Monthly Archives: July 2007

17 homiletical tasks

At one of my favorite used bookstores today, I came across a book titled African American Religious Studies (ed. Gayraud S. Wilson, Duke Univ, 1989). I’m always a sucker for books on religious studies, so I leafed through it, and in an article by Cheryl J. Sanders titled “The Woman as Preacher,” I came across a list of 17 homiletical tasks undertaken by preachers in the African American tradition.

Sanders was interested in figuring out whether there’s a difference between what women and men preach in the African American church tradition. But I was interested in the tasks in their own right, as a way to analyze the sermons I hear, and the sermons I write. Below you’ll find my paraphrase of Sanders’s 17 tasks. (In some cases, I have done a little translation from the African American church to the peculiarities of Unitarian Universalism.) Following Sanders’s original list, these tasks are listed in alphabetical order:

  1. Affirming — Speaking in positive terms to the congregation, especially about what the congregation is doing.
  2. Celebrating — Calling attention to the joy of worship.
  3. Criticizing the church — Pointing out the shortcomings of the congregation, the wider denomination, or more general categories of religious community/institution.
  4. Criticizing society — Especially, criticizing unjust social structures and social systems.
  5. Exegeting scripture — A critical analysis of religious scripture.
  6. Exhorting — Exhorting lsiteners to act or exhibit some virtue.
  7. Interpreting scripture — Different from exegeting scripture, expounding on the significance of a particular religious text, with an emphasis on the text’s application.
  8. Inviting hearers to commitment — In a traditional Christian church, this would be followed by an altar call; in a Unitarian Universalist context, this might be followed by a request for deeper financial commitment, volunteer commitment, etc., but more immediate than no. 6, exhorting.
  9. Observing a liturgical event
  10. Proclaiming an eschatological vision — Broadly speaking, a look towards ultimate, or last, things. John Murray’s words, “Give them hope, not hell,” would fall into this category.
  11. Quoting lyrics of hymns — Using hymn lyrics as authoritative sources, or as a summary of the sermon.
  12. Quoting lyrics of Negro spirituals — Negro spirituals can be considered as a repository of history and culture, as well as a cultural tradition, that goes beyond denominational boundaries. Predominantly white Unitarian Universalism has no homiletical task exactly like this; references to popular culture fall under no. 17.
  13. Quoting poetry or drama
  14. Storytelling — Telling the stories from religious scripture.
  15. Teaching — A more formal and structured presentation of information.
  16. Testifying — The preacher tells about her or his personal witness of the self-disclosure of the divine in her or his life.
  17. Translating religious scripture into the vernacular — Different from storytelling, insofar as stories have more of a timeless quality.

Looking over this list, I find that I tend to neglect some of these homiletical tasks — e.g., I rarely, if ever, engage in testifying. I also find that I have a tendency to favor certain of these tasks — e.g., I’m more of a teacher than a storyteller, and more interested in exegesis than translating scripture into the vernacular. Not that I believe that every preacher should exactly balance all of these tasks over the course of a church year. But this list of homiletical tasks does help me to evaluate myself, and better understand what kind of preacher I am — and it helps me to realize what sorts of churchgoers are not going to be satisfied by my sermons.

Eight things I noticed on the beach yesterday evening

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

A Herring Gull swooped down onto the beach a hundred yards in front of me, carrying something large in its bill. Through the binoculars, I could see that the gull was carrying a fish, maybe a flounder, that looked too big for it to swallow. A young gull stood nearby, watching and hoping the older gull would drop the fish. The adult gull tossed the fish in the air, dropped it several times, tried to maneuver it so the fish’s head was pointing down the gull’s throat, and then, so quickly I didn’t see it, swallowed the fish. I could see a bulge in the gull’s throat. It swallowed hard a couple of times, then flew away.

A light rain shower passed over the beach, leaving the sand pockmarked with tiny craters where the big raindrops had hit.

I looked out over Saco Bay as the rain showers passed. The sun broke through the clouds in the west, and lit up Eagle Island, which is a mile or so out in the bay. The island stood out, bright and green, against the dark blue clouds and the dark gray sea. More sun came out, and picked out the tops of waves as they broke against the beach, turning them from a dull color to brilliant white.

Bits of a rainbow appeared in the sky: two short, bright bands at the horizon, marking out the north and south points of the bay; and pieces here and there against the dark clouds, so faint that at times I wasn’t sure if I was seeing them or not.

A Common Tern hovered over the water. I managed to get my binoculars up in time to watch it break out of its hover, plunge into the sea, and emerge with a small fish in its bill. It flew up, tossed the fish back and swallowed it, and shook itself dry as it flew off looking for more fish.

Halfway out to Eagle Island, fifty or sixty white specks appeared in a sudden ray of sun, circling around, hovering, and plunging into the sea.

