THMM600 - Advanced Preaching

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

THMM500 Contemporary Approaches to Pastoral Practice, Communication and Group Processes and THMM501 Exploring Parish Culture

Incompatible

THCP600 - Advanced Preaching

Teaching organisation

This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials, online learning, video-conferencing, or supervision. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment. The unit will include online activities with face to face sessions, either weekly or over dedicated intensives, so as to facilitate the participation and interaction of students from a range of ecclesial ministries. 

Unit rationale, description and aim

This unit builds on students’ understanding and experience of preaching, assisting them to develop their ministry of preaching the living Word of God, in a variety of pastoral contexts. It aims to extend students’ knowledge of contemporary scholarship on preaching, as well as developing their practice of preaching by paying attention to the assembly, the text and the preacher, and inculturation of the Gospel. By exploring the intersection of the Second Vatican Council’s understanding of Revelation with contemporary understandings of communication theory, they will more fully appreciate how the living Word of God shapes the faith community and its response to God’s grace, both individually and corporately.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - articulate contemporary approaches to the ongoing interpretive tasks of preaching, from text to voice to purposeful action, and develop a personal theology of preaching (GA1; GA2; GA5).

LO2 - critically reflect upon one’s practice of preaching by preparing, preaching and analysing several performances in light of contemporary scholarship in hermeneutics and communication theory (GA1; GA4; GA9; GA10).

LO3 - analyse and evaluate the intersection of the Second Vatican Council’s understanding of revelation, the mission of the Church in world and the ministry of preaching (GA1; GA2; GA4; GA5).

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

GA10 - utilise information and communication and other relevant technologies effectively.

Content

Topics will include:

• Theologies of the Word in light of Dei Verbum and subsequent Church teaching;

• The role of preaching within the context of liturgy;

• The intersection of liturgy, culture and proclamation as fundamental to homiletic discourse;

•  Understanding the liturgical calendar and the structure of the Lectionary;

•  The critical role of the assembly in actively receiving and reconstituting for themselves the alternative view of reality which sees God as a key player in all facets of life;

•  The preacher’s capacity to name perspectives that are silent in their preaching. Ways of gaining insight into the assembly’s experiences, pertinent to the readings;

•  Engaging the biblical text imaginatively, so that it becomes, for both assembly and preacher, the living Word of God

•  The various dimensions and contexts of contemporary preaching:

• Preaching as personal communication 
• Preaching in history       
• Preaching as sacramental communication
• Preaching as rhetoric                                 
• Preaching as dialogue with scripture      
• Preaching as dialogue with culture         
• Preaching and ecclesiology                       
• Preaching as prophetic voice                    
• Preaching as eschatological hope            
• Preaching in the sacramental moment  
• Preaching in context                                  
• Preaching and new communication 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials, online learning, video-conferencing, or supervision. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment. The unit will include online activities with face to face sessions, either weekly or over dedicated intensives, so as to facilitate the participation and interaction of students from a range of ecclesial ministries.

Adult learning theory frames this unit’s exploration of the collaborative ministry between pastoral ministers, members of faith communities and clergy in the exploration of their placement cultures. In particular, transformative learning theory informs the unit’s approach to learning about ecclesial cultures as an attitude or orientation to ministry, while guiding the development of appropriate pastoral ministry tools for pastoral planning. 

Assessment strategy and rationale

A range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. Such procedures may include, but are not limited to: homilies, essays, reports, student presentations, case studies and online interactive student performance tasks. Presentation of preaching and teaching scenarios to other adult learners are an effective assessment strategy to enable and develop the knowledge and expertise proper to the ministry of preaching this unit enables. They will be sequenced in order to provide scaffolding for learning.

Assessment 1 enables students to articulate a personally appropriated approach to preaching and its foundations in Christian Spirituality and theology;

Assessment 2 enables students to bring together their theological foundations with contextually situated instances of preaching and evaluate their effectiveness in the context of appropriately scaffolded critical feedback. 

Assessment 3 enables students to re-evaluate their integration of a theology of the revelation, the Word and the ministerial practice of preaching with contemporary approaches to communication theory and culturally analyses.  

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Buechner, F. Secrets in the Dark. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006.

Brueggemann, W. The Word Militant. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.

Burghardt, W. Preaching: The Art and the Craft. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Clader, L. Voicing the Vision: Imagination and Prophetic Preaching. New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2003.

Craddock, F. Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985.

Day, D., J. Astley & L. Francis, eds. A Reader on Preaching. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005.

De Leers, S. Written Text Becomes Living Word: The Vision and Practice of Sunday Preaching. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2004.

Holberg, J. ed. Shouts and Whispers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2006.

Long, Thomas & Farelly, Edward, ed. Preaching as a Theological Task: World, Gospel, Scripture. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.

The Bishops Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry, National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Fulfilled in Your Hearing: The Homily in the Sunday Assembly. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1982.