What Do They Hear?: Bridging the Gap Between Pulpit & Pew

I love this book. I've recommended it to dozens of people for a strange reason: I live in the South.Now obviously, Powell has aimed this book at clergy, and his point in writing is to point clergy toward how the congregation hears Scripture differently than the (educated) pastor tends to hear it. It succeeds in this mission, but it's the byproduct that makes it a must-read.Do you know anybody who insists that there is only one way to read Scripture, that it just "says what it says"? I do. My family has a lot of fundamentalist evangelicals, and I have a wide network of friends from all over the spectrum, progressive to conservative. I get frustrated talking to my conservative friends who cannot see that they look at Scripture through a particular (American, middle class) lens. They don't get that. They think a conservative is someone who reads and obeys Scripture and a progressive is somebody who doesn't value Scripture as much.This book is the antidote to that blindness.This book articulates through experiments and plain prose exactly how even the most familiar interpretations of the most familiar stories are in fact *interpretations*.Read the book, share the book. Anybody who says "Well, I'm just obeying what the Bible says plainly," needs to read it.

Mark Allan Powell, What do they hear?: Bridging the gap between the pulpit and the Pew (Nashville, The Abingdon Press, 2007) Let me begin by suggesting, contra another review, that this book gave me more, not less, than what I was expecting. Unlike many other books on clerical practice, this book gave solid facts on how people hear things differently. In writing about this book, I feel I'm telling tales out of class. The first sentence in the preface is `This book is for preachers.' I am certainly not a preacher, but then Powell, one of the foremost Lutheran writers on Biblical exegesis claims to be primarily a literary critic. In a sense, the book is a look behind the curtain in the throne room of the Wizard of Oz. It presents experiments in literary criticism, and how preaching about the word of God is received in diverse circumstances. This is a popular presentation of material the author has presented in more scholarly venues. The most tantalizing description of Powell's studies is to be research in how things are misheard, as in the famous J. D. Salinger novel, Catcher in the Rye, which is a mistaken hearing of Robert Burns' `Comin Through the Rye'. Except that Powell's interest in misunderstanding is not in faulty hearing, but in faulty interpretation. The irony is that mis-interpretation is not always bad. It is a truism of literary criticism that people often imbue their words with meanings of which they were not conscious, and readers pick these up and make good use of them. The point of literary criticism, whether it be of or of Catcher in the Rye or Romans, is to examine the different elements in texts which allow for "polyvalence within parameters". There is a chasm between the intellectual backgrounds of Lutheran pastors and most of their congregants, based on the many years of seminary training. The congregants want that knowledge to be there, but they don't want to see it. The successful preacher knows how to bridge that chasm and be understood. But, as we shall see, that chasm is small compared to differences between seminarians in the United States, St Petersburg, Russia, and Tanzania. The author conducted an experiment asking 100 American seminarians to briefly outline the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) after reading it. Powell was surprised when only 6% mentioned the famine in 14b. Later, he had the opportunity to work with 50 Russian seminarians in St. Petersburg. He asked them to do the same exercise. In this case, 84% mentioned the famine, while 34% mentioned squandering, compared to 100% of the Americans. This is understandable in the sense that while Americans have virtually no experience with famine, St Petersburg suffered from a 900 day famine due to the Nazi siege of the city (Leningrad) during WW II, when 1.1 to 1.3 million Russian civilians died, mostly from starvation. A second big difference between the American and Russian students was in their interpretation of the son's error. Based on a difference in the translation of a key word in verse 13 the Americans considered the son wicked, while the Russians considered the son foolish. The Greek word asôtôs literally means wasteful, but it may also figuratively mean dissolute, and it is the latter interpretation given by virtually all English translations. On the other hand, virtually all Syriac and Arabic versions translate the word to something meaning `wasteful'. Another contribution to the difference in interpretation is the heavy emphasis in Russian beliefs in the foolishness of going out into the world on your own. The Russians put a far higher value on community and family. When the author posed the question to about 50 