Through some odd optical effect that I don’t understand, broad rays of alternating light and dark appeared in the clouds, radiating out from Wood Island; or perhaps I should say, converging down towards Wood Island. If I wasn’t aware that the sun was almost directly behind me, I would have thought that the sun must have been behind Wood Island, as if somehow the sun were setting in the east southeast, instead of in the west.

A dozen Bonaparte’s Gulls stood on the beach, keeping an eye on me now and then, but mostly doing nothing. They were all molting, losing the crisply-defined black heads of their breeding plumage, losing the odd tail feather, looking rather bedraggled. Presumably, these were first-year birds that never made it all the way up to the breeding grounds in Canada, and so here they sat on the coast of Maine, molting and waiting for the fall migration to begin in earnest. It was a poignant sight, an anticipation of the end of summer.

Posted two days after the fact — I’m a little behind in posting due to spotty Internet access here in Cambridge.

Friday the 13th?

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This was the last day of children’s program of the religious education conference at Ferry Beach. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6, and this morning we ended up with the 5th and 6th graders.

The morning did not start off well. The children were tired and a little cranky to begin with. Then they found out that they would not be allowed to watch the “Banathalon.” The Banathalon is a strange Ferry Beach tradition — a relay race where instead of passing a baton you pass a banana from one competitor to the next. Years ago, it started out like a triathalon, with running, bicycling, and swimming legs, and then at the end someone had to eat the banana-baton. Over the years, other legs have been added — pull-ups, solving a Rubik’s cube in 5 minutes, etc. And during the religious education conference, the banathalon is a competition between the high school youth and the junior high youth — which means that the 5th and 6th graders are very interested in it.

“This year, we can’t watch the banathalon,” I said. About half the group erupted. We can’t watch!? Why not? We always watch! (“Always” in this context means “last year.”) “It’s not my rule, although I agree with it,” I said. “It’s the conference coordinators who said we couldn’t watch.” They continued to be cranky and upset, so I said I would get one of the conference coordinators to explain why they couldn’t watch. Anne came, and explained why they couldn’t watch. At that point, some of the children said, Well, if we can’t watch, let’s do something else. Two days ago, we had all agreed that the group would spend alone time in the woods, so finally the group calmed down enough that we could walk over to the woods together, and get set up for spending alone time in the woods.

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Tree Murals and Foxes and Rabbits

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6. Some notes on Thursday’s activities:

We started off with the 1st/2nd graders this morning. It’s a small group (only 8 children), with mostly 2nd graders. They have been a very easy group — lots of sunny personalities, and no conflicting personalities. The weather was finally clear and dry, so at last we were able to do one of the lessons we had planned out in advance — the Tree Mural project, a way to help children appreciate a living thing (a tree) while learning about the ecological concept of habitat.

First we went out and “adopted” a tree. We lay around the base of it while Lisa read a sort of guided meditation to help the children get a sense of the tree (the complete lesson plan is at the very end of this post). It was a little hard for children of this age to focus on this part of the activity, but they did pretty well — especially when we all sat up and started looking for living creatures on and around the tree. The children found spiders, ants, caterpillars, a hole that might be a chipmunk hole, and other small creatures.

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Wait, what does this church stand for?…

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This year’s theme at the annual religious education conference is how to spread the word about Unitarian Universalism. Which raises the interesting question — how do you tell a visitor to your church what “Unitarian Universalism” means, anyway? I interview Peter Newport, one of the ministers at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Unitarian Universalist church, and I ask him that very question.

Not to kill the suspense, but we don’t come up with an answer…. (1:24)

Screen grab from the video showing two middle aged white guys laughing.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

On film

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6.

This morning we had the grade 5-6 grade group for the entire morning. A film crew came to Ferry Beach today to film a short film to promote Unitarian Universalism. The film makers, David and Anne, felt that a key component of Unitarian Universalist religious education is our focus on Nature and respect for the interdependent web of all existence. They wanted to get some footage of children engaged in outdoors religious education, so they decided to film us doing religious education with the fifth and sixth graders.

Before the children arrived, I talked with David and Anne, and with one of the camera operators (also confusingly named David), about the kind of shots they were looking for. He wanted groups of children and adults close together, in a natural setting, looking at something together. Then I figured out how to adjust our lesson plan (we decided to use the same session plan as we used with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday) so David could get the shots he was looking for.

All that was pretty straightforward. What really worried me was how the children would react with a camera looking over their shoulders all the time. When the children arrived, I started up my computer and showed them photographs I had taken of the Piping Plover sitting on her nest — I had promised a couple of days ago that I would do so.

We sat in a circle, and did everyone (including the film crew) introduced themselves. Then i reminded the children of the Piping Plover photos, and showed them my small video camera. I was sitting next to David with his big video camera, and we compared the two cameras. I told the children that I like to use my camera to help me observe and remember what I see in Nature. Then David talked about his camera, and the kinds of documentary work he does with it. These introductions allowed the children to become somewhat accustomed to the film crew.

