Gary Simpson on the craft of preaching

Gary Simpson is the 30-year pastor of Concord Baptist Church, a historic Black church in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. George and Gary -- two renowned practitioners of preaching -- talk about their craft and the future generation of preachers that they are bringing up. If you ever listen to sermons and wonder what it's like to prepare for that week after week, you'll be interested in this episode.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason: What are preachers doing on Sunday morning when they stand up and proclaim the word to congregation. We're going to talk to a teacher of preaching, Gary Simpson, about just that work, about where things are today and where we see preaching going in the years ahead. Stay tuned for Good God.

George Mason: Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm George Mason, your host and I'm pleased to welcome to the program again, Gary Simpson. The Reverend Dr. Gary Simpson is the pastor of Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, New York. And he is also a teacher of preaching. He teaches preaching in New Jersey at-

Gary Simpson: Drew.

George Mason: Drew University, School of Theology.

Gary Simpson: It's the School of Theology at Drew University.

George Mason: There it is. Okay. And so, this is a topic, Gary, that I'd like for us to talk about because we are both practitioners of preaching, which is to say we do it most every Sunday and occasionally other times. And we've been doing it for a long time. So, not that we understand it all that well just because we have, but we have thought about it a great deal.

Gary Simpson: Sure.

George Mason: So I think people might be interested, not just our colleagues here, but people might think that when you get up to preach on a given Sunday morning, all you've done is sort of read the Bible and ask the Spirit to lead you. And then based upon your wit and wisdom, you just hold forth because that's who you are. But there's a lot that goes into thinking about what this is we're doing. So when you take some fresh students and try to help them understand what is it we're doing out there on Sunday morning, what are some of the things that shape that first conversation to help them understand this work?

Gary Simpson: Well, my first conversation is usually about orientation. I ask, in mostly in an introductory class, "Have you heard a good sermon lately?" And they'll start listing those qualities that made a good sermon. And then I asked them, "Have you had a bad sermon lately? And what happens?" And we started talking about qualities. I think my first inclination is to say that preaching is more being than doing. There are a lot of methodologies they would go over them at the Academy that talk about the machinations. "These are the ingredients, put these things together, do these things, and you'll have a good sermon."

Gary Simpson: Well we know you can follow that book, do all the things in the right order and still not have a good sermon. Right?

George Mason: That's right.

Gary Simpson: Because it is not just about learning a skillset, it is also a perspective, a way of looking at the world and even before looking, listening. And one of my arguments is that the idea, if it's a skill, then all you have to do is keep practicing. Well, we do know that there are people who practice preaching and never get better at it, right?

George Mason: Oh, right. They're doing the same thing-

Gary Simpson: Doing the same thing over.

George Mason: ...over and over again and they're not reflective about it.

Gary Simpson: Not reflective about it and not hearing other voices. One of my favorite little illustrations is to ask people, "So you remembered the movie, The 10 Commandments?" "Yes." "So you remember when Moses went to talk to God, right?" "Yes." "Okay. Who was Moses?" "Charlton Heston." "Who was the voice of God?" "Charlton Heston." And that sometimes this idea of who God is as our own voice magnified and amplified. Right? So if that is our universe for understanding good preaching, so even to get better in preaching, if I'm only saying, "Well that wasn't as bad as it was last Sunday," my universe is so small to kind of measure that up against. I think opportunity to hear other people preach, to hear people who don't start with your presuppositions, then-

George Mason: Okay, so that it seems to me is both a positive and potentially a negative in preaching. And I'll put it this way, I do think that we're all copycats in some way, right? So we find preachers who we like and who we admire and we love to listen to and we want to pick up on what they're doing, right? And then it's very possible that we sort of adopt some of their style or their pacing or their structure of their sermons or the way they go about it.

