayDoh! from its can and work it with our hands. He said, "mold the PlayDoh! into the shape of what you think you would like to be or do with your life." I remember that as I shaped PlayDoh! and created a dream, so I can give that dream to God and allow him to shape me into something he can also use. It was a brilliant idea.
Leonard Sweet has written a large book about preaching. This is a thick book both in overall content and sheer girth: 369 pages (about 1/10 is reserved for end notes) and I only read an e-book on my Nook. To be sure, 369 pages was too many in my opinion for the very fact that at the end of the day, as Sweet himself notes, metaphors tend to break apart. In the case of Giving Blood there was simply too much repetition and, in my opinion, he stretched the metaphor too far. Less is more and I think in this case the sheer volume and density of words was kind of overwhelming. Couple this with one of my pet-peeves, unbalanced chapters, and you end up with a lopsided book that despite the beauty of the metaphor was rather tedious (I was actually sick of the word 'narraphor' by page 50.) I really dislike when one chapter is 30 pages and another is 5. It's a personal thing, but there were times when I was convinced Sweet could have lopped off about 50% of a chapter and still made his point.
That being said, the metaphor is beautiful and I agree with a great portion of what Sweet wrote. Preaching is, to me, exactly what Sweet calls it: giving blood. And unless a person has stood in the pulpit and preached a sermon, or spent time in the study during the week preparing (bleeding), or stayed up late on a Saturday night because there were simply no words, then they will not ever understand what Sweet means by giving blood. Any preacher worth his salt does these very things. Then on Sunday mornings he or she has the audacity to stand up before people who expect a miracle and lay out their heart and mind and soul in mere words. People expect all their problems solved, all their questions answered, all their wounds balmed, and all their sins forgiven. Yet the preacher is tasked with standing and proclaiming the word of God to a people who will not listen and who will forget every single word by the time they cross the threshold of the back door.
Preachers give blood. And if preachers do not give blood, then perhaps they need to review if it is preaching they are actually doing. This is what we do week after week, in season and out, in good times and bad: we keep coming back for more because that is what we do. We preach. We cannot help ourselves. From near the conclusion of the book he writes:
Do you bleed over every sermon? Do you give blood through every sermon? Preaching is the discipline and craft of giving blood. (330)
It's true. Preaching takes years off our lives because we put our life into every jot and tittle we scratch across the paper.
I think the best parts of the book were found in the 'Labs' and the 'Interactives.' These were short sections at the end of chapters where Sweet applied his principles to a passage of Scripture (e.g., Jonah) or shared some ideas or exercises for how to put into practice the subject matter of the preceding chapter. Of these two, I liked the labs the best. I especially enjoyed his various readings of the book of Jonah. I recall one time I preached a sermon from Luke 15 and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. That morning I didn't so much preach a sermon, but offered four different readings of the parable. That is, I told the story from four different perspectives--the father, the son, the older brother, and as a disinterested bystander. It was a lot of fun to see the anguished faces of the olders among us that morning as I 'tore apart the sacred story.' I still smile because for me it was enlightening and exhilarating to see the story from other perspectives than the same one I had always used.
I think this is the gist of this book. Preachers are called to bring the living word to life among dead and dying people. We will never do this if the people are bored. And we will not awaken them if the way we preach does nothing to spark their curiosity and arouse their suspicion. This is what I loved doing when I preached and why I waited until the last possible minute to script my sermons. I didn't want to know what I was going to say until it was time to say it. One time I preached a funeral sermon with nothing but my heart. No notes. No Bible. No nothing. I just poured out words and prayed that the Holy Spirit would do something with them. Sweet is absolutely correct that a lot of preachers tend to be rather boring. I think so boring even the devil won't hang around because the preacher is doing all his work for him by keeping the people sedated.
Sermons need life but if the preacher doesn't care, I can't imagine the Spirit does. What is the Living Word in the hands of a dead man?
One time I preached a sermon about Jesus' crucifixion. I don't recall all the specifics of the sermon, but I recall the conclusion. Sometime in the weeks leading up to the sermon me and one of the deacons had taken apart an old piano that was no longer in good repair. While doing so, we came across a large hunk of wood inside the old instrument. I'm not sure what purpose it served, but I do know that it probably contributed considerably to the weight of the piano. It must have weighed 150 pounds. It was solid. As soon as I saw it I was reminded of what may have been the crossbeam of the cross of Jesus.
