Dr. Hannan challenges the traditional model of preaching as a solo endeavor and instead invites pastors to develop preaching collaborations—empowering lay leaders to find their voices and engage Scripture in new ways. She shares practical ways to start small, build confidence, and create a culture where multiple voices contribute to the life of the church.
What happens when pastors shift from simply delivering sermons to facilitating conversations around Scripture? What if instead of “feedback” after a sermon, we engage in “feed forward” before the sermon even begins? Dr. Hannan offers fresh insights on how inviting laypeople into the preaching process not only strengthens their confidence but also deepens relationships within the church community.
Whether you’re a seasoned preacher or someone exploring how to step into a preaching role, this episode is full of wisdom on how to make preaching more collaborative, inclusive, and transformative. Join us as we reimagine what it means to share the gospel together!
About This Season, “Reimagining Preaching”:
This season, we’re exploring how the church can proclaim the good news in our time by reimagining preaching. Host Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas is joined by experts in the preaching craft—leaders who think deeply and dream boldly about how we can bring a liberated witness to the pulpit and the world. As you listen to this season, please let us know what you think. We value your feedback and questions!
About our guest:
The Rev. Dr. Shauna Hannan (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is Professor of Homiletics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Core Doctoral Faculty for the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. She is co-author (with filmmaker, Gael Chandler) of Scripting a Sermon: Using the Wisdom of Filmmaking for Impactful Preaching (WJKP, 2024), author of The Peoples’ Sermon: Preaching as a Ministry of the Whole Congregation (Fortress, 2021) and co-editor of Eco-Lutheranism: Lutheran Perspectives on Ecology. Her other published work can be found in theological journals such as Word & World, Dialog, Journal of Lutheran Ethics and The Christian Century. Dr. Hannan has been an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) since 1998. Currently, she serves on the candidacy committee for Pacifica and Southwest CA Synods and is rostered in Rocky Mountain Synod of the ELCA. Hannan, a well-regarded presenter, workshop leader and preacher, is especially interested in equipping the next generation of lay preachers. Find out more about working with Dr. Hannan’s cohort program here.
Related Resources:
- In each episode this season, we’ve asked our guest to highlight an organization doing good work in the community. Shauna mentions Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service), a nonprofit organization that supports and empowers immigrants and refugees who are rebuilding their lives in the United States.
- Be sure to check out Rev. Dr. Shauna Hannan’s books, The Peoples’ Sermon: Preaching as a Ministry of the Whole Congregation and Scripting a Sermon: Using the Wisdom of Filmmaking for Impactful Preaching
Continue the Conversation at the Reimagining Preaching Conference: May 3, 2025
Join the Center for Transforming Engagement in Shoreline, Washington, for this skills-based conference equipping clergy, church staff, and lay preachers to bring the Word to life in Cascadia. Learn more and register at: https://transformingengagement.org/preaching-conference/.
Episode Transcript
Seth: Welcome to Transforming Engagement, the podcast where we hold conversations about changes that serve the common good and the higher good. Hi, I am the Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas, and I’m excited to host this season of the Center for Transforming Engagement Podcast. This season, we’re hosting conversations about how the church can proclaim good news in our time as we explore re-imagining preaching. I’m joined by experts in the preaching craft, folks who think deeply and dream boldly about how we can bring a liberated witness to the pulpit and the world.
Today I’m joined by the Rev. Dr. Shauna Hannan, who is professor of Homiletics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and core doctoral faculty for the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She is co-author with filmmaker Gail Chandler of Scripting a Sermon: Using the wisdom of filmmaking for impactful preaching, which is out in 2024, and also author of the People’s Sermon: Preaching as a ministry of the Whole Congregation, which was released in 2021. Shauna Shauna’s, a well-regarded presenter, workshop leader and preacher, and is especially interested in equipping the next generation of lay preachers. Shauna, welcome to the podcast. It’s so good to have you here and I’m excited to chat.
Shauna: Thank you for the invitation, Seth. I’m excited as well. Thank you.
Seth: Oh, yes. I mean, I want to dive in first and just talk about The People’s Sermon. That’s a provocative great title and what I think it opens up this beautiful conversation about how we bring our entire congregations and communities, voices into the preaching conversation. Tell us about that.
