While sermons continue to be written...

I figured I'd wax on a little about a topic raised elsewhere, regarding whether we should rethink sermons in church, and wondering if sermons are perhaps overrated as a part of church life.

I actually agree with the idea that sermons might be getting past their use-by date, and I give sermons all the time. This topic has actually vexed me for a few years now.

Let's start with a little history. The idea of having a person stand up and give a talk to a large group of people in order to persuade them of something (let's say bigger than a family) goes back a long way. I won't pretend to know how long it goes back. I can take you back to Ancient Greece, where the sophists and other classical rhetorists set up schools to teach people how to do this (Paul talks of such people in 2 Cor 11:5-6). Being able to stand up and say something persuasive was not just a method of gaining political power (like Pericles giving a funeral oratory), or sway the masses to come to your point of view (Acts 17:22-31, Paul does it himself) - it was actually something that could earn you a living in and of itself (so the great Demosthenes himself started out).

(Of course, we could go even further back, and look at what is possibly the first great speechs of the Old Testament - given by Moses in the Pentateuch. But I think our modern day sermon styles are far more built on the Greek style that was the way it was done under Rome in Jesus' time, than it was on truly ancient speech-giving such as at the time of Moses.)

Next, it is perhaps worth saying a thing or two about the purpose of sermons in churches, that their effectiveness can be all the more accurately measured. To talk about preaching as a subset of teaching is perhaps correct, and I've heard that said a lot, although I think it may confuse the matter (much like saying philosophy is a subset of thinking makes it sound like your internal monologue about what you will have for breakfast is somehow a higher class of thought to which metaphysics might aspire). Better to say that they overlap in places. In my opinion, teaching is the passing on of information; preaching is the act of attempting to persuade your audience to respond to and/or act on your message. (The good old Macquarie Dictionary separates the two in a somewhat similar fashion - "preach: to advocate or inculcate (religious or moral truth, right conduct, etc.) in speech or writing" "teach: to impart knowledge or skill; give instruction".)

So, to simply talk about preaching in terms of how people learn is, I think, to miss a bit of what preaching is about. Preaching and teaching are not the same thing, in my opinion. I can go back and flick through all my education books from my teaching degree, and I can throw up a half dozen models which attempt to outline how people learn (my favourite was Multiple Intelligences which was invented by a guy called Howard Gardner, where he says that everyone learns through at least seven different methods: Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Visual-Spatial, Body-Kinesthetic, Musical-Rhythmic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal) but the learning is only part of the object of preaching.

In fact, in a perfect world, you would only need to teach people incidentals pieces of information that were relevant facts allowing them to make informed decisions on the topic about which you are trying to persuade them. But since sermons have been given more and more the job of teaching people what the Bible says, there comes less and less time for them to do the job of convincing and eliciting.

Interestingly, this is a topic that pretty much does not arise in teaching at all (or wasn't really touched on in my degree). You look at how to get the information from your brain (or, more popularly in modern teaching, a textbook, the teacher being a mildy-trained daycare supervisor who may or may not actually know anything about what they are teaching beyond what is in the textbooks, which themselves are dubious) into the brains of others. You don't look at how to actually persuade them that this knowledge is worth acting on, or that it should be responded to a certain way. (Actually, that isn't entirely true. You could make an argument that by only teaching one method, or one set of facts, or one opinion, that you are causing persuasion by controlling access to information. I actually think you'll find the teaching curriculum very much has this in mind, too. One might call this less 'persuasion' and more 'force'.)

No doubt more than one person has written stuff about the topic of how to get people to do things, though. But I find it scary to think I completed a whole teaching degree, and this was not even touched on beyond perhaps looking at Pavlovian conditioning. I have always said that education is not a solution to the world's ills. While it is a popular idea that if you just teach people enough information, they will make the right decision, this not only flies in the face of historical fact, it also is theologically bankrupt.

Unfortunately, this rather disturbing epiphany regarding my dearth of knowledge around the factors of persuasion threatens to derail my whole train of thought. So what I have to do, I think, in order to continue, is to look briefly at what I think the factors involved in persuasion are (which is, unfortunately, going to be informed by my own feelings, thoughts, and anecdotal evidence - perhaps far from perfect, although one might call this the very basis of philosophical thought - but it will at least allow forward momentum) so that I can further analyse this remarkable concept that the role of a sermon is to persuade.

So far as I can see, a person's decision-making is shaped by a million different things, many of them probably unique to that individual. But the question is, can I think of some sort of symmetry into which I can break up these things? My first instinct (reinforced by a little afterthought) is to think of levels (perhaps the wrong word... but just assume I'm not creating a hierarchy for the moment) of acceptance of truth, or at least reasonableness. But let's take a step or two back from that. First principles first.