Before the morning worship began that day, I had arrived early and strategically placed the 'crossbeam' in the middle of the sanctuary. I had also supplied a few hammers and scattered a large supply of heavy nails on the floor. After the conclusion of the sermon, I said something to the effect of 'we have all had a part in nailing Jesus to the cross.' I then invited the congregation to come to the center where the patibulum was located and pound a nail into it. I was amazed that everyone there participated. I kept the crossbeam in my office until I eventually left the church as a reminder of what we, the entire congregation, had said that day about our relationship with Jesus.
It's not so much, then, that Sweet is offering us a new paradigm for preaching or homiletics. He is simply putting down on paper what some of us had discovered a long time ago: images work because we all learn in different ways. In education we call this the 'theory of multiple intelligences.' I have a suspicion that we never really grow out of our particular intelligence for learning. That is, if I am a kinesthetic learner as a 10 year old, perhaps I will still be such when I am 20. It doesn't mean I cannot develop other ways of learning, but it does mean that perhaps I will always lean in one direction more than another. And perhaps--and here I agree with Sweet even if he says it more implicitly than explicitly--preachers need to take a long hard look at the way 'preaching' was conducted in the Bible and become more like those fellas who laid on their side for a year or cooked their food with feces than those guys who ramble on and on and on for years without end demonstrating to all the futility of a well mannered discourse to someone who learns by doing.
I'm sure a twelve year sermon from Romans is fantastic. But I'm sure it is also profoundly boring to most.
I think this is why God had the prophets in the Old Testament do some really strange things in order to get the attention of the people and why the Spirit animated the disciples so wildly on the Day of Pentecost that people thought they were drunk. Maybe we need to open ourselves to the Spirit. So maybe preachers can abandon, to an extent, the 'stand up and lecture people about what they should believe' style of preaching and instead adopt a way of preaching that illustrates ways of believing, ways of growing up in Resurrection life, ways of being a follower of Jesus. You know, let the living word live inside us and bring the Word to life among us.
I read an e-book version of Giving Blood obtained through NetGalley for review purposes, but I will purchase this book so I can give it more attention with my pen. Although I think the book is a little longer than it needs to be, I still recommend it. I would say give it to a younger preacher, but I think a lot of younger preachers already get this. I'd say give it to an older preacher who will either read it and change or who will laugh at you and prove why his ministry/congregation is ineffective.
4/5
Author: Leonard Sweet
Publisher: Zondervan
Year: 2014
Pages: 368 (I read an e-book version on my Nook reader. My page numbers may be a bit different. I apologize in advance for any troubles this may cause.)
[Disclaimer: I was provided with a reader's copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for my fair and unbiased review. I am happy to provide that very thing in the following blog post.]
Twitter: @lensweet
I once preached a sermon about the Bible. I think it might have been from John's Gospel, but I don't really remember. The sermon had something to do with the Scripture, the Bible, the Word of God--however you want to refer to it, that was the topic. It might have been about Jesus. I might have even trekked into the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and wrestled a bit with his idea that in his mouth the Word of God tasted like honey, but in his gut it was turning him inside out, upside down, and sending him scurrying off to the bathroom.
I don't really remember all the particular details of the sermon except for the end. I recounted a story about a tradition (perhaps apocryphal) that when young Jewish children first hear the Torah or first read it, they are given honey to eat. It is, so the story goes, to remind them of the sweetness of Scripture. So I preached my sermon and finished with a reading of Scripture. I then moved down to the floor where I had arranged a table with two or three jars of honey and some plastic spoons. That day, instead of an invitation hymn or prayer or announcements I simply invited the congregation to silently walk forward when they were ready. One by one they came forward and received a single spoonful of honey--pure, sweet, glorious, raw honey. It was a beautiful moment.
It was one of the best sermons I ever preached and easily one of the few, without referring to my journals, that I remember. It was a stroke of genius.
One time I went to hear a friend preach. He had just taken a position with a new congregation and it was his first sermon. I don't remember all that much about what he preached that day or what passages of Scripture he used, but I do remember that at all of us in the room had been supplied with a small can of PlayDoh! and that at some point he had us take the PlayDoh! from its can and work it with our hands. He said, "mold the PlayDoh! into the shape of what you think you would like to be or do with your life." I remember that as I shaped PlayDoh! and created a dream, so I can give that dream to God and allow him to shape me into something he can also use. It was a brilliant idea.
