This is an area of discussion much needed for today’s
pulpits… unfortunately I wish this book had been postponed another couple
months. We need people talking about this, but not talking about it poorly.
Steven Smith’s Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons like Scripture needed another pass with the editor,
and a bit of interaction with some dissidents. All in all, I give this book a
7/10 or 3/5 (rounded down) because the content is there, but it’s not quite there,
wrapped with bow.
Book thesis:
“The humble ambition of this book is to show a preacher or teacher how
the genre influences the meaning of the text and give practical help for those
who want to know how we can shape our sermons to reflect this meaning.
Smith writes to pastors and teachers with the caveat that
this book is an introduction—and this is testified over-and-over again with
recommended resources for further study at the end of every chapter, and a
voluminous bibliography in the back. In fact, its sheer size may be a point of
anxiety for the pastor who wants the few best resources to look into… not the
whole gamut of scholarship since the 50s. Smith supports his thesis a bit
vaguely at times—showing the Bible expositor how the genres of Scripture tend
toward a kind of sermon structure best suited to re-animate the biblical
authors meaning.
Smith loosely categorizes 9 genres into 3 major categories. Story
contains OT Narrative, Law, Gospels/Acts, and Parables. Poem/Wisdom contains
Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, and Prophecy. And Letter contains Epistles and
Revelation. Again, they are loose categories with some overlap but Smith makes
a pretty compelling case for categorizing them where he does. The
macrostructure of Story applies to the genres therein (even Law—because Law is
given in the context of narrative), and there are microstructures singular to
the particular subgenres. Similarly with Poem/Wisdom (though there is great
diversity between the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Eccelesiastes, and Job). Truth
be told, the Letter category seems a bit arbitrary since Revelation is all over
the board, and the Epistles bear resemblance to the Prophetic literature.
Each chapter breaks down into Interpretation, Communication,
and Structuring a Sermon; it ended with a sample sermon, study questions, and
recommended resources. I found that the Interpretation section often asserted
things without interacting with dissidents/counterarguments. And at the risk of
wanting my cake and eating it too: I was surprised to find Smith prolonging his
pen so often in the interpretation sections and swiftly passing through the
Structure sections. Truly, you must understand the text before you know how to
convey its meaning, but the Structure sections (the apparent thrust of the
book) remains scant to my eyes. I think the readers would be better equipped if
these sections included multiple examples of sermon outlines from the genre in
question. Smith offers a sample
sermon in each chapter, but the benefits could be multiplied if confused
pastors could see the variety even a single genre provides… after all different
texts reveal different structures. On the other hand, the study questions were
at the perfect level of cognition—requiring enough thought to solidify the
ideas presented without being obscure or menial. Additionally, I was pleasantly
surprised with how well Smith handled some of the more complex or ‘scary’
genres: prophecy, Psalms, and Revelation; and yet I was dissatisfied with his
mediocre treatment of Luke, Acts, and some epistles.
So let me get to my biggest dissatisfactions…
1. Editing.
I found an uncanny number of typos and inconsistent/confusing headings. But
really they were all things that are entirely amendable, things that the
college English professor docks you for because
it shouldn’t have happened. I think just a couple more weeks before the book
hit the printer would have given the time for another spell, grammar, and
outline check and would have presented the book in a much more professional
manner. Most of the content is there,
but it’s still sitting in the store-given plastic bag, unappealing.
2. The
Introductory matters. Chapters 1-3 could use some revision. Again this seems
like someone was on a time-crunch. Like the author had written the first draft
and never got around to checking it out and revamping his arguments.
Occasionally the author would give an example to ‘prove’ his point without
telling you what the point was! We had no lens to interpret. At times he leaves
his question ultimately unanswered—he gets into the discussion but leaves it
vague; he seems to start writing about something only to end up saying, “But we
all already know the rest” or “we aren’t going to talk about this.” And he
seems to assume things he shouldn’t. This sort of ‘unworked’ feel pops up a
couple places in the remainder of the book (e.g. 185 where he states, “Let’s
deal with a few strategies,” but that is the final sentence of the section… and
he doesn’t explicitly answer this in the remaining sections), but it is
predominant in Chapters 1-3. In fact, I think the book would have been better
if it simply had the Introduction followed by chapters 4-12.
All that being said, I have found
this book beneficial for myself. I learned some things. I saw some things for
the first time. I captured a pithy proverb or two about preaching. I am
confident about a foray into the book of Revelation. And so I give this book 3
stars… recognizing its potential value, and hoping for soon updated editions…
with a few of my suggestions taken into consideration.
I recommend it [the updated
edition] to pastors who feel they’ve run themselves into a rut in the pulpit.
The ones for whom every sermon seems the same with three alliterated points and
the same conclusion each time. Unfortunately it’s the ones who haven’t realized
they’re driving themselves into that rut that need this most and who are most
unlikely to read it.
I also recommend it to students of Scripture who aspire to the
pulpit one day. And to teachers of small groups (though for this group I think
it has least immediate application).
One of the benefits of this book
is its introductory level—not just to sermon structure but to genre
interpretation. I would show persons this book alongside Preaching with Variety by Jeffrey Arthurs and Preaching God’s Word by Duvall and Hays. Of course each book has
its niche, and so should it be; this niche relates to conveying the text
through appropriate structures. After all “we preach a text, not a sermon.”