Shauna: Absolutely. Thanks for the invitation to talk specifically about that book published just four years ago or something like that, and probably could have published it 10, 15 years earlier, but didn’t get around to it because I was busy teaching the contents of the book and presenting to various organizations, groups of people, communities saying, what do you think about this? The time is coming when we might see, again, lower numbers of people enrolling in seminaries. Not that people aren’t called to proclaim the gospel, but just life is busy and people are finding other things to do. And so I was kind of saying to people, I think this is going to happen again. There’s this ebb and flow. And are we ready for it? And not only are we ready for it logistically, but even theologically, how do we understand what the role of preaching is? And I noticed that I was already starting to make changes in the way I teach preaching and very much saying to students that even as you are being equipped to be faithful preachers, at the same time, you’re being equipped to equip others, to proclaim, to fulfill their baptismal call, to proclaim the gospel. And if you don’t do that, there’s going to be a gap. And it’s going to be, I think a missed opportunity to broaden the conversation, to invite many other voices around scripture to hear, what are you thinking? What engages you? What entices you? To tell you the truth, Seth, this is not new. I’m not creating something that’s new here. And so in a way I’m thinking it’s not that big of a deal, but it is coming across as kind of a big deal for people because it’s a new way. Well, it’s an old new way of doing it, and I am hopefully people will pay careful attention to the people in the book that I’ve thanked for the work that they did before I came along, in trying to push us to consider preaching as a practice of the church that not just one person gets in a community.
Seth: Wonderful. I’m wondering as we start to talk about this, how are people responding to what you just described as the ebb and the flow in the sense of what helps them root that? I wonder, do you go back to the apostles and the early church? Do you talk about particular times in our more recent history when we’ve had to expand that network of speakers and preachers? What are some of the first ways you sort of start to articulate that this is not a new idea?
Shauna: Right away, well, in chapter two, first chapter is focused on what is preaching? Back to the basics. And I think that is very interesting. We don’t all agree on what preaching actually is or how it functions. And maybe that’s okay. I think that’s worth a conversation. And then in the second chapter, and this is what I think gets at your question, the question of that chapter is why do we do this? Why preach? And that is what happens when we preach is one way to ask the question, but secondly, on what basis do we do this? And I think that’s your question. What’s the root of this? And I’m inviting people to really get at the root of it. And that might be different for different communities, even different communities within a denomination, but certainly within, I mean for different denominations, that’s different. And that’s fine. I just want people to have the conversation. And so there in that chapter, I give some, I ask us to think about this biblically, you named some things there, theologically, also ecclesialogically, like what has the church done? And I’m a Lutheran, and I know it’s not only Lutherans that hang our hat on this thing we call the priesthood of all believers, but we surely do. And so I have challenged my fellow Lutherans to say, do we really believe that, that it’s the priesthood? And that doesn’t mean that everybody has to be the person to stand up 15 minutes into a worship service and be the solo speaker, but to have us ask ourselves what have our practices been? How did we get there and what’s the foundation of those practices? And so yes, biblically, we take a look at, there’s no place in the Bible that says: 15 minutes into a one hour worship service, one person will stand up and everybody else will be super quiet, and in 12 minutes everybody will stop listening.
That resonates with some people, right? Because they know that’s not how it works in every community. I’m absolutely aware of that, but there’s no place in the Bible that says that. And so I say to my students, and I’m not encouraging anybody to do this who might be listening to this podcast, but what happens if the day comes when a group, say you’re a pastor in a congregation, and a group of people come and they say, look, let’s not have the sermon anymore. Let’s just have three more hymns and we’ve got 60 signatures. Again, I’m not recommending this, but what happens if it happens? I say to students, and anybody in workshops with me, do you have a response? And you say, here’s why we’re doing this. And it may not say directly in the scripture, engage this practice in exactly the same way, but there are places of scripture that propel us to preach the word in a variety of ways. And that comes from Jesus, that comes from the model of disciples. You could think of parables, you think of synagogue, like Torah readings and midrash, goes way back. And then there are some theological reasons we do this, and then some churches might say for good order, we don’t have open mic night. So I’m not saying anything goes, this is about faithful proclamation,
Seth: Right? I mean, I’m a Presbyterian, so we do things decently and in order, and that resonates so well.
Shauna: I had the Presbyterians in mind when I said that
Seth: Really, there’s so much about that event within the worship service that I want to say it feels like we’ve historically wanted to control that moment in such a way that only the credentialed folks can stand in that pulpit, only certain people who look a certain way. It used to be mostly just people who look like me, white men who could stand in those pulpits, at least in my context. And so how do we expand our imagination beyond where we’ve been, while also remembering these great things we’ve learned from our traditions?
Shauna: Yes. Yeah. That is the question before us.
Seth: Yeah. And so what you’re doing is calling in that broader audience and engaging them. I wanted to know if you could talk about some of the ways that you begin to equip some folks from the broader congregation to take ownership of that role and to really feel that it is theirs to hold – not only the ordained clergy, but that we all have a significant voice to contribute. Tell us about that.