George Mason: But then there comes a time when if you stay there, you're not really being authentic in terms of who you are. So somehow there also has to be that kind of, Okay... I used to try to preach just like this guy who was the guy who called me into ministry." And then my first pastor in seminary, I know I started shifting to be more in that style. Eventually I had to figure out, "What is George supposed to do? Right? And that's a longterm process of discovery, isn't it?

Gary Simpson: And your voice changes too over time. I mean you know, we all know the prepubescence, our voice is way up there. And then all of a sudden we resonate. Men resonate, the little males get a little deeper, many of us do. I think that happens also in the texturing of our preaching that our voices change. I think you're right, until we find our own voice, we borrow somebody else's, right? But when I say listening to other people preach, I'm not just talking about getting some heroes for preaching. I'm also talking about hearing other people preach. Different bodies, right?

Gary Simpson: And hearing people who have different theological perspectives and how they pull this off. People who don't preach in English. To hear other voices, the sound that gives to me and other perspectives, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy teaching preaching, is because all of those voices are there. And I would want to think, let me say, that I'm a better preacher because I hear these voices. Because these voices are saying things that I never saw, I never thought about, and they're giving me an opportunity to kind of expand my own repertoire and my own vocal ability by listening to them.

Gary Simpson: So, I just want to say, I think we all have those two or three people who are kind of icons for us. And we also know that mimicry never ever pans out. It never ever pans out. But I think there are so many people preaching, and in some ways, George, we might have too many preachers right now. And if I might even say too much exposure to preaching, so that we are hearing things in standards or quote-unquote standards or expectations of preachings are either heightened beyond reach in the more polished versions, or lowered to a sense of almost irrelevance by some of the overexposure we might be experiencing right now.

George Mason: So let's talk about what we're doing when we're preaching.

Gary Simpson: Okay.

George Mason: One of my pet peeves, I suppose, is when I hear people say that we're there to preach the Bible. Now, there's an awful lot of preaching today that is really more teaching than preaching and there's a...

Gary Simpson: Similarity?

George Mason: Or training.

Gary Simpson: Oh training as opposed to teaching.

George Mason: Or training, there you go. That's right. So yeah, the teaching you're supposed to draw out from, educate, right? But now my sense is we have this big gospel story that the Bible gives us a narrative about. We have a living God, we are proclaiming to a people, and it always seems to me to be a smaller task to just teach people a text than it is to proclaim good news that has the power to unlock people's lives and to give them hope and and direction.

Gary Simpson: Well, I would always say when people say we preach a text, I say, What genre or texts are we in? Right? Where are we? What does the text say? I love to start in on John 1, "In the beginning was the word." You cannot substitute the word Bible there.

George Mason: That's right.

Gary Simpson: It just won't work, right. And what we have in the Bible is not... And we also have to remember this, that written form is actually we who are in the post enlightenment era, a more literate society and not speaking pejoratively of orality, but people are talking story first. So the words that are written are actually the second form. And so...

George Mason: Derivative, not primary.

Gary Simpson: Yes, so let me write this down before I forget, right? This kind of thing. So the Bible is an opportunity for us to see the complexity, and for that matter, the inadequacy of words. They're just, as Paul would say, "Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift," right? I can't really... And all of us who preach know. I mean this happens every Sunday. Man I wish-

George Mason: Here it is, I know what's coming.

Gary Simpson: I wish I had to say that or I didn't get there. Almost, but not quite. Any preacher who walks away and thinks that they've hit it over the fence is just...

George Mason: Exactly, how many times you say, "There was that thing I wanted to say."

Gary Simpson: Yeah, exactly.

Gary Simpson: Yeah, I didn't get to it.

George Mason: Or then here's a different side of this. Someone comes up to us in the narthex afterward and says, "When you said this, it was just the word I needed," and I'm thinking, "I don't believe I said that."

Gary Simpson: Exactly.

George Mason: "When did you hear that? Was that in that sermon that I just preached over there because... Tell me more and what the spirit was saying." The real word was being heard, not exactly through the precise words we were using, right? So what's happening is there is a mystery of encounter that happens in this proclamation event where people and the people of ages past encoded in the scriptures and the living presence of Christ in the Spirit, in our Christian tradition and other traditions, other ways that all of this is an encounter.

