Details 6.8.2023

     Last week I discussed domain knowledge. While Biblical Studies, Hermeneutics, and Theology are the primary areas in which the pastor-theologian works we also understand that all truth is God’s truth. Our explorations also require interdisciplinary (sometimes called multi-disciplinary) reading and research. Our application of the text requires analysis of our audience and cultural context, or we risk preaching sermons that people are unable to hear. 

    Today let’s discuss a couple of famous concepts that spring from design or architecture. Form follows function and the devil is in the details. 

Form Follows Function?

    In the late 19th and early 20th century, a familiar epithet regarding design was “form follows function.” It seemed like a commonsense approach to bridging the gap between conceiving a project on paper and executing it in the real world.  Recently I read a book entitled The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski. The guiding thesis of this book is that the notion that form follows function is wrong. The author makes his case convincingly. The history of innovation, as manifested in objects as diverse as forks, hammers, and paperclips demonstrates that form follows failure. These common objects evolved due to the perceived or actual failure of a previous generation of the item to solve the problem for which it was designed and constructed. 

    How does this relate to the work of preaching?  Most human knowledge is iterative. It requires experimentation, curiosity, creativity, and yes, failure. To go through this process requires basic reading and research that is challenging, even unnerving. There are divergent views in Biblical Studies and hermeneutics even among those who hold to a high view of Scripture. Among those who accept the authoritative voice of God in Scripture, there are differing theological viewpoints. Some of these are presuppositions, and some of them are conclusions. One finds illumination in the strangest places! But one must go to those places to find the light. You need to have a plan but be willing to wander a little bit to allow for serendipitous discovery. When you only plow the same furrow, repeatedly the ground will eventually begin to lose vitality. It is then that you need to fertilize that soil with something new. If all we ever do is the same thing that we have always done, then we will never produce anything fresh. 

    Much of the way that we study is predicated on the notion that we don’t want to be experimental or risk failure. There is nothing wrong with changing our minds. There is nothing wrong with incorporating new data into our thinking. If we keep our eyes on Jesus and rely upon the Holy Spirit and the community of the Saints, we will have the necessary guardrails in place to prevent catastrophe when any form that we are pursuing leads to failure. Do you have any idea how many patents were filed during the evolution of the paperclip? 

    The process of thinking through scripture and preparing a sermon is hard work. You will add a bit here, trim there, construct a truss or a brace, and then discard the whole thing and start over. Your floor will be littered with the abandoned detritus of your labors. The function of a sermon is to proclaim scripture so that believers are edified, and unbelievers are called to respond in faith. Reaching that destination may require starts, stops, rethinking, reevaluating, editing, cutting, trimming, folding two points into one, adding good parallel illustrations, and asking someone to proof and critique your work. After all that you will walk into the pulpit satisfied with what you have prepared and find that it falls flat. Other times you will enter the pulpit genuinely concerned—only to find that (this may have happened to me last Sunday) the book sermon from Job, that you were editing until 8.20 Sunday morning was effective in bringing someone to faith. Form follows failure, and failure creates focus. 

The devil is in the details. 

    That brings us to the anonymous (though often attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) blurb that the devil (or God) is in the details. The German reads Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail if you want the original. 

    For the preacher that means we must be diligent to consider each detailed step of exegesis. We should at least skim each secondary book available to us when exegeting a text. We should read the original languages of the text and examine several translations of the text to consider the diverse ways of rending the text into colloquial English. 

    How will you begin the sermon? How will you end it? Will you read the full text all at once or interleave it within the points of the Sermon as you explain each part and relate it to the point in question? What about the transitions? Am I using too many passive verbs? How’s the grammar? Am I saying too much in the first person? Are the slides too detailed? Is the vocabulary to foo-foo? When I preach this will I sound like a hillbilly?

     You have to consider how this specific message from this text fits into your overall preaching plan for the series and year. You need to think about how the pericope or paragraph fits into the overall structure of the book. Being a preacher requires that we function like a lawyer who must prepare a new, different case every single week. The details matter. Design matters. The words in the text matter. Our choice of words matters. This is important. God is truly in the details.