Tanzanian seminarians, `Why did the son end up starving?', about 80% of the student came up with a third answer. "Because no one gave him anything to eat." They believed letting the boy starve was callous. People in a foreign country often lose their money, because they don't know how things work, and they don't anticipate famines. And, `the Bible commands us to care for the stranger and alien in our midst.' Chapter 3 discusses the nature of empathy, that quality which draws us into the story and lets us associate with 19th century orphans (Oliver Twist) or 22nd century Na'vi on a distant moon (Avatar). The author cites the cinematic westerns of the `30s and `40s, where almost all viewers, at the time, identified with the white settlers and not the American Indians. They would not have imagined an interpretation which sympathized with the Indians. This whole point of view was reversed by some important movies such as John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, Little Big Man, and Dances With Wolves. The focus of this discussion is `The Good Samaritan' (Luke 10:30--37). The common interpretation of this parable in embedded in our language and popular culture. There are even Good Samaritan laws, famously broken in the last episode of Seinfeld. Jesus' listeners would have had far better empathy with the priest and the Levite, but the force of the story leads them to accept the ideal empathy with the foreign (and despised Samaritan). In Tanzania, the author encountered an entirely different interpretation of the parable. Their moral `is that people who have been beaten, robbed, and left for dead cannot afford the luxury of prejudice. (I suspect the Tanzanians were far better informed about the Judeans had for the Samaritans.) The Tanzanians thought our interpretation was bland and obvious. The Tanzanians have a Good Samaritan law too, but it says they will accept assistance from anyone, whether it is a Capitalist, a Socialist, or a Communist country. In our own setting, this means, for example, that they would have no problems whatsoever accepting money from an organization which acquired the funds from gambling. The Tanzanians don't believe their response is purely economic. They believe Jesus' objective in the parable was to empathize with the powerless (and not with the healthy travelers on the road). A second kind of empathy is `realistic', where one empathizes with the character most similar to one's own circumstance. The author did an experiment by soliciting responses to the story at Mark 7:1--8 (The hand washing story) from 50 clergy and 50 lay people. A tally of the responses showed: Empathy Choice Clergy Laity Jesus 40 0 Disciples 0 24 Pharisees 4 18 Other 6 8Oddly, six of the laity saw their clergy as Pharisees, while only 4 clergy saw things that way. The clergy results seemed more idealistic and the laity results seemed more realistic. This observation headlines a number of generalities one may make about the differences in the way the clergy and the laity interpret Biblical stories. Chapter 4 deals with the question of `meaning', emphasizing two different senses of the term. The first is the `message', that informative content which can be summarized or restated in words, without any loss of `meaning'. This puts the focus on what the speaker said. The second sense if the effect on the listener. This meaning cannot be restated in different words, as it would have a different effect. This `meaning' is less precise, which is why, in the Gospels, we often get two or more parables which have the same `message', but deliver it with different effect, such as Luke 11:5--8 (the request for bread at midnight) and Luke 18:2--5 (the widow and the judge). The two stories have the same moral, but it is delivered with different types of characters in each case. If you are not inclined to empathize with a widow, you may be more inclined to empathize with a person who needs some bread, but all the stores are closed. The author presents the material with a light touch for the non-professional, but I sense no `dumbing down'. Powell does give references on where to find the original research, but some of those sources are relatively pricy, so consider yourself blessed that you can get these conclusions in an inexpensive form.

Even for a non-clergy this is an interesting read. I received a lot of in-sight into the ways to get listeners' attention.It not only is helpful to clergy but it could be very helpful to speakers in sales, motivation, etc.

Dr. Powell is a good theologian and can convey ideas and new thoughts that lay folks can understand. Really good reading and very thought provoking!

great thinking

Down to earth & useful suggestions.

The message of this book is that clergy and laity read and hear the Bible in some significantly different ways. The effect of this book is that I feel hopeful.

Helpful book. Short and sweet. Helps you get out of your expectations into thinking about what people in the pews are thinking.