Craddock’s Inductive Method: Craddock proposed that sermons be shaped according to the same process of creative discovery employed by preachers in their exegetical work.
When preachers study biblical texts, he said, they do not know in advance what those texts mean; they must search for meanings, putting clues together until meanings emerge at the end. Sermons, therefore, ought to re-create imaginatively this inductive quest so that the listeners can share the preacher’s experience of illumination. The implication is that hearers best listen to and learn from sermons precisely the way preachers listen to and learn from biblical texts. p. 145
“So instead of being told in the introduction what the sermon is about, listeners ought to move through the sermon as a process, putting together various bits and pieces of evidence, until they are able to discover the key claim of the sermon in the conclusion.” p. 145
by the time the hearers arrive at the end of an inductive sermon, they ideally have become so engaged in this discovery process that they, and not the preacher, complete the sermon by naming its resolution in their own minds and lives. Just as preachers at their exegetical desks finally claim for themselves the meaning of the text, so hearers in the pews should be empowered to claim for themselves the meanings of those texts through the gradual step-by-step process of the sermons.” p. 145
“building cumulatively toward a climactic “Aha!” These smaller units are connected by transitional expressions that help the hearers put the pieces together, such as “It seems … , but still…”; “Of course . . . , and yet…”; or “Both this and this … , yet in a larger sense .. Taken as a whole, then, the sermon form proposed by Craddock is an attempt to organize the flow of the sermon so that it “corresponds to the way people ordinarily experience reality and to the way life’s problem-solving activity goes on naturally and casually.” p. 145
My notes: Find Craddock’s actual quote. Above has footnote (8)
“In Craddock’s view, the preacher should imagine that the hearers are going to solve a specific problem, and then design the sermon to give them all the necessary information, and in the proper order, to resolve that problem for themselves. It is crucial to remember that in Craddock’s scheme the problem being solved in the sermon is always the question, What does this biblical text mean for us today? That question hangs in the air at the beginning, and the sermon rolls along the pathway of discovery, gathering clues, until it finally arrives at the place where the listeners are prepared to make a decision for themselves about the claim of the text upon their lives.” p. 145-146