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This is part three of a three-part series. In part one, Bob Hyatt offered a cultural and historical apologetic for dialogue in preaching. In part two, he addressed some of the concerns people have with dialogical preaching. Now Hyatt paints a picture of what this approach to the sermon event looks like at The Evergreen Community and offers a few ideas for anyone who would like to introduce dialogue into his preaching.

PreachingToday.com: You have briefly summarized what a typical dialogical sermon looks like in your church. Please take a moment to show us the process in greater detail.

Bob Hyatt: Sunday really starts on the Monday before. We post the passage that we're going to walk through in an on-line forum, asking the whole community to read it, meditate on it, and begin to ask questions of it. Sometimes we get little participation in that forum. Other times, we get a ton. It depends on what grabs people's attention or how arresting the subject matter is. When the on-line forum doesn't produce a strong conversational thread, I can still work with conversations I have with people throughout the week. They'll ask me how I'm going to handle something they noticed in the text, and I might give them a preview of what I'm thinking and bounce some ideas off of them.

Once Sunday rolls around, I open the discussion of the passage with a series of questions that reflect the question the text will ultimately answer. After a time of conversation, we'll move into the passage, making our way through it verse-by-verse or chapter-by-chapter to see how the Bible addresses the issues we've raised.

In the middle of the sermon, I try to lean a bit more on the audience. There are times—and this might be too much for some people—where I will run up against an interpretive question in the text, and I will leave it up to the community, asking, "What do you think?" I am almost never disappointed. Someone usually comes up with the answer I would have given. The power of the moment, though, is that it comes out of the mouth of the community. It's a unique opportunity for those who have studied the passage throughout the week to say, "I thought about that, and here's what I've concluded in my study."

After this more intense time of dialogue, as I've already said, I tend to "get on my horse and go." I've spent a lot of time studying, praying, and meditating on the implications of this passage for our community, so I use the final part of the sermon to lay those implications out for the people to see. Hopefully other people have already contributed to that sense of what the text is saying to us as a community, but it's my goal as the teaching pastor to frame the implications and challenge us as a community. 

We usually follow the teaching with a time of singing and response before I ask a few final questions to make sure we've all said what needs to be said. It's a final chance for people to agree, disagree, offer an "amen," ask questions, or make another point.

The dialogue that opens my sermon varies in length, but the final two parts—consisting of dialogue and my own reflections—last 40–45 minutes. The final question that I ask at the end of the gathering usually runs about 10 minutes.

How can those in a more traditional setting introduce dialogue into their preaching?

It does become nearly impossible to do dialogical preaching when a church is over a certain size. Large numbers of people are not made for verbal interactivity. However, anyone can do this to some degree through the power of on-line forums. The text doesn't have to be some surprise that the people unwrap on Sunday morning. Post the passage in an on-line forum the week before. There's nothing wrong with even posting a few thoughts about where you're planning to go in Sunday's teaching. Ask the people a series of questions: What do you think? What is your response? What questions do we need to answer? What implications do you feel need to be teased out of this passage? When I do this with my community, I'm constantly amazed by the things I didn't think of in my time in the Word. I have a limited perspective, so I love to hear how the passage is impacting others before the sermon happens.

Sermon preparation groups are also a way to indirectly introduce dialogue into the sermon. I have a friend who pastors a church of 1,500–2,000. He meets with a sermon prep group on the Friday morning before the Sunday service to discuss what he's come up with in his preparation.

For the last 20 years or so, churches have handed outlines or blank pieces of paper to the congregation for sermon notes, but have you noticed there are never any essay questions on them? The people are only asked to fill in the blank or are told exactly what to write. What would happen if you took five minutes on a Sunday morning and said, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to write out your response on the sheet that you have in front of you"? Dialogue doesn't always have to be verbal.

What are some resources to help a preacher learn more about dialogical preaching?

Doug Pagitt's Preaching Re-imagined tackles dialogical preaching head-on. Regardless of what you think about Doug or his theology, if you care about the craft of preaching, you should interact with his book. Hear him out, because he presents a fantastic case for involving people. If people take the time to read his description of a typical Sunday worship gathering for his community, Solomon's Porch, they'd be surprised. It's very different from the free-for-all picture that a lot of people have painted in their minds.

David Fitch has also addressed some of these issues in his book, The Great Giveaway. I would also suggest preachers take a look at Joseph R. Meyer's Organic Community.

A new site is being developed called InteractivePreaching.net. They have a number of writers discussing the use of dialogue in preaching. It should be up and running soon, so I would invite folks to check it out.

Bob Hyatt is a pastor at Evergreen Community in Portland, OR. He also serves as a church planting coach and the Director for Equipping and Spiritual Formation for the Ecclesia Network. To find out more about Bob or to connect with him, check out bobhyatt.me.