Gary Simpson: Exactly. The best we can do, is create an opportunity as much as is in us for people to encounter this Spirit of God in that moment. It really is not at the end of the day... I mean, yes, you put some perspiration in, you organize your thoughts, you introduced them to some ideas, but ultimately people are not remembering the moves of your sermon as much as they are living into the movement of the Spirit.

George Mason: And this is what excites me still about doing ministry, is where else in our society can you go and hear someone for 20 odd minutes on a Sunday morning who is not trying to sell you something, who is not trying to enlist you into their political party, who is not trying to get your money from you, who is not trying... Now there are all institutional goals that sometimes we touch on in these things, but there is a sense in which when people come to church on Sunday, over and over again, you and I get to say, "We're going to do something for good and for good." This is free. Like the gift of God, this is free and here we are. It's costly, but it's free. Right?

Gary Simpson: Exactly, right.

George Mason: And what a privilege that it's just an authentic human moment with no strings attached.

Gary Simpson: And a moment to say something that some of those people who come to hear us may not have heard all week, that "You are of value."

George Mason: There you go.

Gary Simpson: Right? That, "You matter," right? "Who you are matters, what you do in the world matters," and "that God loves you unconditionally. Not based on any kind of prerequisite that you have to do or be before God."

George Mason: "We don't need your social security numbers."

Gary Simpson: No.

George Mason: "We don't need your address."

Gary Simpson: No.

George Mason: "We don't need your financial records."

Gary Simpson: "And if you're a felon, we're not going to...."

George Mason: You'll still get a vote.

Gary Simpson: Yes exactly.

George Mason: In our church, you still get a vote.

Gary Simpson: That's exactly right.

George Mason: Because you matter.

Gary Simpson: Because you matter.

George Mason: You matter to God. And you also have spiritual gifts to offer to the body regardless of who you are, and no matter what anybody out there says about you.

Gary Simpson: Right exactly.

George Mason: What a great gift.

Gary Simpson: And I think that is our work.

George Mason: All right, so let's come back and talk about our hope for the future of preachers in the church based on some work we do together that has been about training young ministers. So when we get back from the break, we'll talk about that.

Gary Simpson: I look forward.

George Mason: All right.

George Mason: Thank you for continuing to tune in to Good God. These conversations are part of a larger program that is called Faith Commons, the umbrella organization you might say of Good God. Good God is the first project of Faith Commons, which is a nonprofit organization that is intended to do public theology you might say. It's multi-faith, not just Christian. Jewish, Muslim other faiths, but all of them becoming involved in the question of how do we promote the common good together.

George Mason: There are so many areas of need and concern in our community and Faith Commons is trying to help bridge the gaps between religions and peoples in our community so that we can have a more just and peaceful society. Thanks for continuing to support us.

George Mason: We're back with Gary Simpson. Gary, we were talking about preaching and the pastoral life. And you and I have both been privileged to be part of a movement that has been going on for nearly two decades now in American churches. Not a lot of us, but a few of us have been experimenting with and pioneering this training of young pastors and ministers in our church beyond their seminary training, to help them actually find their way in the congregation.

George Mason: Because we all know that the sort of division of learning that happened with the academy and the church where we just ceded the training of ministers to classrooms, really didn't produce the kind of practitioners in the pulpit and in the congregations that we had hoped. So this is work we've been doing and we've both had the experience of dealing with many young ministers who've come through. And when they come to us and stay two years and then leave, we have this joy of being able to see how they have progressed and how they have found their voice. I like to talk about they've got more competence and they've got more confidence, right?

