The Second-Best Angle and Why It's Often the Right One

When a minister sits down with a passage, one angle usually presents itself first. It is the angle that is interesting to the minister — the clever exegetical move, the unexpected reading, the doctrinal lift, the historical hook. The minister's own taste runs toward this kind of preaching, and the angle is exciting in the study.

The discipline that produces durable preaching is sometimes to choose the second angle instead.

Why the first angle is suspect

The first angle is suspect because it is shaped by the minister's interests, not the congregation's needs. The clever exegetical move is interesting because it is unfamiliar. The doctrinal lift is appealing because it engages the minister's theological tradition. The historical hook is satisfying because the minister has done the reading.

None of these is wrong. They are the texture of a thoughtful minister's mind. But the question on Sunday morning is not what is interesting to the minister. The question is what the congregation needs to hear from this passage this week.

Often that is a duller angle. The expository read of the passage's main claim. The pastoral reading of what the passage is offering people in difficulty. The moral reading of what kind of people the passage forms. These are not exciting in the study. They are often what the room needs.

The choice

The choice between the first angle and the second is a pastoral choice, made with the room in view. It depends on knowing what the congregation has been through this season, what they are wrestling with, what they have already heard from the pulpit recently, what they need to be re-rooted in.

A minister who picks the angle by what is exciting in the study will produce a varied, intellectually lively run of sermons that quietly miss what the congregation needs. A minister who picks the angle by what the room needs will sometimes produce sermons that feel duller in the study and land harder on Sunday.

The harder landing is the work.

Two questions before choosing

Two questions help separate the first angle from the second.

What did this congregation hear from the pulpit last week and the week before? If the recent diet has been intellectually lively, an unflashy pastoral angle is often the right corrective. If the recent diet has been pastoral and tender, an angle that engages the mind may be needed.

What is the season the congregation is in? Funerals in the recent past, a difficult congregational meeting, a community trauma, a stretch of weariness — these all call for particular kinds of preaching. The clever exegetical move is the wrong sermon when the room needs to be held.

These questions take a minute. They often shift the choice from the first angle to the second.

When the first angle is the right angle

Sometimes the first angle is the right angle. The congregation does need to be intellectually engaged. The passage genuinely calls for the doctrinal lift. The minister's excitement is, in this case, an honest pastoral instinct rather than a self-serving one.

The discipline is not to default to the dull. It is to interrogate the exciting before defaulting to it. If the first angle survives the interrogation, preach it with confidence. If it does not, choose the second.

The minister whose second-angle sermons are routinely landing harder than their first-angle sermons is learning something the long ministry rewards.