“The Role
of Preaching in the Revitalization of a Congregation”
Rev. J.
Ronald Knott
GIVEN AT LOUISVILLE PRESBYTERIAN SEMINARY
NATIONAL FESTIVAL
OF YOUNG PREACHERS
Louisville,
Kentucky
October
31, 2015
Before I get into my topic,
I would like to say that I have always had a passion for preaching. That might sound
like an oxymoron coming from the mouth of a 72 year old Catholic priest
who has been preaching for 47 years (46 years for Catholic churches and 1
year as a campground minister for the United Church of Christ) and is very
aware of the stereotype that Catholics do not value preaching. It might
shock you to know that I have about 90% of all the homilies I have given over
the last 45 years in hard copy and computer files. Several hundred of them are
on tape.
My passion goes back to a
funeral for a distant relative at the Stephensport Baptist
Church, Stephensport, Kentucky, when I was seven years old. In
those days, Catholics were taught that if you had to attend a
Protestant service like a funeral or wedding, you were not to participate. At
seven years old, I remember sitting there listening to the excited and
dynamic preacher and lively gospel music saying to myself, “I know I am not
supposed to like this, but I do!” I remember it clearly.
In Catholic seminaries, like
Saint Meinrad Seminary, of the 1960s, we were not allowed to preach
until we were ordained deacons during our very last year. I, however, wanted to
learn how to preach. During the summer of 1968, one year before I was ordained
a deacon and two years before I was ordained a priest, I signed up to be a
campground minister in a United Church of Christ program called “A Christian
Ministry in the National Parks” for seminary students from various Protestant
seminaries. I was the very first Catholic to sign up for that program.
I was trained at St. Richard Episcopal Church in Chicago and was assigned
to Crater Lake National Park. I was the preacher and I was assisted by a
Disciples of Christ female seminarian who served as a music minister and an
Episcopal seminarian who served as an education minister. I preached twice a
weekend all that summer at generic Protestant services in the campgrounds of
that beautiful national park. I also served as a night desk clerk at the
lodge, a fill-in bartender and the MC at the Miss Crater Lake beauty pageant.
My passion for preaching
intensified after my ordination to priesthood. Immediately after
ordination, I was sent to live alone in “Bible Belt” of southern Kentucky in an
area where I was the first resident Catholic priest ever – in the history of
the world! I was ask to pastor two very small churches with less than 12
members together. When I entered a local independent Baptist Church to attend
my first ministerial association at the invitation of the local Southern
Baptist minister, I was asked to leave. It seemed that every minister in the
county was preaching on the radio. At the invitation of the local radio
station, I had my own radio ministry on Sunday morning, but I was eventually
thrown off the air while I was away for vacation after pressure from some of
the local ministers.
When I was ordained a priest
in 1970, I assumed that I would follow the typical track at that time. I would
serve in a large urban or suburban parish as an associate pastor for a couple
of turns and then become a pastor of a small parish or two before working my
way up to a large parish. When I was chosen to be sent to the “Bible Belt” of
southern Kentucky to be part of a Catholic evangelization push, I was shocked
and totally unprepared for what I was being asked to do. My first job was to
raise the funds for my own salary. Money for continuing education was not yet
part of any ministry package at that time. Without funds, I was driven once
again in my life to use my imagination.
At the suggestion of the
Presbyterian pastor, in the next town, I signed up with him, a Disciples of
Christ minister and an Episcopal priest to study for a Doctor of Ministry
degree offered by McCormick Seminary in Chicago in “Parish Revitalization.” I
thought it would be the closest thing I could find to teach me a few things I
needed to know, especially about evangelization. Without funds, I was given a
full scholarship by McCormick on two grounds: poverty income and minority
religion! By the way, I was the only one to graduate and my thesis was “How One
Roman Catholic Church Dealt Assertively With Its Environments: Inside
Weakness and Outside Hostility.” Not only did my own members not know much
about their own faith, the local community was filled with anti-Catholic
stereotypes and prejudices. It was in that program that I discovered my
mantra on “parish revitalization,” whether it be in the Bible Belt of southern
Kentucky, the Catholic ghetto of central Kentucky or the urban core of downtown
Louisville – if you want to revitalize a congregation, spend your time on
preaching, your money on music and then they will ask for education.
After ten years in the
Bible Belt of southern Kentucky, I was sent to the so-called Catholic
Holy Land of central Kentucky. To my surprise, I found myself focusing again on
preaching in an effort to evangelize the life-long Catholics of a 200 year old
rural parish in need of revitalization. To my surprise, what had worked in the
Bible Belt, worked in that traditional Catholic
ghetto.
While a focus on preaching
played the most significant role in the growth and revitalization of my first
two small parishes, it wasn’t till I became pastor of our center-city Cathedral
in downtown Louisville that I became totally convinced of the role of preaching
in the revitalization of a congregation.
