Preaching for the Senses
Some people see what you mean; others need to hear or feel it.
Cinda Gorman
April 1, 1990
The preacher was rhapsodizing over the grandeur of creation. Like many trained communicators, he employed illustrations to give his abstract ideas concrete form in the minds of the listeners.
He spoke in sets of three and began by drawing a mental picture of his first visit to the Grand Canyon. My mind began to roll a movie of our family vacation there two summers before. Indeed, it is a wonder of creation.
Then he reminded us of an airplane trip in which he was treated to the beauty of a sunset above the clouds, and I chased that sunset with him from east to west.
By then, I knew we were about to see another visual picture, and I checked out of his sermon. My thoughts turned to those in the congregation who find it difficult to draw mental pictures. What were they hearing? Were they experiencing the grandeur of creation, or had they begun to think about the Super Bowl game to be played that afternoon?
All Kinds of Learners
The very term illustration is a testament to the homiletical admonition to draw vivid word pictures that bring the audience into the story and give tangible features to abstract ideas. But recent research in psychology and education points out that not everybody carries a movie camera around in his or her head. Some people remember things best by replaying a mental tape recorder. And a third group gets in touch with its world by, yes, touch, taste, and smell-through bodily sensations and movement. In short, we preach to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic souls.
I was first introduced to this idea, called "neurolinguistic programming" (NLP), in a D.Min. class at Fuller Seminary. The professor explained the various ways people learn, and each of us tried to figure out which learning channel was predominant for ...
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