Shauna: Yeah, I do actually think it starts in many ways with the leadership of a community, whether that be a congregation, but let’s just refer to the congregation. Because not those of us who went to seminary, we know where we can kind of push the edges and like, oh, that’s really important, but that’s not as important. Let’s do something new. But there are a lot of people who just don’t know and they thought, well, I didn’t even think we could ask that question. I didn’t even think I could explore that. So it begins with a kind of the leadership that says, your inquiries, your curiosity, all of those things that’s welcomed here. Your intuition around, boy could I do that, but I don’t want to go to seminary, but I mean, I don’t even know how to read scripture really? And that is stunning to me when I keep hearing that because we’re all about the reformation commitments. Again, as a Lutheran, get the Bible in people’s hands in their own language, this is yours, and why are people saying, oh, no, no, I’m not. You tell me what it means. That has been to put it in the best way, a missed opportunity, and we’re feeling the effects of that missed opportunity and people have been pushed away, at least certainly not invited to have a thought, a question. And so for me, it begins with the leadership being bold enough and maybe even vulnerable in some places enough to say, Hey, I’m not the one who’s going to come and tell you what this means.
I mean, that means I need to put my ego to the side. It’s not about me proving to you look how much I know. I mean, people assume we know some stuff, but what makes a really lively situation is when somebody enters and say, yeah, I know stuff, but so do you. And in fact, if we don’t have you with all of your particularities in the room, we’re going to miss something here in this story. We can’t know. And so it takes on the part of those of us who are identified as leaders, it takes for us to first say, I’ve got to do something a little bit different here. And it could be huge, but it also could be just baby steps and I’m going to give you just one baby step and maybe we can get into others. And that is simply, it used to be more common to have a standing Bible study on the upcoming readings if you follow the lectionary for Sunday worship, but it’s not happening in most places, I’m finding. So just reinstate that and reinstate that in a way, not where, say I’m the preacher. I come and say, I did my studies and now I’m going to spend 45 minutes telling you what this scripture reading is about, and then we’re going to open it up for questions for about 10 minutes, and then we’ll close with a prayer.
That’s fine. I like a good lecture. I love learning, but isn’t what I’m talking about, this is about facilitating a time together, whether it’s in person or now. Absolutely, on Zoom. Where I have a series of activities that open up scripture for us where people are invited, it’s creative, it’s collaborative. I set the tone that, yeah, I might say thank you for that thought. And knowing what I know about the fuller context of scripture, I think maybe that pushes it a little bit beyond a kind of faithful reading. But there’s, as Paul recur said, there’s a surplus of meaning here. Let’s dive into that. So start with a kind of different attitude on the part of leadership. Secondly, reinstate that regularized Bible study around the Sunday scripture readings, and then thirdly, how you schedule or how your lesson plan for that. Make sure that as the leader, you’re speaking even less than 20% of the time because as soon as your voice comes into the room, there’s an authority that makes people think, oh, I didn’t answer it right, or whatever. So it’s an attitude shift in a way for everybody.
Seth: So Shauna, I hear in your description of the ways that we can begin to engage this broader network of listeners and speakers and preachers. I want to hear you say a little bit more about this piece of inviting in those voices to the larger conversation of lesson planning and in the sense how does the pastor or leadership of a community, as we step back, how are we also taking on a role of convening or space making for the membership or the people in that group? You talk about an attitude shift. Say a little more about what you see there?
Shauna: Yeah, that’s great. I like the idea of space making a lot. That’s nice, Seth. I think about it as being a kind of facilitator of sorts in some ways, a timekeeper – like a planner and a timekeeper. And I also often in class talk about when you go bowling, and if some people haven’t bowled a whole lot, mostly children, but sometimes adults, you put the bumpers on, it’s like bumper bowling, so it doesn’t go into the gutter. So I’m the facilitator that says, no, we, we’ve got to kind of manage the gutter and we’re going to at least hit one pin here. But there’s a lot of room. There’s a whole lane. And so I have in this book, it’s chapter four, the feed forward chapter, just a bunch of ideas, and it’s not at all exhaustive, but a bunch of ideas of some creative and collaborative ways to engage scripture. And so I would plan my 45 minutes or an hour Bible study accordingly. One of the most fruitful things that almost every class or workshop, I lead this thing from Godly Play the Episcopal church. It’s called, I Wonder, I Notice, and I learned it from others obviously, where someone reads scripture. So I often open a Bible study this way. I read scripture and people are invited to interrupt, which is already new, but it’s an activity that does so many things. People are interrupting the reader who needs to stop, slow down. We will not answer every question. It might feel a little chaotic and it feels rude to some people, so it takes a minute to get going. But once people do, and on Zoom, people can put their question or comments in chat as well. I wonder why Jesus took them to the mountaintop. I notice that he only took a few disciples. I wonder, I notice, like in Jeopardy that’s your prompt. It kind of gets the juices flowing and it makes us slow down and see the story and have our questions affirmed as valid questions. And not only that, I can do this just with you and me, but if we have people who we’ve never heard from in our congregation or people in the community we’ve invited, even better, and they think my questions matter and invite them in, inevitably somebody will say, I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t even think of that. It gets us to the point and say, we needed each other to raise all of these questions. That’s only 10 minutes. And a lot of preachers feel pressure that I’ve got to answer everything. No, it’s just getting the questions out there and then doing something like a writing exercise where people take one of the characters in the story and they write from the perspective of that character. What is Peter going to write in his diary tonight after this fantastic event on the top of the mountain?
