“Sermon structures,” he writes, “ought to travel through congregational consciousness as a series of immediate thoughts, sequentially designed and imaged with technical skill so as to assemble in forming faith.” (18) p. 15
“The human mind, says Buttrick, works something like an auto-focus camera. Everything out there in the world is streaming through the lens of human consciousness, but, as every photographer knows, not everything can be captured on film. The photographer must pick something to photograph and must allow the camera to focus on some object, thereby creating both foreground and background. Just so, the mind selects some field on which to focus, either using a wide-angle lens, thus taking in a broad range of meaning, or narrowing its view to a single small area. It can employ “filters” to highlight certain structures of meaning and can even determine “composition” and choose “angles of vision.” From Long (P. 151)
reachers are something like photographers’ assistants, setting up a series of interesting scenes and tiien urging the hearers to take pictures of them, ^\dlen preachers interpret the Scripture, they discover there “fields of understanding produced by symbols of revelation,” and the task of preaching is to present those in such a way that the hearers can capture them on the mind’s film. “Preaching,” claims Buttrick, “mediates some structured understanding in consciousness to a congregation.”^^ p. 153
ermons involve a sequence of ideas. First the preacher speaks of this idea, then another idea, then the next idea, and so on. As the preacher presents one idea after another, the hearers are busily snapping away with their mental cameras. “Here is the first idea,” the preacher says. Click. “Here is the second idea,” and, again, click. Now, when the sermon is finished, what do the hearers have? If the sermon is poorly constructed, all they have is a cluttered box of random snapshots. If the sermon is well formed, though, they will have something like a filmstrip, a series of pictures that possess a lively sense of movement from one to the next and that work together to produce coherent understanding. p. 153
Sermons, then, are “a movement of language from one idea to another,” and because of this Buttrick likes to call the individual ideas, or units, of the sermon “moves.” Because of his understanding of how human consciousness works, Buttrick insists that these moves must be built according to a single blueprint. Every move is required to possess three indispensable parts:^^1. Opening statement. The preacher must state, in one clear sentence, the main idea of this move, what this move is about (e.g., “We are all sinners”). This invites the hearers to “take a picture of this.” In addition, the opening must show how this move is connected to the one before, indicate the point of view of the move, and establish the move’s emotional mood.2. Development. In the middle section of the move, the main idea is elaborated, sometimes through clarification or illustration and sometimes through the raising of objections.3. Closure. In a terse final sentence, the main idea of the move is restated, thereby signaling to the hearer that this move is complete. Thus, the shutter on the hearers camera closes, and the film advances in readiness for the next move. p.153-154
Buttrick is persuaded that, given the diminishing attention spans of contemporary people, about four minutes is the most people will devote to a single idea, so each move must complete its work within that limit. A well-designed twenty-minute sermon, then, consists of an ordered sequence of no more than five or six of these three-part, precision-designed moves. p.154