To enable persuasion, you need, first, consciousness. This, I think, helps to separate persuasion from what might bluntly be called force, but perhaps more correctly needs to be called response to stimuli. While it is true that a caterpillar walking along a wall can be made to walk in a different direction by placing a flaming match near it, that doesn't really count as persuasion. I think that might be simply called response to stimuli. It's not so much the fact that you are threatening the beast with pain or death - one can imagine a martyr-to-be being persuaded by someone that it is not worth throwing away their life for the sake of their beliefs - it is more that the beast doesn't decide whether or not it will throw itself into the flames. It just avoids the pain as a matter of course. A true decision is being made by the would-be martyr, even though there is an attempt to coerce a decision by force. So in terms of this idea, "consciousness" refers to the ability to make decisions abstractly, rather than simply having them determined by outside phenomena. So a consciousness can be persuaded. Can it be forced? I might leave that for now. What is consciousness made up of? I'm hoping we'll get a better picture of that as we go.

What else do we need for persuasion? Probably another consciousness, to do the persuading. But not necessarily. Although I think you do need at least your own consciousness. Although we might say, "The facts persuaded me," I think that's a trick of the language. What might be more correct is to say, "I persuaded myself by acceptance of the facts." When alone, and considering whether or not to jump off a cliff to its bottom, it is not the cliff, nor the height, nor the perceived spectre of possible injury, or a fear of heights, that persuades you - it is your own consciousness appealing, in whatever way, to itself, using these as tools in its arsenal to bring about a decision.

It looks like we also need a decision to make. There can't really be persuading without a decision to persuade on. Now, that decision might be as simple as an either/or "take the left door or the right door". Or it might be as complex as, "Accept this as true," or "Conduct yourself in this way."

So, with the structures required for persuasion to take place sorted out, perhaps now we can look at levels of acceptance of truth, or reasonableness. But those two terms themselves cause us a little bit of problem. For starters, they can make it seem like all decisions are based on truth or reason. Anyone who has met another human being knows this is not the case. Perhaps we should repackage this idea as levels of acceptance of persuasion. I think it's good to look at this from the perspective of the persuadee - after all, the job of persuasion is to elicit a response from the persuadee, and so surely the persuader has to work within the bounds set by the persuadee's levels of acceptance of persuasion - persuadabilities, we'll call them.

What makes up a person's persuadabilities? I think logical reasoning certainly makes up part of it. It's hard to persuade someone to believe or do something illogical. Not impossible, though, especially when the illogic is complex or deeply buried. Of course, it is also possible for people to make decisions to believe, accept or do things that are illogical - proving not only that logical thought is not the only, or even primary, tool in human decision-making. So for example, logic might tell us "A and B" implies A. Attempting to persuade someone that the statment "A and B" does not actually imply, or even require, A, is a hard ask. Having said that, I'm sure you can think of a time when someone you know has acted on or accepted such a premise - I think of a quote from Futurama where That Guy says, "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business," hence proving that corporate business is fundamentally illogical. The existence of logical fallacies goes a long way to prove that illogic can be persuasive.

Something's reasonableness is probably a little more difficult to define, but let's go with reason as the process of thought which goes into seeing if something is probable to a point of acceptance. The word "thought" there is to separate it from what comes after - so we are sticking to thought processes here. Still, a lot of stuff feeds into reason. Perhaps we could call reason "the process of interpreting facts, or assumptions pretending to be facts". Reasoned belief is what you use when you sit on a chair, assuming it will hold your weight. There is a probability that it won't - either that it was built badly, is old and frail, or has been sabotaged to fail. Unless you live a life wholly more exciting than mine, though, those probabilities are probably fairly small, and so you sit without first testing every chair you meet. This measurement of probabilities happens in an instant, but takes into account historical experience, anecdotal evidence, all sorts of knowledges, beliefs and assumptions.

Our senses also inform a part of our decision-making. Whereas using reason alone one might read a statement such as "the object is made of metal" and come to the conclusion on the balance of probabilities that the object is solid (to be rather shocked when they find the object is made of mercury at room temperature, which is a liquid), information about an object's physical characteristics discovered by physical senses may assist in determining more facts. I want to separate our senses from our thought life, though. While senses are probably primarily an information gathering tool, we no doubt use them in the way we make decisions. I suppose one could make the argument that the senses give us information, and then we think about it, process it, and decide using thought. Could be true. But I think there is more to it. Think about when you eat something that contains a food you don't like - I don't like coffee at all. Someone puts chocolate brownies in front of me and I go, "Ooooh, brownies!" but I take one bite and I find that they used a teaspoon of coffee in their recipe, and I decide not to eat any more. That decision is not so much based on the information that I don't like coffee (I eat things made with olive oil, and I don't like olives). It is based pretty much straight on sensory perception (tastes bad, not eating this). That I am willing to try eating a Calypo every few years, despite knowing full well I don't like them, is proof that I can be persuaded to ignore my senses (and my reason).

