{"id":30464,"date":"2016-10-04T23:36:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T04:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/red-ink-and-all-getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-homiletician-part-5\/"},"modified":"2016-10-04T23:36:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T04:36:46","slug":"red-ink-and-all-getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-homiletician-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/red-ink-and-all-getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-homiletician-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Ink and All: Getting in Touch with Your Inner Homiletician Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Hoch<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the fifth article in a series. See part 4.
<\/em><\/p>\n

So how do you measure your efforts over time? Namely, what tools exist to measure or get a handle on how your sermonic efforts are contributing to the sorts of flourishing named or implied by the purpose your inter-disciplinary team developed?<\/p>\n

Back in the classroom we use rubrics. What’s a rubric? The term rubric comes from the Latin word for red. Historically, rubrics were instructions written in prayer manuals — in red ink — alongside the actual words of the prayer or rite.<\/p>\n

In a learning environment, a rubric breaks a more complex learning objective into smaller parts. Like the rubrics of old, they are written in the metaphorical “margins” of the primary action, in this case the sermon.<\/p>\n

As used here, however, a rubric indicates not so much a proscription (“Don’t pull on your ear when you preach!”) as much as it does a hoped for outcome (“The preacher communicated the message of the sermon with a minimum of external noise.”).<\/p>\n

The point of a rubric (scored or not) isn’t to assign a grade to your sermonic work, but rather to generate a conversation based on some marginally empirical data, giving the preacher a slightly longer perspective on his or her work. I say marginally<\/em> empirical because, in the end, I hold to the mystery more than to the math of proclamation. Even so, I find numbers useful if imperfect tools in learning the art of proclamation.<\/p>\n

What might a rubric look like and how might you use it? For the sake of conversation, let’s use the following purpose: “Preaching is to cultivate a learning environment after the pattern of Christ’s own life, with our questions activated and illuminated by the activity of the Spirit.” From this we might develop three or four hoped for outcomes:<\/p>\n