Once a dynamic parish,
especially around 1890-1910, it began to decline seriously in the 1950s and by
the time I arrived there in 1983, it had dwindled down to about 110 persons,
mostly retired older women living in two local senior living facilities near the
cathedral. They was a smattering of visitors from the local hotels on
occasion.
Having heard of my “parish
revitalization” degree from McCormick Seminary, the Archbishop of Louisville
gave me a very simple job description – “Do something with it!” I was warned by
the former pastor “not to get my hopes up” “because there aren’t any Catholics
living downtown anymore.”
My first day on the job, I
took a lawn chair and went across the street to a small park and just sat there
looking at it, looking at what was around it and what was down the street from
it. Gradually, it occurred to me that I had about three choices, as far as
growth: conversions to Catholicism, attract Catholics from other parishes and
go after “non-practicing” Catholics that came downtown to work in the high
rises around the Cathedral. I was aware that the second largest
denomination in the US were “non-practicing Catholics.” In
a few years, we earned the nickname “The Island of Misfit Toys.”
In a few months, I had
developed my three-pronged plan for revitalization: spend time on preaching,
spend money on music and show obvious hospitality. Without spending a penny on
advertising, I simply focused on preaching and asked my associate pastor to
do the same. Word got out and they began to come. I borrowed $70,000
to start a music program. That budget grew quickly to $100,000. I
stood at the doors of the Church with the associate pastor for each of our four
weekend services – rain or shine. They continued to come. Every month we grew,
simple because of our reputation for preaching first, and then for our music
and hospitality. In the 14 years, I was there, we grew to 2100 members, with
the average age being 25-35, then 35-45, then 65-75. Again, I remind you
that we did not advertise. Word of mouth was our best friend. Among those
who were “non-practicing,” we attracted a significant number of divorced and
remarried Catholics, as well as Gay and Lesbian Catholics. The
“unconditional love of God” from the parables became the central focus of
our preaching, something these people needed to hear, but did not really know
about. Our budget grew from $90,000 a year to $900,000 a year without one
single money talk! We gave away 25% of that $900,000 to local,
national and international charities.
Besides our outreach to
“fallen away Catholics,” as a Cathedral we had the responsibility of reaching
out to the community around us. This mission was eventually taken up by a new
5013C, an interfaith organization, called the Cathedral Heritage
Foundation (now the Center for Interfaith Relations), with its own
interfaith board. We basically made a pact with the interfaith community that
said, “If you help us fix this place up, we will all use it!” It is now used
for opening and closing services of religious conventions coming
to downtown Louisville, community ecumenical celebration and
services in good times and bad and a place of prayer during the day. This
foundation established an annual Festival of Faiths which is still celebrated
by a week of events celebrating the role of religion in the community. This
5013C raised over $22,000,000 to restore the buildings and has an annual
fundraiser to support the work of the Center for Interfaith
Relations. The Cathedral houses a kitchen and dining room for the homeless
in its basement, staffed and funded by the community at large, a ministry that
has been going on since the `1840s. The foundation also built a
prayer park in an adjacent lot which it purchased. This park contains many
religious quotes from the world’s religions, as well as a large fountain,
tables, benches and relaxing trees and plants.
In the last several years,
including most of my year and half retirement from being director of continuing
education at St. Meinrad Seminary, I have been leading priest
retreats. In fact, I have done over 100 week-long retreats in seven countries,
with about ten more on the calendar. I spend a lot of time in those retreats
challenging priests of all ages to take preaching more seriously – for the good
of the people they serve, as well as for their own good.
As a former pastor who
stills believe seriously in the power of preaching to revitalization of a
congregation, there are a few things worth pointing out that have worked to
help this happen.
1. Good preaching takes
time. Priests normally get one day a week off. As pastor, my
associates and I took two days off – one for rest and one to produce a
printable script for distribution.
2. If printed copies of
homilies are used in the pulpit, I suggest highly that the preacher learn to
write in what is called an “oral writing style.” When people
object that it sounds like he/she is reading it, that has more to do
with the style of writing than the practicality of the technique. Most of us
write homilies like we wrote term papers. No wonder they sound read! There is
another style of writing that finds the precise word, the right turn of phrase
and the cadence for the spoken word that most people cannot do “on
their feet and out of thin air.”
3. Saving used homilies can be
a gold mind of ideas for prayer days, days of recollection,
retreats, books for spiritual reading and extended preaching
occasions like revivals and parish missions.
4. Those who show up for Sunday
worship are probably less than 50% of those we are called to preach to, so
access to a printed copy of the weekend homily is one way to bridge that
gap. Besides “the faithful” we are called to find opportunities to
preach to the mad, the sad, the ignored, the bored, other believers and the
unchurched.
5. Not everyone can hear and
not everyone can understand the language used by the preacher, so printed
copies, recordings and even translations helps reach more people.
