Book Review: Telling People What to Think by Heath Curtis
Telling People What To Think: A Concise Homiletics for Lutheran Parish Pastors by Heath R. Curtis. Independently published, June 2024. Available at Amazon.com
Heath Curtis’ Telling People What to Think is subtitled “a concise homiletics for Lutheran parish pastors.” His stated purpose is to provide encouragement and practical advice to parish pastors who want to improve their preaching. He has not written a book geared toward teaching seminary students how to preach. Nor does he offer some revelatory process or sermon form. He simply wants to help those who are preaching week in and out to do it better. Less explicit, but embedded throughout the text, he also wants to help preachers gain efficiency in their sermon preparation while restoring joy to the work. These are admirable aims. Those who read through his easy-to-read 96 pages of instructions, admonitions, and examples will find it obvious that Curtis has lived the life and done the work. There is much wisdom to be gained here. So also, in addition to his instruction, he provides another 100 pages of sermons from various preachers with a few lines of introduction to each. If you are a preacher or a teacher of preachers, or even if you are the son or daughter or wife of a preacher who wants to know what your loved one’s inner life is like on this topic, this book is well worth your time. Beyond that, Curtis’ stated goal ought to be the goal of every preacher. This book will help any preacher who takes it seriously to get better at preaching.
First things first and what the book isn’t.
Curtis understands that preaching has been instituted by Christ for Christians to hear during the Divine service. Their purpose is to teach and encourage the hearers not to convert them and they are to do this with the Scriptures leading them into all that Christ taught the apostles This, of course, is simply what the Bible says. It was never questioned in Lutheranism until the most recent decades. Curtis spends a few pages explicitly debunking the overly simplistic ideas that preaching is indistinct from the Absolution or that performative speech is the only true preaching or the silly bit of legalism that insists no sermon can ever end with a Law statement. This is central to his thinking and the book, but he does not spend much time on it. All that simply to say that this book is not yet another rehashing of why antinomianism is wrong.
Curtis’ unique strength
Curtis is no poet. His language doesn’t soar. He is, however, one of our most competent and intelligent pastors. His writing and conversation are utterly free of pretension. He is a wordsmith of his own order, hard to recognize as such unless one slows down to contemplate for a while just what he has done. Here, as in all of his other writing, his arguments are marked by a searing, often uncomfortable insight and analysis leading to seemingly inevitable conclusions which are delivered with simplicity and clarity. He is nuanced and careful, but there is no room for ambiguity. He does not simply make assertions. He lays out his work as clearly as he does his conclusions which tend to be quite obvious and yet surprising. Rare is the man who is left unconvinced when the award winner debater from Seward is done.
The title of this book is a bit of that signature Curtis treatment. He comes at the question of what a preacher does and lands on “I tell people what to think.” Such a description of our work never occurred to me before this book. Without this book I don’t think it ever would have. I know now that it will be with me into eternity because it is absolutely correct. Curtis explains:
I tell people what to think while they lie on their death beds. I tell them what to think about God and eternity. I tell jilted wives what to think when their husband runs off. I tell failures what to think about their future. I tell the melancholy what to think about being sad. Folks pile into a building once a week and sit on uncomfortable benches so they can listen to me tell them what to think for 15 minutes. And they put money in a bucket for the privilege (5).
The simplicity of that idea is powerful and insightful. It isn’t the only thing to be said. Curtis knows that. He issues caveats and warnings with it, but it is helpful in distilling our task down to a concrete reality rather than a theoretical abstraction and theory. That is what the whole 96 pages is about. It reads fast because he isn’t trying to wow his readers or say profound things. He is giving nuts and bolts advice and theology toward the actual grind of writing and delivering sermons, but he does so not only to help us get better at the whole process and deliver sermons that better communicate God’s Word but also that the grind itself would be more enjoyable.
A Walk Through of the Text
To this end, while being concise, the book is rather thorough. After a short set up Curtis walks the preacher through the context of the sermon. He begins by explaining the flow of the liturgy and the sermon’s place within it. He then takes up how a Lectionary works in the preacher’s and the hearers’ favor. His vivid practical streak pulses as he describes the yearly, predictable rhythms of parish life that every reader will recognize as accurate. This launches him into some brief theological reflection on the role of the preacher’s personality and experience and the unique character of each congregation. None of this is particularly breath-taking or surprising. Yet it is well done and I found it a useful aid in contemplating my own situation.