And then you share what you wrote and there, you’re to a half hour, but what you’re doing as the preacher is listening in and then you’re moving the time along, you’re making sure somebody doesn’t hog the time and you’re the one who might be still the one person who preaches the sermon, but now you’ve got their questions and you’re not assuming that. Let’s just say I’m not assuming that my questions are most important for the congregation members. You’re not reaching everybody. That’s where people say, oh, I’m not even going to do this because I have too many people. And I’m like, wow, it’s not an all or nothing thing here. Yeah. So that’s what I mean about facilitating. And I do find people say that they just say, well, let’s read scripture and let’s just open it up for people to comment. People do need some guiding: how do I hold the bowling ball? What does that line, why does it beep when I step over the line some? And so we develop that process and people trust us as, oh, that person is leading us in a way that we can trust them. They’ve got our backs. We’re going to get out of here when we said we’d get out of here, but we’re also going to be affirmed in our own curiosity. That’s kind of what I mean by that. I mean, there’s a lot more that’s identified in the book, but yeah,
Seth: Well, you’re describing just creating a container of a space for people to the bumpers allow us to move around and yet also don’t upset the whole enterprise.
Shauna: And it’s also fun. I mean, you would not even believe the number of people who are like, and I’m not doing anything magical. Seriously. It’s sort of too easy. And people are like, wow, that story really came alive. I’ve never heard that in a way. And I mean, I hardly had to do anything really. And I know it’s time consuming. Preachers will say, I don’t have time for this. I mean, I no longer accept an invitation to preach, and I don’t have my own congregation right now, but unless whoever is asking me to preach puts me in touch with a group of 5, 7, 8, 9 people to have a Bible study ahead of time, I’m not going to fly in, assume so many things about a group of people, and fly out. And I just am not going to do that anymore. And when people ask me to be, why are you asking me who in your congregation could be? How about I help you equip your congregation so that when you go on vacation or whatever, they work with you, you become the preaching professor in your community? And that doesn’t just get people around scripture, gathered around scripture. It doesn’t only, but it does create competence and confidence for proclaiming the gospel. But it also, it’s relationship building around scripture and the gospel and starting to get comfortable talking theology and just saying, you matter and we’re not as whole when your voice isn’t here.
Seth: You’ve said that a couple times now, and I love that deep truth that we are not whole without your voice. We need your voice and we need the professional, trained voices, certainly, and we need the person who’s very much still discovering their faith. I love also what you’re saying about the questions that you want to know are from the congregation, how do we craft our sermon in isolation and then just kind of predict what the people are asking about this text. I just think that’s, and I’m guilty of it.
Shauna: Me too.
Seth: So many of us are, I feel guilty, but how to move out of isolation towards collaboration. I wonder if you could talk a bit about how you do this with congregations. You just described it that your pastor’s sick and we need you to step up and preach today, so be ready. How do you do some of that?
Shauna: Yeah, thanks for asking. I’ve been mulling over how to do this for so long and synods or diocese or presbyteries, they only have a certain amount of continuing ed they can offer in a year, and they might often get the same people. And so like, gosh, there’s got to be another way to do this. And so I started offering these cohorts and they’re cohorts of four to six congregations. I’ve done it with three, and it works just fine. So let’s say three to six. Six gets to be quite a bit. So three to five is great. And we meet over two months, six sessions on Zoom, and these cohorts are made up of a leader, a rostered leader in the congregation, pastor, priest, deacon, whatever, and then four to six members of the congregation or three to six members of the congregation. That rostered leader is really important for me because my goal is not to overrun our preachers and preachers get afraid. They’re like, well, I’ll work myself out of a job. I’m like, I don’t think so, but wow, wouldn’t that be something, right? No, you still get to kind of, you’re overseeing it. So I work with the leaders then, and I don’t make assumptions about exactly how your community or context or congregation will do this. You’re the leader in that. And so I have some cohorts where people just sign up as individual congregations, and then when I’ve got enough, we find a time that works or I throw out a time that I know that I’m leading one and people can join in. And then I’ve also had synods say, bishops come and they say, Shauna, we need 15 lay preachers, like ASAP like yesterday. And I said, well, it’s going to take a minute. This isn’t overnight. It takes a while, but let’s start now.