So now we come to things that are probably even harder to quantify. Think of emotions, cultural conditioning, and natural stasis. These all play a part in decision-making. If something makes you feel good (not just in a sensory way, but emotionally) you may well go along with it - donating to charity, perhaps. Cultural conditioning may simply be peer pressure on a grander scale, but I would say that there is an element of decison-making that is wrapped up in the identity of the maker as part of a culture. The actions permissible under the effects of intoxication are a fascinating example, in their difference between various alcohol-consuming cultures, and their acceptance of, for example, anti-social behaviour. Natural stasis could possibly just be called laziness, but it's a huge hurdle in matters of persuasion. Whether linked to a desire for idleness, a preference for the familiar, or a belief in conservatism, the fact is that it is difficult for people to make change, as a rule. Tell someone that if they invest their savings in your firm instead of the firm they are currently invested in, and they will make exactly the same amount of money, and they won't change. You need to offer something more to overcome their inertia.

Some thoughts about persuasion, as opposed to coercion. I would seek to define persuasion as "the act of attempting to achieve a decision being made by someone through affecting their persuadabilities." Coercion, on the other hand, would be "the act of limiting the persuadabilities of someone in order to achieve their making a certain decision." The first thing to be acknowledged here is that it is pretty much impossible to force someone to make a decision. Hold a gun to someone's head and say "Eat this cake or I will shoot you," does not rob them of their ability to make the decision between the two options - it merely attempts to limit their options by making one of their persuadabilities very loud.

Coercion, however, is not always evil - building a wall in front of a cliff might limit people's choices about how they interact with the cliff, but it also stops them from falling or jumping to their deaths. By that same token, persuasion is not always good. Giving someone false information, or tricking their senses, is not attempting to limit their persuadabilities, but is still wrong - convincing someone with a logical fallacy could fit into this category.

It's interesting that, looking at persuasion in this way, rather than preaching being a subset of teaching, teaching actually becomes a subset of preaching - informing people of data so that they might later make a decision based on that data. After all, that is the end, isn't it? We don't teach people things merely so they know them, do we? We hope that by their knowing them they will be persuaded to do something - be a good citizen, recycle, kill the enemy, whatever. It is by not teaching them, or only telling them a little bit of information, or one side of an argument, that we may well be coercing them.

Anyway, that little thought game has helped me understand my own thoughts on persuasion a fair bit. Back to preaching in churches. If the purpose of preaching is to persuade people, then obviously sermonising is not the only method of doing so.

It's worth considering how disruptive it would be to the church model to displace sermons. For all its faults, it is probably efficiency that keeps it in its place. The "preacher speaks, audience listens" model works at every size, from tiny church to massive convention. While there are other forms that allow delivery of persuasion and information, that might even work better on a per individual basis, they tend to lose efficiency when multiplied up - either they just don't work with large groups, or the amount of work in including more people becomes exponentially large.

Another point, that I think we don't make enough of historically, is that listening to preachers was as massively popular form of entertainment. People could make a living just going from place to place giving speeches (and yes, I know this still happens, but not so much for entertainment any more). That's sort of fallen from favour these days. People would rather watch TV (and not just watch people give speeches on TV either).

I have often wondered what church would be like if, as the centrepiece of our services, we were offering up something that people actually found entertaining, that also offered the delivering of persuasive and informative messages. What methods of communication are open to us that would be entertaining as well as informative and persuasive? Question and answer times is perhaps a starting point. Discussion groups are obviously one model that flows from that, where conversation facilitators have the role of leading conversation to certain conclusions that people should consider in their own lives. I guess you could go on mass outings, and actually take people by the hand and get them to do what it is you are wanting them to do, so they get a feel for it.

To include teaching, persuasion and entertainment, I actually like the idea of using roleplaying games. Yeah, they're not for everyone, but then, that's why we have a bazillion denominations - for differences in practice as much as dogma. Some people find roleplaying fun, and it is very difficult not to learn things from roleplaying (in the same way it's difficult not to learn things from living). It provides a safe sort of practice area for exploring different aspects of ideas, concepts, and even actions. And, it can be a great generator of further discussion on issues which you seek to persuade on, because it helps to make them more directly and immediately relevant.

Obviously it's a bias that I have, due to it being an activity I enjoy. But it seems to fit the bill a little more easily than sport, or watching TV. And even if it only inspired a church to be built up from nerds, that would still be awesome.