The Historical Evolution of the Sermon

For just as you are hungry to listen to me, so too I am hungry to preach to you.

— St. John Chrysostom

Not unlike any other method or system of communication, the sermon has changed and evolved throughout the centuries. In the early church, many sermons were "apologias" (a Greek term referring to the defense of a particular Christian teaching or doctrine), usually intense theological explanations of a topic being debated or defined by the early Christians. The witness of Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD) in his famous letter to the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius, describes those early Christian sermons by saying that the "presider of the assembly speaks to us; he urges everyone to imitate the examples of virtue we have heard in the readings." This is an early and rare description of a sermon in the second century of Christianity within the context of Sunday worship. Yet, we get a lot from that brief statement. We are told that there was a preacher who spoke to the assembly, and that there was an exhortation inviting specific changes to be made in the lives of those gathered as a result of the proclamation. It is fair to say that the craft of preaching has always involved a preacher and an assembly trying to comprehend how best to understand and apply the meaning of the Word of God for the living out of our Christian lives. The fact that there is a preacher and there are listeners is perhaps one of the only aspects of preaching and proclamation that will not be radically subjected to the communications revolution taking place around us.

However, when we take a look back in time we discover that the most renowned testimonies of the first centuries of Christianity were primarily focused on the martyrdoms of significant figures who had a great impact on the life of that primitive church. Certainly the stories of Perpetua, Felicity, and other martyrs were considered a powerful witness that led those around them in the Christian community to embrace the Gospel and live the message of the Word of God. The witness of these stories was a powerful tool within the early Christian church, which found itself at odds with a hostile cultural milieu.

In this sense, one could say that the Christian sermon has gone full-circle, with popular preachers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries focusing a great deal of attention (in their sermons) on their own personal stories of pain, abuse, addiction, and other human dramas, which may make their message more appealing — or even more credible — to contemporary listeners. In the early church, for some it was the witness of martyrdom that made the Gospel attractive. While it is certainly a stretch (i.e. martyrdom vs. stories of personal strife) one cannot ignore the strong connection between personal testimony, witness, and experience in both the primitive church and in some contemporary Christian traditions. One could say that many pastors today are actually recognized for those personal journeys and often use those narratives in their preaching much more so than their level of education or knowledge of theology.

In order to go deeper into our understanding of the changes within the craft of preaching as a result of our media culture, this chapter will focus on the evolution of sermons in the post-Reformation era (after 1685). We'll do that by looking briefly at a theologically and denominationally diverse group of preachers who can be categorized as "iconic" figures in the most recent centuries of Christian history. The first two lived in a time when, apart from print media, technology did not provide for much more than the traditional pulpit and the spoken word. Yet, with the dawn of radio and television in the twentieth century, others became among the most influential people of our time. By looking at these sermons and the well-known and transformational individuals who preached them, I believe we will be able to discern the evolution that has already occurred and the developments that will continue to take place in preaching. Rather than pretending to use these six preachers as some sort of case study, we will look directly at each specific style used to preach the Christian Gospel and the effect their surroundings and particular cultural milieu had on the message they proclaimed and continue to share today.

John Wesley (1703–1791)

John Wesley understood the apostolic mission of the church in the most radical way and put it into practice in the most literal way. The very origin of the word "apostle" (in Greek apostollein) refers to one who is "sent" or to actually "send away." Wesley, his brother Charles (the renowned author of over five thousand hymns), and the great Anglican preacher and mentor to Wesley, George Whitefield, took the Gospel to the streets. As some of the first in England to promote preaching outdoors in the eighteenth century, they were harshly criticized and persecuted for initiating this unpopular practice.

Wesley and his colleagues had begun the practice of public preaching and what would evolve to become what we now call "revivals" as a result of their association with the Holy Club in Oxford. The Holy Club was dedicated to the pursuit of holiness, originating what would become known as the "Holiness Movement" with their specific mix of religious study, piety, and service that would eventually lead to the establishment of Methodist societies (although Wesley would declare himself an Anglican until his death). There is little doubt that in Wesley's unique style and in the movement he helped to lead, something new was taking place. Wesley and those who became adherents of his method were taking Christianity back out into the streets, beyond the walls of the church. The step of taking the sermon from the context of the traditional indoor pulpit and making it accessible to any who might want to listen on the street was not a new method, but an application of an old, forgotten method — the one used by prophets and apostles of biblical times, who spent their time beyond the confines of physical structures and/or religious buildings. One could say that those outdoor revivals of the eighteenth century were the "mass media" of their times. It was certainly the only way to reach thousands of people, gathered in a single space to hear God's message.

I believe this open air or "field preaching," as it was called, led Wesley to become a truly effective communicator among the people of his time. He possessed a simplicity and directness not common among his colleagues who preached in more formal indoor settings. This is evident from the preface of...