TOW #14: Pastor T's Penultimate Sermon (Written Text)

On her penultimate Sunday at our church, our pastor of more than ten years gave her sermon on the journey through life. It ties to the occasion given that she is entering a new stage of her own life (retirement), and the church is entering a new stage of its existence (searching for a new pastor). She seeks to aid us in the new leg of our journey with the reassurance that God has always provided instructions.

The most important rhetorical strategy she uses is beginning the sermon with an anecdote in which she describes her recent travel on an airplane. Humorously, she tells the story of how she paid an excessive amount to check her luggage when she could have red-tagged her bags for free and carried them herself to the next connecting flight. “Here’s the kicker,” she says, “ at the end of the trip, doing it this way, you don’t have to go to baggage claim and wait till your luggage comes spinning around on that ramp, then fight off rude people who hog the spaces next to the thing, so you have to say, ‘Excuse me can I get my bag,’ and there goes your bag for another trip around.” She knows the image of a pastor fighting off a self-important crowd of vacationers at a baggage claim is sure to humanize her. Oftentimes preachers are seen as stuffy or more pure in their thoughts than any other person. By presenting herself as a true human being who experiences the same baggage claim annoyances as everyone else, she makes her audience much more open to receiving her sermon as a lesson they can apply to their own lives, rather than just to the life of someone of elite moral character. 

This strategy is probably most effective in the present world, in which the new generations are moving away from the church. It appeals to emotion through humor rather than fear, as has been used by preachers of the past, which is significantly less intimidating. After such an introduction, when she says that God is not like an airline and provides fairly detailed instructions, her audience will be prepared to hear her out.