And so they find the congregations and with the leaders who would be committed to this. And so if anybody has three to six congregations that would want to come together and you tell me the times that work for you during the week, let’s make it work. I’ll work with you. And we start with that and I start by saying, why do you want to do this? And then to the people in the congregation, why did you say yes? You probably thinking, what did you get yourself into? And so essentially they’re the facilitators. I send out a prompt, here’s the reading from the book, and then here are some activities you might engage. And some people meet in between sessions as a group, but it has changed almost every congregation I’ve worked with. I kind of want to say every, but I mean that would be overstated, I think.
But they’ve come back with a statement. This has changed everything for us. We’ve just made minor tweaks and it’s changed everything. Some individuals have said, one guy, we had someone from the east coast, I can’t remember, and then Kansas, Montana and Los Angeles, California. They’re like, we’re being churched together from all across this country. And I learned that we’re not the only ones having these concerns, and I learned that we’re distinct in some ways that was such affirmation about being the church together. But someone else might say something like, just two more things about this. One thing is I’ve been a member of this congregation for 60 years. This is the first time that I felt like I have learned to engage scripture deeply and trust myself because I’m doing this in community. I’ve had a community of people say, we want to learn more and as laypeople make ourselves available to the synod.
If our Synod finds themselves in a position where they don’t have preachers, we’re retired. We can go out and do this. And we’re working as a team still meeting once a week. And then finally I said, two more, but don’t do this in a sermon. I said, two more, but I said three anyway. And then the last thing is I’ve had pastors say, I was so burned out that I didn’t want to do this cohort, and I was thinking this might be the last kind of thing that I do before I really take a break or just be done with ministry. And this has revived it so much. My congregation has now seen how much work and they want to participate and they want to do this. They want to study scripture, they want to, and not only they’re thinking about the sermon in different ways and they’re engaging it that I feel like all the work that I do as a preacher actually matters. I’m getting so much feedback beyond, good sermon pastor, because I’ve equipped them in a way to give a meaningful response. And I say, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Seth: And I can attest as a preacher who has gone through seasons of burnout and things, that description just sounds so life-giving to have people in your community who are able to turn back and go, oh, yeah, I kind of get some of that. And especially amidst times when there’s a lot of negative feedback, or this may be outside the scope of our conversation today, but just even the sense of how do we speak a difficult word and be able to hold the space of getting that kind of perhaps negative feedback, but having a community around that it’s going to like, okay, we see, we understand with you.
Shauna: As soon as you have other people who are doing it occasionally like standing up, they feel the vulnerability of being a preacher. They feel the weight of the task. I’m preaching a class right now on preaching towards social transformation, and we’re explicitly leaning into picking an issue that will rub some people the wrong way and what do we do? And I say, first of all, if you’ve developed this rhythm of feed forward proclamation feedback, it’s this ongoing conversation and if you’ve developed that rhythm of feed forward and feedback, when you encounter something that needs to be addressed and you have to use your more prophetic voice or whatever, people already know there’s a way to engage you. It’s not like they go home seething, because I don’t know how I’m going to tell the pastor I absolutely disagree with you what you said.
There’s a rhythm and there’s an expectation that if you do, please, that’s a pastoral issue, let’s talk about it. But oftentimes people, it’s in their system and they act out because there’s no way out. And so this is a rhythm that you establish even before you really need it. And when you really need it is when these issues are coming up. So students in my class are saying, oh, I’m glad I already have this idea of this rhythm. And again, I’m not the only person who’s suggesting that what I’m doing is I wasn’t interested in writing a book in the same way that I can’t imagine preachers being interested in just preaching and never hearing what their hearers hear. I’m not interested in writing a book and having it just sit on people’s shelves. I want this to actually make a difference. And so I’m putting this into the hands of people saying, what’s working? What isn’t working? And not everything is working for people, but what I’m noticing is that the conversation has started and the conversation starts with those things that are maybe more easily digestible.