His next chapter is a brief but full description of what a Lutheran sermon is. This wasn’t revelatory either, but he moves through it quickly and it needs to be said. He gives the right sources from recent publications for further reading. He also includes here an excursus on sermon length with particular guidance and suggestions for how to preach longer sermons without them seeming long, in other words, how to not be boring but get the work done. This is a very practical section. I found it riveting. This excursus, I think, is a real addition to the field even though it is not theological.
His next chapter gets into some practical advice about resources for sermon writing. He begins with theological resources. This is worthwhile. Some may pick something up here that they missed along the way. Whether you do or not, it moves fast.
Then he moves to non-theological resources in a section titled “Maintaining and Feeding Intellectual Curiosity.” This both surprised and delighted me. He makes an argument for the particular blessing and command that pastors be generalists, being curious and somewhat informed about a myriad of topics, as opposed to specialists who must put all of their efforts toward making a paycheck. This requires reading widely and deeply. It is a fascinating argument and description and something I’ve heard little about in our circles. It again includes some very nuts and bolts suggestions about how to go about this.
He then moves to sermon structures and forms. He rails against an exclusive use of a strictly Law-Gospel outline, but he recognizes and commends its use as it matches the text and the needs of the congregation. He also includes illustrative example of it being used well. He then goes on to suggest and describe other sermon structures and forms. Some of these are almost genres of sermons rather than outlines or structures, but he doesn’t use that term. In any case, there is some theology here but it is mostly about craft and using tools that are really no different than those given to any public speaker or teacher. It is a useful summary and I found it helpful.
A Unique Contribution to Homiletics
This chapter contains the one thing that may be a unique contribution to the field of homiletics. He has noticed and then deliberately developed a technique that he calls “boxing out.” He did this, as we all have, spontaneously as he preached. Unlike the rest of us he not only noticed its effectiveness, but he decided to lean into it in a deliberate way. Sometimes when Curtis preached he would break from the outline or manuscript, lean toward the congregation and tell them something about God in a different voice, as a kind of aside. It wasn’t gratuitous but it worked. Imagine that he was about God’s providence to Abraham and then breaks into his own sermon, leans forward and says in a more casual tone, “You know the Bible says fathers aren’t to provoke their children to anger. That tends to be our instinct. We are often afraid of our children, that they will withdraw their affection or take our grandchildren away from us, and so we walk on eggshells and try to appease them. Abraham acts in faith here. He loves Isaac. He believes Isaac will live somehow, that the Lord will provide. But he is risking the relationship. Even if and when it all works out, what will Isaac think of him? Raising children, living in families, learning to forgive and let go of grudges, this is harder than self-help books make it look. Thank God that we have hope in Christ and He covers our failures.” Then he goes back to his sermon.
When he broke the flow and even went outside of his thesis for that sermon, the people sat up and noticed. In fact, it may have been the most powerful moment in the whole sermon. So Curtis suggests planning this, honing it, and using it as a deliberate technique. He spends a few pages explaining how it might be done. He also provides examples. The nomenclature, “boxing out” is based on the magazine and newspaper practice of sidebar material on page in a distinct box. This, brothers, is significant. It can be put to immediate use.
His last chapters deal with suggestions about how to actually go about the task, developing a method and plan for the work and then some thoughts about also thinking about how sermons work together over time, week to week and throughout the year. These are both very practical and readers will find them thought provoking.
A Devotion for Imitation
Following the text are almost 100 pages of actual sermons from a variety of preachers. Curtis introduces each, naming the form or structure that the sermon follows, and often highlighting a particular feature of the sermon. Reading through these sermons is more than a devotional exercise. With Curtis’ guidance and the 96 pages before these sermons a reader can see a particular feature to be imitated. This is significant. Imitation along with repetition is the essence of learning. Our formal homiletics instruction along with our typical compositional instruction does not emphasize this or usually allow any room for it. Our emphasis is almost exclusively on self-expression and originality. We have been scared nearly to death by lawyers about plagiarism. These 100 pages are a most useful feature of the text and again imminently practical.