Gary Simpson: Yes, yeah. Just, this path just before coming here I was at the faculty retreat at Drew and they had invited some local pastors to come and talk with us. And two of those were women who were...They're now United Methodist pastors, but they're in New Jersey serving and they were with me. I was just so proud of who they're becoming, right? And could see from the start where we were and where they were now, I was just glad to be a part of that. Right? Because some people, George, they need to be able to see it and they need to be able to make some mistakes and they need to find their gifts. And of all the things I do in ministry, this is the one thing that has to me the most lasting input.

George Mason: That's right.

Gary Simpson: And that I am helping to create this ecology of people who embrace the identity of pastor, who want to be more than the preacher on Sunday morning or who wanted to be more than the professional person who shows up on the program. But people who really understand what it means to live the pastoral life. You feel like your children are going all over the place.

George Mason: Well, you really do, don't you? And the pride is just extraordinary. And of course when they go through struggles too, all through the years, then the pain of that is great. You feel like it's your own that you're reliving and you continue to stay up with them. When we think about this work though, let's talk about a thing or two that we're seeing. Is there a trend? Is there a way that these young pastors are different today from when we were coming up? What does that mean? What do we think is happening out there?

Gary Simpson: Yeah. I struggle with this a lot because I think something is missing and it's not a deficiency in this generation of pastors, but a failure by our generation of pastors. And that is this whole idea of mentoring and being mentored, of apprenticing as Dale Andrews would talk about it academically. It's just missing. I get a sense that sometimes the giftedness which is obvious is all people think they need. "If I'm just gifted, I should finish this work, get that degree and tomorrow I should be the pastor of the greatest church ever," right?

Gary Simpson: And some of the tears we have George, some of the struggles we talked about in the previous thing of coming into our own, I worry that there's not enough patience. Pastoring is a patient profession.

George Mason: Okay, this is so big. So almost every time I feel like I made a mistake in my early ministry, it was impatient. Almost every time a former resident who's a pastor gets into trouble, we talk about that they've gone too fast. Being patient to sense and know where a congregation is and to... I like to say I think pastors should always be one step ahead of a congregation, which means that we have to monitor our progress and our relationship to the congregation. We can't be back with them in the sense of... I mean this is what we were called to do, right? We're supposed to lead in a sense, but if you get two or three steps out ahead, you've cut yourself off from the people.

Gary Simpson: Yeah, I think that's right. So let's make a list. Patience.

George Mason: Patience is one.

Gary Simpson: The other is I think timing. And by this I don't mean patience meaning time. Timing means like the children of Issachar who understand the times and know what to do, sometimes what is a good idea today could be a terrible idea in the morning. And I think as God is always moving, what we have to pray about is timing so that we can move at the right time. Some of the ideas, and this might be another side of impatience, right? But, but some of the ideas are not quite ready.

Gary Simpson: I remember Dr. Taylor saying once and I'm going to quote him in next Sunday sermon, that there is no revolution without evolution. That there are some things that have to percolate up, some things that have to be set into motion before the revolution takes place. And I'm not sure that that appreciation for the evolution because people think, "Well, if it's going on in church now it's tradition and we have to throw it out," and...

George Mason: But I think this also relates to a shift that's happened. I think it's more true, maybe test me on this, tell me if I'm right about this. I don't know. You come from, in the African American preaching tradition, there is a rootedness in the more prophetic tradition of liberation of calling people to a transformation of society and challenging the powers to be, and those sorts of things. In our more traditional white church experience, many times the people in our pews were the people who were actually responsible, whether they knew it or not, from holding people back and were eager to keep the status quo and not have the preacher meddling in social justice matters and these sorts of things.

George Mason: So now what's been happening is we now have a younger generation that in our seminaries and schools and in our more progressive tradition, they're ready to take on the world. But everybody in their pews is not. So they've learned that you're supposed to preach prophetically about what's going on with the systems at work down at city hall or what's going on the school board and what's going on here... And everybody in the pews is not ready for that in the right way. So there's a kind of impatience about how to say what, when, right? Do you see any of that to be true in the black church tradition?