So that when things get ramped up, let’s say even politically or who knows, there’s a crisis, there’s trauma that’s just emerging, we’re ready to be the people of God and we come together and we have these difficult conversations and they will be difficult and we can do it.
Seth: Equipping the saints so that they’re ready for the time that we are called to. It’s beautiful.
Shauna: And I have to say Seth it, so it’s the Bible study ahead of time, which is also a pastoral thing. And then there’s a kind of intentional feedback, which is a whole other chapter in the book, but there’s also this during the sermon, during the worship service, and it might be that you have five people in the congregation who are the person who’s the called pastors, the primary preacher, but you can call on these other four, but it could also be that during the sermon we hear other voices. Just think about how, think about a podcast. A podcast isn’t a lecture of one person. That’s not a podcast. It’s a conversation. It’s an invitation. And so if you find that someone has this fantastic insight in the feed forward Bible study, you would ask them, Hey, could I share that? And you would have to get permission, and not only that, you need to say you got permission in the sermon. Otherwise people think, what are they going to say? What are they going to share that I shared? Permission giving is huge, consent is huge, but even better than that, let’s say you were at a Bible study I was leading, and you had this fantastic insight. Let’s go back to Peter on the mountain, I’m thinking transfiguration, and you had this fantastic insight. And I said, Hey, Seth, at that point in the sermon, could I hand the microphone to you? Could you come up to the pulpit and share that? You’re like a living illustration of that? And so then Bob might be sitting there and say, oh my gosh, if Seth can do that, I can do that. I mean not to, I know you’re amazing, but you see what I mean. Then all of a sudden you’re modeling different voices coming in rather than saying, the commentary showed this, which I’ve written commentaries, but I always think, how can a commentary commentator know everything? You need to translate that. So sometimes that commentary comes from the community, and then you’re the illustration and you are practicing the proclamation of the gospel in that sharing in the sermon.
Seth: I love it. Actually, when I was reading your book, the first note I took down on my ledger was ‘Pass the Mic.’ And this image of being the one who in the sense controls access to the mic as the trained and stated leader of a congregation, but then that work of yielding and opening a space for the mic to be passed to other voices, the ones in power have the ability to yield that. And so why not steward that? Well,
Shauna: Yeah. Yeah. I think power is a really important thing for each community to think about. Are we okay with the power dynamic that’s here? Does it feel like an oppressive power dynamic? Does it feel like an unfair power dynamic? What are the reasons for the power dynamic? All of that around preaching is so important because we’ve done well in worship, having so many other voices, reading the lesson, singing, doing these other things, but the one place is even people are serving communion. Maybe they’re not presiding at the table, but the sermon has been like, no, you will not pass through that threshold. And I think in a lot of ways, for good reason, because the risk, a lot of harm can be done when there’s this place that’s the pulpit that holds the kind of authority for people, and if people misuse that authority or abuse that kind of power, there’s a mess to clean up. And so in that way, I say, pass the mic, but it’s not open mic. It’s not willy-nilly it. It’s facilitated, it’s curating.
Seth: Absolutely.
Shauna: I think which pieces will enter this exhibition and which will not, and where will they be and how will I guide you through the gallery when I’m the docent? Yeah. That’s another way to kind of think about how you’re walking people through this.
Seth: We have all these different faces and voices represented in many elements of the worship service, the priesthood of all believers, serving communion, and reading scripture, and offering hospitality, and yet there is this protected category of the pulpit and the speaking and that has caused harm. I’m curious if you can talk about how the work you’re doing is offering a space for healing and restoring of those voices into their place that we need them to be in and where that leads us.
Shauna: Yeah, thank you for that question. I think this is really a question for each community to talk about. Sometimes we don’t know the harm that our words create, and I’m not the best at this, so I’m not like here is the perfect model, but that I’ll be always attempting to do this in my life. I would like to have an attitude where if there’s something I said or did that landed in a way that was hurtful, I’d like to know about that. We talk a lot about intent and impact, so I can’t imagine anybody’s intending to hurt somebody in a particular way. I mean, I think people do, but when we have a relationship with a pastor or congregation members, but sometimes not saying anything or not having an open communication has the impact that my voice is not welcomed here. So for starters, I think we want to have some kind of representation, and we have that in other parts of the worship service. I talk about that in the book, whose bodies are seen and heard in worship, and then if we have a, why is it they’re not seen in the pulpit?
So it speaks volumes to have representation alone. And then I also think that this kind of open communication to sort of identify that really hurt. It’s also a reason that it’s not anything goes, like I already said, like it’s not open mic. There are some things that the way we are in the world don’t mirror the gospel, and there are limits that there are things that hurt and we don’t want that. And it has kept people from the church for a long time, and they may not make their way back because of it. And I don’t think we want that. We do want to be bold.