Leonard Sweet has written a large book about preaching. This is a thick book both in overall content and sheer girth: 369 pages (about 1/10 is reserved for end notes) and I only read an e-book on my Nook. To be sure, 369 pages was too many in my opinion for the very fact that at the end of the day, as Sweet himself notes, metaphors tend to break apart. In the case of Giving Blood there was simply too much repetition and, in my opinion, he stretched the metaphor too far. Less is more and I think in this case the sheer volume and density of words was kind of overwhelming. Couple this with one of my pet-peeves, unbalanced chapters, and you end up with a lopsided book that despite the beauty of the metaphor was rather tedious (I was actually sick of the word 'narraphor' by page 50.) I really dislike when one chapter is 30 pages and another is 5. It's a personal thing, but there were times when I was convinced Sweet could have lopped off about 50% of a chapter and still made his point.
That being said, the metaphor is beautiful and I agree with a great portion of what Sweet wrote. Preaching is, to me, exactly what Sweet calls it: giving blood. And unless a person has stood in the pulpit and preached a sermon, or spent time in the study during the week preparing (bleeding), or stayed up late on a Saturday night because there were simply no words, then they will not ever understand what Sweet means by giving blood. Any preacher worth his salt does these very things. Then on Sunday mornings he or she has the audacity to stand up before people who expect a miracle and lay out their heart and mind and soul in mere words. People expect all their problems solved, all their questions answered, all their wounds balmed, and all their sins forgiven. Yet the preacher is tasked with standing and proclaiming the word of God to a people who will not listen and who will forget every single word by the time they cross the threshold of the back door.
Preachers give blood. And if preachers do not give blood, then perhaps they need to review if it is preaching they are actually doing. This is what we do week after week, in season and out, in good times and bad: we keep coming back for more because that is what we do. We preach. We cannot help ourselves. From near the conclusion of the book he writes:
Do you bleed over every sermon? Do you give blood through every sermon? Preaching is the discipline and craft of giving blood. (330)
It's true. Preaching takes years off our lives because we put our life into every jot and tittle we scratch across the paper.
I think the best parts of the book were found in the 'Labs' and the 'Interactives.' These were short sections at the end of chapters where Sweet applied his principles to a passage of Scripture (e.g., Jonah) or shared some ideas or exercises for how to put into practice the subject matter of the preceding chapter. Of these two, I liked the labs the best. I especially enjoyed his various readings of the book of Jonah. I recall one time I preached a sermon from Luke 15 and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. That morning I didn't so much preach a sermon, but offered four different readings of the parable. That is, I told the story from four different perspectives--the father, the son, the older brother, and as a disinterested bystander. It was a lot of fun to see the anguished faces of the olders among us that morning as I 'tore apart the sacred story.' I still smile because for me it was enlightening and exhilarating to see the story from other perspectives than the same one I had always used.
I think this is the gist of this book. Preachers are called to bring the living word to life among dead and dying people. We will never do this if the people are bored. And we will not awaken them if the way we preach does nothing to spark their curiosity and arouse their suspicion. This is what I loved doing when I preached and why I waited until the last possible minute to script my sermons. I didn't want to know what I was going to say until it was time to say it. One time I preached a funeral sermon with nothing but my heart. No notes. No Bible. No nothing. I just poured out words and prayed that the Holy Spirit would do something with them. Sweet is absolutely correct that a lot of preachers tend to be rather boring. I think so boring even the devil won't hang around because the preacher is doing all his work for him by keeping the people sedated.
Sermons need life but if the preacher doesn't care, I can't imagine the Spirit does. What is the Living Word in the hands of a dead man?
One time I preached a sermon about Jesus' crucifixion. I don't recall all the specifics of the sermon, but I recall the conclusion. Sometime in the weeks leading up to the sermon me and one of the deacons had taken apart an old piano that was no longer in good repair. While doing so, we came across a large hunk of wood inside the old instrument. I'm not sure what purpose it served, but I do know that it probably contributed considerably to the weight of the piano. It must have weighed 150 pounds. It was solid. As soon as I saw it I was reminded of what may have been the crossbeam of the cross of Jesus.
Before the morning worship began that day, I had arrived early and strategically placed the 'crossbeam' in the middle of the sanctuary. I had also supplied a few hammers and scattered a large supply of heavy nails on the floor. After the conclusion of the sermon, I said something to the effect of 'we have all had a part in nailing Jesus to the cross.' I then invited the congregation to come to the center where the patibulum was located and pound a nail into it. I was amazed that everyone there participated. I kept the crossbeam in my office until I eventually left the church as a reminder of what we, the entire congregation, had said that day about our relationship with Jesus.
