Every now and then you and I need to be made to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps there are few ways to make people fee more uncomfortable than to talk to them about them public speaking or dancing. Robert Smith attempts to combine both of these uncomfortable realities into a helpful metaphor for biblical preaching.
Robert Smith is professor of Christian preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to this, he was a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Right off the bat you have got to respect Smith’s gutsy-ness to link the sacred act of preaching to a metaphor such as dancing. Remember, Smith is from a Baptist institution. I can’t wait for his next book, perhaps Fermenting Truth: A Pastor’s Guide to a Gloriously Intoxicating Ministry
Doctrine that Dances is primarily a book for preachers. Smith employs two main metaphors throughout.
The first is that the preacher is to be a ‘doxological dancer’. That is to say he is to be not just mentally engaged with the passage but also emotionally engaged. Smith warns against pastors spending time in the study of the word but neglecting their due time under the knife, in surgery, so to speak.
The second metaphor is that the preacher is to be an ‘exegetical escort’. He is to use the text to bring people into the presence of God. Here is a definition from Smith of such doctrinal preaching:
My definition of doctrinal preaching emphasizes its underlying aim: transformation through Christ. I state that doctrinal preaching is the escorting of the hearers into the presence of God for the purpose of transformation. I contend that the task of the doctrinal preacher is to serve as an escort who ushers the hearer into the presence of God through the proper and precise expounding of the Word of God. When this is done, the efforts of the doctrinal preachers have reached their limits because they cannot transform the hearer. The hearer is left in the presence of the only One who can transform a human soul—Christ.
Some may think that Smith is just being too cute with these metaphors and it is overkill. I’ll be honest, I thought the same thing for the first 30 or so pages. But Smith pulls it off. He keeps emphasizing the metaphors and developing them within the context of pastoral ministry. When you finish the book I trust you’ll agree that you have been served well by a man who wants to see God glorified and people transformed (including the preacher) by the faithful study and proclamation of the Word of God.
The book is written in a very engaging style. Smith is very culturally relevant (a good model for preachers) and writes with an eye toward the end goal (transformation). He also recognizes the negative stigma of doctrinal preaching, that it is boring. However, he doesn’t flinch; his charge is for men to not make the glorious truth of Scripture boring but rather to be affected by this truth and then preach as a man who has been so affected.
I think Smith does a great job balancing the oft distorted poles of emotion and content. Too often men compromise one for the other and sadly the casualties are in the pews.
Smith writes:
The preachers are simultaneously exegetical escorts and doxological dancers as they respond respectively to the substance of the Word of God within a style that is unique to their own personality yet reflective of an enthusiastic and passionate delivery. Doctrinal preaching includes both the exegetical escorting of the hearer and the doxological dancing of the preacher as the preacher ushers the hearer into the presence of God for the purpose of transformation. The preacher, who prior to the preaching moment has been transformed and who dances in the delivery of the message, expects the hearers also to be doxologically responsive to the Word of God because to the transformative moment. The doxological response in the preaching and hearing of the Word of God does not enter the sermon in its conclusion; rather, it begins the sermon in its introduction and resounds throughout the message.
Throughout the book Smith quotes from people that I did not expect. I wonder as to why he would repeatedly quote Harry Emerson Fosdick, as well as Karl Barth, and St. Francis of Assisi. I did not find their quotes to add significant value to the point he was making and without a disclaimer would be concerned about folks embracing the rest of their teachings within such a context. This however, would not cause me to not recommend this book to preachers.
Finally, there is a continued reference to American slavery, African American preaching and the development of Christianity within the early African-American community. I had found this curious throughout the first 2/3 of the book until I realized the Smith himself was an African-American. This disclosure by Smith was helpful.
Smith has a wide potential readership, the Baptist community (both Reformed and Arminian), the African-American Community, and the rest of evangelicalism. Each area needs to be reminded of the call to preach the word faithfully and passionately for the glory of God and the transformation of people. May God be pleased to use it to this end.