I think, for example, I’ll give an example of myself. When I failed, I would call it I failed, and this was before I was doing this kind of feedforward feedback. I had a sermon that was very well received. It was on the healing of the 10 lepers, and I was teaching these cohorts, and rather than put somebody else on the spot, I brought up the recording of that sermon and it did not land well for someone. And it surprised me because of course, I could say, and we all have said as preachers, I didn’t even say that, but of course people, they will bring their whole selves and we want them to do that, and they’re going to hear things. And I was so grateful to that person. I mean, I felt very small to be honest with you, and it was very hard. I was like, oh, no, no, no. And then I wanted to go back to everybody and fix it, right? But no, no, that’s my ego. And I was like, thank you. Help me understand what this was. Honestly, I still think, no, I was saying exactly the opposite, but I can totally now see after spending time. Wow. Well, that was your experience. And what I failed to do was in my conversation, talking with someone who identifies as somebody with a kind of disability. that of course they would love to just approach Jesus at his feet and be healed. Of course, they’ve prayed and they’ve thought, I haven’t prayed right, and you know what? It should have been their voice as my illustration, and that wouldn’t have made it perfect. That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been harm, but I did not do that. So one of the exercises I have in there is a kind of empathetic exercise where we identify a community and we think, how might this text land? How might the divorce text land for somebody who’s recently divorced? How might the healing stories land for somebody who’s just lost somebody? Anyway, it’s one thing to imagine and it’s another thing to go and ask, and it’s a third thing to say, will you share that? We need to hear from you.
Seth: I feel the conviction of that reality in my own context. So I love that story, and I love that you’ve made space for people to have that voice back to you. Every time I preach on text that includes the widowed or the orphaned,I look out at our congregation, like, oh my goodness, I have to be very careful here because I could hurt someone because I have not experienced that. So I need to actually go and listen well to their stories and not only listen, well give them space to share those stories as, to better flesh out the gospel story.
Shauna: Yeah, you got it, Seth. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.
Seth: Well, yeah, we’re looking for contextual examples. They’re sitting in the room with us.
Shauna: Exactly, yeah. And instead of being maybe you’ve been in the pew, I’ve been in the pew, and I’m like, wow, they’re talking about me as if I’m not in the room. They’re talking around me. Why didn’t you ask me? Why didn’t? Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, this is its opportunity to model a kind of difficult conversation or beautiful conversation or crucial conversation as some people might say. Yeah, yeah. This is the kind of thing where I know we had been talking about, I just wrote this other book with a filmmaker. It’s a book called Scripting a Sermon, and I have to tell you, I was absolutely amazed that the subtitle is ‘using the wisdom of filmmaking for impactful preaching.’ Filmmaking is all the rage, television or whatever. People are so into it. It’s in our DNA. People get engaged. They leave a film needing to tell people what they experienced in the film, what they loved about it or hated about it. But after a worship service, people might be just like me, meh. Womp, womp. We want people to have a reaction. This is the gospel. It’s scandalous, it’s radical, it’s beautiful. And I thought, well, how do filmmakers do this? I’m aware of the differences including a budget, including time, but guess what? They often have cast and crew, and I want us to ask who’s our cast and crew? They also, documentary filmmakers especially, have impact teams. They might even have an impact producer. I’m thinking, why? If I were a pastor, again, I think I’d have an impact team, listen for how people are being impacted by the sermons, by worship, by Bible study. Help me hear what’s happening. And if there’s some story that I think I’m wondering how it will land for the widow or the orphan or the person who identifies as somebody who has a disability, often they don’t identify that it’s a disability. Other people identify it as a disability, but to ask people about this, what story do you want to tell around this that I could not preach until I’ve heard that story? That’s kind of what an impact team does. Or an impact producer, I’ll test it. Market testing right? Ahead of time. How will this land and will it land in the way I would want? You’d be amazed. Filmmakers don’t just kind of willy-nilly throw stuff out there. Everything is very intentional, and we don’t even need to have visuals, screens or anything. We’re already visual because we’re seeing each other and hearing each other, but what are we hoping will happen and then how do we get there? It was so much fun writing this with a filmmaker because I mean, I wanted to be a documentary film producer. I still do. I don’t know if I’ll get around it, but I was like, she was in the industry. She was an editor in Hollywood. I said, is this how it works? And she’d be like, no. I was like, darn, because that would be great, but I learned so much more. And so part of it is, the reason I love this book is because I think we as preachers could also go to our congregation and say to the folks there, what do you love? Are you an artist? Are you a musician? Are you an athlete? Are you a carpenter? Are you a filmmaker? How is your craft? And this is Gail’s term, my co-author, both magical and mundane. What are the things you absolutely have to do that you’re like, I’ve got to clean my brushes afterwards. It just has to be done. It’s magical and mundane. Hear from people in your congregation, how is it communal? How is it collaborative? How is it creative? Then say, okay, how can we do that at this church with scripture, with the sermon, with worship? And maybe it’s not filmmaking you come up with. I just give that as one example. It’s carpentry. Maybe it’s the little league team. How is that a model for how we are inclusive? We invite people in to be the best that we can be in this community. That’s the intention there. And I think it absolutely follows from this idea of the people’s sermon, what else is happening in the world? But we haven’t brought into our church practices yet, or at least our pulpit practices. Could we?