We moved into the same basic lesson that we had done with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday (“secret agents” and collecting things on the beach), and I set things up so that David got some great shots of children crouched on beach sand sorting through different kinds of seaweed. The film makers needed to do interviews with a couple of children individually, so to accommodate that, Lisa and I took the rest of the children down the road to see where the house had washed into the ocean last winter. I hadn’t really planned for these interviews, and this part of the session didn’t go as well as the “secret agent” activity.

After the snack break, the film crew was pretty much done. We all sat in a circle, and we went around the circle, allowing each child some time to talk about how it felt to be filmed. Many of the children said it was “distracting.” One or two didn’t really notice a difference. Several of the children pointed out how many in the group were kind of acting for the camera.

Then I gave them a couple of choices for activities that they could do in the second half of the morning. Nearly all of them wanted to spend alone time in the woods (just as we did last year). So we did that to finish out the morning.

Overall, I felt this morning’s session went very well indeed. The film makers were a little distracting, but in spite of that I felt that the children learned a lot, and had fun besides.

Piping Plover photos

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This evening, I managed to take some photos of the Piping Plover nesting up the beach from the conference center. I know some regular readers of this blog might be interested, so I uploaded the photos to Flickr.

View six photos as a slide show.

View thumbnails of the photos, better for slow connections.

I’ve placed these photos in the public domain, use as you see fit.

Winging it (successfully)

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Once again this year, Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6, and this morning we had the grade 1-2 group, followed by the grade 3-4 group.

We decided to take the 1st and 2nd graders down to the beach to see the fog. We collected different kinds of seaweed, and were having fun trying to decide where the fog began and ended, when it started to rain lightly. We headed back to our tent, and got under cover just before a downpour started. We compared the different types of seaweed, and decided which ones felt slimy, which ones felt slippery, which ones felt lumpy, and so on. The heavy rain put an end to rest of our lesson plan, so we decided to make time for free play in the sand in which the tent is pitched — but then the wind picked up, and it got cold, and we ran inside where it was warmer. It wasn’t a bad session — the children got time to get to know one another — but the heavy rain and cold winds prevented us from meeting some of our learning goals for the morning.

By the time the 3rd and 4th graders joined us, the rain had stopped and it was warmer. But the ground was still so wet that we couldn’t do our planned activities, which involved crawling around on the ground. So we walked down to the beach.

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Re-focusing

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

The children’s program of the religious education conference started this morning. Once again this year, Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6.

One of our groups this morning was filled with really great kids — I knew most of them from last year’s conference — and I was expecting the group to be lots of fun. But this group just didn’t come together. In fact, things started to fall apart, which meant that the children started acting out the stereotyped roles they have learned:– some of the boys started acting out, some of the girls sat there passively, one or two kids started acting like the good kids telling the others to behave. Nobody was learning anything. Nobody was having any fun.

It was raining off and on, so maybe the kids were cranky. Or maybe the chemistry just wasn’t right. I don’t know why things weren’t working, but I knew something had to change.

So I threw out the lesson plan we had written up, and did something that was more or less unexpected: “OK, everyone stand up. Make a line, and hold hands. Follow me.” The line broke down a couple of times, but finally we made it over to some trees. “Look at this…” We started picking up different kinds of lichen. “What’s it feel like?” Damp. Squishy. Soft. “Usually lichens are dry and crispy, but now they’re all wet from the rain,” I said. “It’s OK to pick it up, because wherever you drop it it will start growing again.” The kids started telling each other what they knew about lichen (these were 5th and 6th graders, so they knew quite a lot.) Lichen is fungus. No, fungi. It’s fungus and algae together. Look at this one growing on the tree! Look at this one, it’s completely different!

We ran back to our picnic table. Earlier, I had collected different kinds of seaweed down at the beach. We compared the lichen and the seaweed. “Seaweed is a kind of algae,” I said. Some of the lichen looked a little like some of the seaweed. Both the seaweed and the lichen felt damp, squishy, and soft.

By now, we were all re-focused. We sat down, and I asked them to come up with a list of ground rules that we could all live by. They came up with some good rules: No physical violence. One person talking at a time (they’re thinking of using a talking stick, but we’ll see). The Golden Rule: treat other people the way you’d like to be treated. And a few other common sense rules.

By the time we got the rules written down, and all agreed on, it was time to go to lunch, so we all went off to the dining hall.

Thinking back, I’m trying to figure out if there was anything I could have done differently at the beginning to keep things on track. I probably had higher expectations for the group than I should have had. Many of them are strong kinesthetic learners, and I probably should have had manipulatives for them to play with, or an immediate physical activity for them. I’m also not thrilled by having kids rotate through the different activities on such a tight schedule (I prefer spontaneous programming that arises from children’s interests, rather than schedules that force children to change to a different topic whether they’re ready or not) — and my negative attitude towards the schedule may well negatively affected how the group interacted.

But I suspect that in this case, there may not have been much that I could have done to change the way we started off. And it’s fine, because it worked out pretty well in the end — even though I never made my key point, that for many of us Unitarian Universalists appreciating Nature is a big part of our religion.