It's not so much, then, that Sweet is offering us a new paradigm for preaching or homiletics. He is simply putting down on paper what some of us had discovered a long time ago: images work because we all learn in different ways. In education we call this the 'theory of multiple intelligences.' I have a suspicion that we never really grow out of our particular intelligence for learning. That is, if I am a kinesthetic learner as a 10 year old, perhaps I will still be such when I am 20. It doesn't mean I cannot develop other ways of learning, but it does mean that perhaps I will always lean in one direction more than another. And perhaps--and here I agree with Sweet even if he says it more implicitly than explicitly--preachers need to take a long hard look at the way 'preaching' was conducted in the Bible and become more like those fellas who laid on their side for a year or cooked their food with feces than those guys who ramble on and on and on for years without end demonstrating to all the futility of a well mannered discourse to someone who learns by doing.
I'm sure a twelve year sermon from Romans is fantastic. But I'm sure it is also profoundly boring to most.
I think this is why God had the prophets in the Old Testament do some really strange things in order to get the attention of the people and why the Spirit animated the disciples so wildly on the Day of Pentecost that people thought they were drunk. Maybe we need to open ourselves to the Spirit. So maybe preachers can abandon, to an extent, the 'stand up and lecture people about what they should believe' style of preaching and instead adopt a way of preaching that illustrates ways of believing, ways of growing up in Resurrection life, ways of being a follower of Jesus. You know, let the living word live inside us and bring the Word to life among us.
I read an e-book version of Giving Blood obtained through NetGalley for review purposes, but I will purchase this book so I can give it more attention with my pen. Although I think the book is a little longer than it needs to be, I still recommend it. I would say give it to a younger preacher, but I think a lot of younger preachers already get this. I'd say give it to an older preacher who will either read it and change or who will laugh at you and prove why his ministry/congregation is ineffective.
4/5
February 23, 2023
Eyebrow Raiser and Eye Roller
For every 10 words he used he made up 2. He beat the metaphor of Blood to death, resurrected it with a blood transfusion then beat it to death again… for 300 pages…
Probably 100 pages worth of helpful and insightful content.
For every 10 words he used he made up 2. He beat the metaphor of Blood to death, resurrected it with a blood transfusion then beat it to death again… for 300 pages…
Probably 100 pages worth of helpful and insightful content.
May 8, 2024
I mostly enjoyed this book and Leonard Sweet has a great approach to preaching that seems really unique and enlivening. I just had a tough time keeping up with all of his made-up words and phrases that he used to describe things in preaching.
July 8, 2017
Deep, sometimes difficult, but worth the read.
April 17, 2024
interesting perspective. mad creative. info dump. so many words. 3/5 👍🏼
January 3, 2015
TGIF! We live in a TGIF culture – what Leonard Sweet calls the “Twitter” – “Google” – “Instagram” – “Facebook” culture. People do not only consume these forms of social media (the Google empire really is a form of social media), people are altered by these forms of media, and this alteration affects peoples habits and thought patterns. One of the drawbacks of this TGIF culture, according to Sweet, is that the straightforward 3 point – expository sermon which teaches some major principle, no longer works. Sweet’s point might be a bit to strong however he is certainly right in pointing out that the TGIF culture demands a change in communication strategy.
Giving Blood is Sweet’s call to the church to take a fresh look at how we preach to a post-modern culture. It’s a call to adapt what he calls “semiotic” and “EPIC” preaching.
Semiotic Preaching
What is semiotic preaching? Quite simply it is “the art of exegeting not the words or principles, but the images, metaphors, and stories (narraphors) of Scripture.”
Here is what Sweet says:
EPIC Preaching
EPIC is an acronym which stands for “Experiential” – “Participatory” – “Image-Rich” – “Connective.” Preaching to post-moderns must not simply be about getting them to understand God, but to experience God. Preaching to post-moderns must move them from being passive recipients to active agents who initiate and make change. Preaching to post-moderns must be image-rich, preachers must take up the poet’s tools – image and imagination, rhyme and rhythm, simile, metaphor, and story. Preaching to post-moderns must be connective, invite people to connect with each other so they can better connect with Christ’s healing power and life-giving presence.
The Book
What is unique about Sweet’s book weaves these two “newer” principles of preaching into the traditional topics discussed in most preaching books: preparation, information gathering, nervousness, writers block, dealing with criticism, sermon construction, etc.
The most helpful parts of the book were his “Interactive” and his “Lab Practicum” sections. The interactive sections leads readers into exercises that will help make them better preachers and better observers of our TGIF culture. The exercises include everything from watching Youtube to reading a section of Eat, Pray, Love to listening to Three Doors Down. The Lab Practicums help shape preacher’s skills in particular areas of preaching.