Seth: I want to be mindful of our time, but I feel like we could talk forever on this. I mean, we could have a whole ever conversation about media and the whole filmmaking. The other book I need to pick up, I need that book. I need your new book. And then Jacob Myers has one called Standup Preaching.
Shauna: He does, yep.
Seth: I want to read that to just two modes of other communication forms that are so helpful for us to think about.
Shauna: Well, and this isn’t a series, so here I’m going to do this. This isn’t a series that out of, well, Westminster John Knox is doing it, and this is the third in the series. The first one was Wes Allen did Preaching and the Thirty-Second Commercial.
Seth: Cool.
Shauna: Yeah, so it’s the preaching and series from Westminster John Knox. Alice McKenzie, she’s at Perkins with, we has a book on humor, similar maybe to Jacob Meyers, and then ours is the third one. I mean, I could have done this on theater or music. There’s so many things to do here, but they’re great. I haven’t read Jacobs, but thank you for reminding me of that.
Seth: Yeah, I’ve only read one of his previous books, but that’s on my queue.
Shauna: Jakes’ engaging, yep.
Seth: Well, thank you, Shauna. This has been a really great conversation with all of our podcast guests. We’ve reached want to know something about you and what you find passion in and want to be of support too. Can you tell us a little bit about Global Refuge, this group that you work with and how we can learn a little more about ’em?
Shauna: Yeah. I can’t say that I work directly with them, but it’s very important to me. The name Global Refuge came about just recently in the last couple of years. It was called Lutheran Social Services and Lutheran Social Services, Lutheran Services in America. I can’t remember the exact term. Now. It’s changed to global Refuge. Huge. One of the, if not maybe the second or third largest social service agency in our country really began as the Lutheran saying, how do we care for our neighbor? And redefining neighbors, not just the person within kind of proximity, but really anybody. And taking from Luther’s commentary on the commandment, it’s not just enough not to kill someone, but how are you giving them life? And in my world, in 1992, I was in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Chicago and worked for Lutheran Social Services, immigration and Refugee Service at that time helped, excuse me, that time helped settle Iraqi and Somali refugees. And I just learned so much. And that had such an impact on my life that I want to see this organization as well as other organizations like it be able to do their work. It rises out of the gospel. People may have no faith. They may be Jewish, Muslim, not Christian at all, not Lutheran, but those people are our neighbor. They are part of God’s beloved creation. And so I want to see that organization flourish.
Seth: That’s great. Well, you can find out more at www global refuge org. Thank you, Shauna. And this has just been a wonderful conversation. I feel excited about the cohorts that you’re offering. Is there anything, any ways that you would like to direct people towards those or how they can get involved with your work further?
Shauna: Yeah, thank you. Simply sending me an email. You can Google my name and you’ll get my email address. If you have any interest in a cohort, if you have three friends who would also be interested, create your own group. Let’s find a time. There’s a bit of a cost to it. I mean, I have a full-time job. This is sort of a side thing, but I think it’s very within reach or we can talk about possibilities. But I think this is it. It’s not a fast track. I’m very involved. I am the one who sends the emails, the follow-up. I’m engaged with you. It’s fully connected, and I’m also open to what you would like for me to do. So if you’re interested, just simply email and express your interest. You don’t have to find three friends, friends or three enemies, but you can let me know if you’re interested. And when I have some room in an upcoming cohort, we can work that out. I’m happy to zoom, very accessible. We’re the church together and I want us to model that kind of communication and togetherness. That’s what this is about. If I didn’t do that, I think the people’s sermon, the name would be a little disingenuous. I kind of really mean it. So reach out.
Seth: Thank you, Shauna. And this again, such a great conversation. Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing more from you and your work. Thank you.
Shauna: You’re welcome. And thank you, Seth.