Gary Simpson: I'm always hesitant to speak for the whole black church tradition, but-

George Mason: Well, yeah. Right. Okay. And, and I'll not speak for the whole white church tradition either. Okay.

Gary Simpson: But I do think that... I'm now responding as a teacher in the seminary, I think that, I do think that getting back to what we were talking about earlier this morning, this kind of division of the pastor and prophetic identity. That one cannot, I think, address adequately those systemic evils without also showing the kind of personal graces for the people who are wounded and afflicted. So you have to do both. And sometimes I think that people... When I assigned social justice sermons in class, those are often the least successful sermons, partly due to the fact that people come in, they go to the library, they study the subject, and then they spit out everything they learned in the library. And they have no, for lack of better word, skin in the game.

Gary Simpson: So if you're going to preach about homelessness, don't just go read books about homelessness, spend some time with homeless people. If you got to talk about-

George Mason: Or maybe go into yourself and ask, "Have I had experiences of alienation in my life or abandonment or insecurity or some such thing."

Gary Simpson: Right. And to be honest, in seminary, it is not lost to us that there are people who if they were not in seminary and having their tuition paid, they would have both housing and food insecurity.

George Mason: Yes, they would. Isn't that true?

Gary Simpson: Yeah.

George Mason: S0-

Gary Simpson: So that's a whole other way of...

George Mason: Yeah.

Gary Simpson: Yeah.

George Mason: Well, so I think that the link between the pastoral and the prophetic that you were talking about this morning is where the success comes, right? Or the failure. So people either know that we are with them and for them, and that this gospel has to do with our life together and their daily experience, and not just what happens in the corridors of power out there. But when children don't have anything to eat at school or are not in an air-conditioned classroom, those children are our children too, right? So there's an extension from our own experience that we want to make a link with, with people.

Gary Simpson: Yeah. David Buttrick said that we all know Jesus saves, but if we only preach about the salvation that Jesus gives, and we don't talk about the systems that keep people from experiencing salvation, then we're only preaching half a Jesus, you know?

George Mason: Right. Half a Jesus preaching.

Gary Simpson: Half of Jesus preaching. Jay-Z says the same thing by the way, about young black children in the inner city. If we only talk about the behaviors that we say we don't like, that they exhibit, and not talk about the systems that had those behaviors happening, we're only telling half the story.

George Mason: Well, and it's a little bit different even in more affluent areas. Years ago we were getting ready to call a minister to adults in our church and he was coming from a seminary where a professor at his school knew of our church and our neighborhood and community and all of that. And he was counseling this young man before coming, and he looked at him and he said, "Does anyone in North Dallas want to be saved?" Now this is a churched culture. This is a very, Bible belt area, but what he was saying is, "Saved from what? The privileges that we enjoy?" part of what Jesus saves us from are all these false gods that they keep us from experiencing the true good news and the life that really is life. And that's part of our job too.

Gary Simpson: Right. And of course we're not only saved from, we're also saved to.

George Mason: To.

Gary Simpson: Right?

George Mason: That's right.

Gary Simpson: And some people are saved to, find a way of reunderstanding the concept of stewardship or of service in the community or saved to reorient from, "Life is what I get to life is what I give." And that goes beyond all socioeconomic barriers and neighborhoods.

George Mason: It really does. Well, part of the joy of our friendship is that we have found that talking about our differences in our churches, our neighborhoods, our culture and all of that is interesting, but it's not ultimately defining. What it is, we have found our oneness in the Spirit of God in our common call and our personal friendship. And Gary, thank you for walking the road with me and being my friend and brother, minister.

Gary Simpson: I'm so glad to be there, George and great to spend some time with you.

George Mason: Good God. Here we are.

Gary Simpson: Good God. Bless you.

George Mason: All right, thank you. Bless you.

Jim White: Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White. Social media coordination by Cameron Vickrey. Good God, conversations with George Mason is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good. All material copyright 2020 by Faith Commons.