6. As pastor, I assumed
responsibility to plan the preaching ministry of the parish, especially
seasonally. This gave us an opportunity to do homily series during Lent, Advent
and other liturgical seasons.
7. Money given for printed and
recorded homilies was put into a preaching endowment. From this endowment,
guest preachers were invited on special occasions.
8. This is a strictly personal
point of view. I believe in preaching from the pulpit, rather than walking
around the sanctuary or up and down the aisles. In a Catholic church,
the pulpit, the altar and the chair from which the priest presides are
considered sacred objects. When I preach from the pulpit, my own personality is
downplayed in favor of my official role as preacher in the assembly. Visually,
it becomes less of my own word and more the Word of God that is being announced.
It reminds me that I am preaching God’s Word and not my own. But, as I say,
this is a personal point of view.
9. As a pastor, I considered
Sunday preaching as a form of “group spiritual direction.” Spiritual leadership
is about the ability to influence people to move from where they are to where
God wants them to be through invitation, persuasion, personal example and the
skillful use of language from the pulpit. Influencing people, not only
individually but as one body, to move deeper and deeper into discipleship is
the goal of Sunday preaching by a pastor.
10.
Here are a few thoughts from Pope Francis that I
have intuitively used in my preaching ministry, long before he said
them. “The preacher has the wonderful but difficult task of joining loving
hearts, the heart of the Lord and his people.” “To speak from the heart means
that our hearts must not just be on fire, be we must also truly understand the
biblical text.” “After calling upon the Holy Spirit in prayer, we need to give
our entire attention to the biblical text, which needs to be the basis of our
preaching. Whenever we stop and attempt to understand the message of a
particular text, we are practicing “reverence for the truth.” This is the
humility of heart which recognizes that the word is always beyond us, that “we
are neither its masters or owners, but its guardians, heralds and servants.
This attitude of humble and awe-filled veneration of the word is expressed by
taking the time to study it with the greatest care and a holy fear lest we
distort it.” “Preparation for preaching is so important a task that
a prolonged time of study, prayer, reflection and pastoral creativity should be
devoted to it. A preacher who does not prepare is dishonest and irresponsible
with the gifts he has received.” “The preacher needs to keep his ear
to the people and to discover what it is that the faithful need. A
preacher has to contemplate the word, but he also has to contemplate his
people.” “Let us also keep in mind that we should never respond to
questions that nobody asks.” “Another feature of a good homily is that it is
positive. It is not so much concerned with pointing out what shouldn’t be done,
but with suggesting what can be done better. In any case, if it does draw
attention to something negative, it will also attempt to point to a positive
and attractive value, lest it remain mired un complaints, laments,
criticisms and reproaches. Positive preaching offers hope, points to the
future, does not leave us trapped in negativity.”
11.
“Nemo dat, quod non habet.” Before we can be
a Samuel, about whom it was said, that “not of a word of his was permitted to
go without effect,” we have to be a Jeremiah about whose preaching was said,
“it was like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grew weary
holding it in.”
12.
Here are a couple of my favorite quotes about preaching.
St. Gregory the Great said this, “The preacher must dip his pen into the blood
of his own heart then he can also reach the ear of his
neighbors.” When using personal examples, we must also remember the
wisdom of Johnny Sain: “People don’t want to hear about the labor pains,
they just want to see the baby.” Nobody wants to hear how bad you had it,
they want to know how you overcame it. About “contemplating, not just the word
itself, but the people who will hear it,” St. Gregory Nazianzus said this, “One
and the same exhortation does not fit all. According to the quality of the
hearer ought the discourse of teachers to be fashioned.” A sermon tailored to
faithful members will not necessarily speak to those alienated or on the
margins of the Church and vice versa.
13.
In short, the famous Dwight Moody, the other
Dwight Moody, said it best, “The best way to revive a church is to build a
fire in the pulpit.”
So far, I have talked about
the role of preaching in the revitalization of a congregation. Serious
preaching can do that! But what I would like to end with is a little something
about the affect serious focused preaching has on the one who preaches.
Preaching well not only leads others to sanctification, but also to personal
sanctification. Serious preaching revitalizes the preacher as well as
the parish. A preacher cannot handle that much Scripture in a serious and
care-filled way, letting it penetrate one’s being, without it having on effect
on the one who handles the Word and the one who hears it preached.
Preaching has been such a
part of my own spirituality that I want to be buried clutching a
Lectionary. The Archbishop of Winnipeg heard me say that and
actually presented me with a copy of the Canadian Lectionary for my
casket at the end of the retreat I led for him and his priests.
Saint Meinrad Archabbey has a casket business and one of the
perks from working there is a free casket. I am now fully ready to go!
Let me end with these two
challenges! If you want to revitalize about any congregation, and your own
faith in the process, claim your pulpit for spiritual leadership
and claim your pulpit for personal sanctification! Truly, it is in
giving that we receive!
FOR HOMILY COLLECTIONS
ronknottbooks.com
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