Although I believe that Sweet over-exaggerates the extent that TGIF has permeated our culture; his suggestions regarding EPIC preaching should be readily adopted by any and all preachers.
Giving Blood is Sweet’s call to the church to take a fresh look at how we preach to a post-modern culture. It’s a call to adapt what he calls “semiotic” and “EPIC” preaching.
Semiotic Preaching
What is semiotic preaching? Quite simply it is “the art of exegeting not the words or principles, but the images, metaphors, and stories (narraphors) of Scripture.”
Here is what Sweet says:
Semiotic preaching is a new form of biblical preaching, but what is being exegeted are age-old stories and images, or what we might call “narraphors” – narrative metaphor.
Semiotic preaching builds on the tradition of “preaching as storytelling.”
Narraphoric preaching breaks down resistance, enters the unconscious quickly and causes the participant to fall into the lap, or trap, of truth. Narraphors get us thinking about something we may not want to think about. They force us to look at life in new ways and they outwit our reasoned defenses.
EPIC Preaching
EPIC is an acronym which stands for “Experiential” – “Participatory” – “Image-Rich” – “Connective.” Preaching to post-moderns must not simply be about getting them to understand God, but to experience God. Preaching to post-moderns must move them from being passive recipients to active agents who initiate and make change. Preaching to post-moderns must be image-rich, preachers must take up the poet’s tools – image and imagination, rhyme and rhythm, simile, metaphor, and story. Preaching to post-moderns must be connective, invite people to connect with each other so they can better connect with Christ’s healing power and life-giving presence.
The Book
What is unique about Sweet’s book weaves these two “newer” principles of preaching into the traditional topics discussed in most preaching books: preparation, information gathering, nervousness, writers block, dealing with criticism, sermon construction, etc.
The most helpful parts of the book were his “Interactive” and his “Lab Practicum” sections. The interactive sections leads readers into exercises that will help make them better preachers and better observers of our TGIF culture. The exercises include everything from watching Youtube to reading a section of Eat, Pray, Love to listening to Three Doors Down. The Lab Practicums help shape preacher’s skills in particular areas of preaching.
Although I believe that Sweet over-exaggerates the extent that TGIF has permeated our culture; his suggestions regarding EPIC preaching should be readily adopted by any and all preachers.
July 22, 2014
This was a very interesting book for anyone who preaches regularly. At times it felt as though the information was repetitive and i wanted the Author to get to the point. But once he did get to the point he had some great things to say. Ultimately he did inspire me to constantly evaluate my preaching and the way I prepare a message. His idea that preaching should be telling a story more than sharing points was well taken and I think he did a great job backing up why stories are more effective. It is a bit of a difficult read but it the insights and inspiration gained from it was well worth it.
June 9, 2015
This book was full of great metaphors, inspiration, and concepts such as narraphor and transductive preaching. The stories and plays on words were a lot of fun…except for the last 100 pages. Sweet over-metaphors and nearly drives the reader mad toward the end by repeating himself ad nauseum. He also "beats around the bush" a lot without much concrete example in the area of structure--which keeps this from being a 5 star book. Actually, a 3.5 would be a better review.
Despite the flaws, this book points out a lot of important trends, cites other authors worth further reading, and gives some fun motivation to play with new concepts from the pulpit in order to communicate the Gospel.
Despite the flaws, this book points out a lot of important trends, cites other authors worth further reading, and gives some fun motivation to play with new concepts from the pulpit in order to communicate the Gospel.
July 17, 2017
Inspiring book. The author describes preaching as "giving blood" (and suggests that preachers should be "homiletical hemophiliacs") and spins the metaphor out about as far as it will go (blood and water, blood work, blood types, blood flow, blood cells, blood bank...you get the idea.) While I probably would have given this book five stars if it had ended 75 pages sooner, I really enjoyed the author's perspective, particularly as he went beyond deductive and inductive preaching to describe a type of preaching that has adapted to communicate with a changing culture--transductive preaching with abductive methods. Looking forward to pondering the ideas and insights I gained from this book.
August 22, 2014
I like Leonard Sweet a lot and find him an effective communicator. I think the first 2 sections are incredible, the last section where he takes a stab at nuts and bolts is lacking. Only Len sweet can so what Len sweet can do. The biggest takeaway for me was in how to exegete images and use them for preaching. I still like and use points frequently.
April 22, 2014
Best book on preaching I've ever read. The whole book is an exercise in how far one can travel on a metaphor.
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July 25, 2014Thought provoking; useful for stimulating fresh perspectives on preaching.
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