A preacher describes his discovery of the gifts of the commonplace — how centuries of faith and wisdom came to live in his flesh and bone, engaging him in his own preaching and liberating his body and voice to serve the Word.

He could make women faint, melt an audience, or cause paroxysms of excitement among his thousands of listeners simply by the way he said "Mesopotamia." George Whitefield (1714- 1770) was a sensation. Even Benjamin Franklin, initially skeptical about this exceptional preacher, warmed to him and became his friend and publisher.

The closest to anyone like Whitefield I have experienced is Oswald Hoffmann, the famed radio preacher of The Lutheran Hour. In the pantheon of preachers, "Ozzie" might occupy a lower rank than Whitefield, but he had this in common: When he spoke the word "God," his inflection convinced everyone — whether listening in a church building or at home on the radio — that God was now in the house and about to do something. His speech charged the atmosphere, with electrifying results.

Each time I heard Hoffmann preach, he concluded with an "Amen" that seemed to come straight from Revelation's last chapter, and he began to walk out of the pulpit. Then, he turned back and continued with a coda, a short exposition on "Amen." It was effective — and, though unique to Hoffmann in its presentation, completely unoriginal in its basic message. Like an accomplished jazz musician, he was riffing on Luther and Paul: "Jesus Christ is not YES and NO; rather, all the promises of God find their YES in him. For this reason it is through him that we say the AMEN to the glory of God" (see 2 Corinthians 1:19-20).

Compared with these two preaching giants, I am nowhere on the charts. "A modest little man with much to be modest about" — a seminary instructor borrowed Winston Churchill's famous dismissal of Clement Atlee to give his estimation of me. His colleagues chose words like "diffident" and "phlegmatic." (In hindsight, maybe I was an inspiration to them and their choleric or bilious humors.) Occasionally, after telling a story, I've been compared to Garrison Keillor, but the point of comparison is probably the droopy voice and reserved demeanor, not his imagination and charm.

My own preaching is commonplace. I'm not embarrassed by it, but neither do I believe that my preaching will attract thousands, either in person or on the airwaves. (The one time I served a congregation that broadcasts its worship, I envisioned a lone, grizzled trucker listening while hauling a semi-load of wind-choked turkeys across southern Minnesota. I never figured out exactly how to address his Sitz im Leben, so I focused on the flock in front of me and decided the trucker could shift for himself.)

Embracing the Commonplace
Over time I made two discoveries that liberated my preaching and ministry, and in these discoveries I made a home in the commonplace as a preacher.

The first discovery came in a slow, ambivalent acceptance of a way of preaching that was decidedly different from where I thought my theological training led.

Early in ministry I carefully prepared sermons using a defined, orderly process, and on Sunday mornings I stayed very close to my typewritten manuscript. Older members who grew up speaking German called this hard work "making a sermon," and I labored as hard at making these sermons as on any seminar paper. Their impact was decidedly underwhelming. Although one careful listener in the congregation heard something for her faith, the rest showed a steely resolve to hope for something more engaging and vital the next week.

I was puzzled. Looking back on those sermons, I find them clear, organized, carefully phrased, and theologically sound. Even today I make the same theological moves with those Scriptures and preach the same message.

My own disappointment and impatience puzzled me most. I knew I was capable of better, and occasionally that better preaching broke loose. It happened when I used the scripts "written on the heart" rather than the manuscript in my hands. I discovered a message scripted in my very flesh and bone — a message embedded deep in my experience and yet not at all a creation of my own homiletical craft or even original with me. The story of Jesus — already framed in Scripture, Luther's catechism, and the inspired words of others — was not far away (as Paul recalled in Romans 10:8).The scripts were right there, on the tip of my tongue, struggling to break free.

In other words, I discovered the wisdom in the parable of the householder (Matthew 13:52). Slowly I learned to surrender the vain hope that each week I could spin gold out of my own straw. I discovered my calling in simply serving the Word that is already there, letting it have its way with me, by giving voice to inspired words that had been composed by others and entrusted to my mind and heart as a treasury of scripts.

With the full measure of God's mercy in Christ that had been entrusted to me from the beginning of my life in story and song, I felt fabulously wealthy. Choosing each week what to bring out of that storehouse to give to others turned weekly preparation into a weekly romp in that wealth.

Increasingly, what I took with me into the pulpit was not a manuscript but an outlined inventory of what to bring out from that treasury. For the journey through that quarter hour on Sunday morning, it served as a road map. For the already familiar parts of the journey a word or two were a sufficient reminder. Eventually, when the scripts and phrasings of God's mercy were already well rehearsed in my life and memory, I entrusted the road map itself to memory.

Liberation of the Body
The change liberated my whole body to serve proclamation. My eyes, hands, even feet were freed from paper and pulpit. Not surprisingly, the more that I became engaged in preaching — the more I used of the Word embedded in my whole life's experience and the more I used of my body — the more engaged others became. Their lives, their very physical selves, opened to a more fully engaged preacher.

Responses have been mixed. When I returned years later to preach for a special occasion in the congregation where I began ministry, one listener blurted his wonder at the change in his engagement. Other listeners, however, express wonder in a different way about why I repeat selected words, phrases, stories, and ideas in this way of preaching.

My usual response — "Tell me about a song you love and its refrain" — comes from my second discovery: I discovered the role of commonplaces in oral discourse.

Today many use the word "commonplace" pejoratively to dismiss expressions that are thought to be tired, stale, or threadbare. In a culture that celebrates "breaking" news, the most current technological wizardry, and the freshest and most original video clip, a well-rehearsed and oft-used passage like Hoffmann's "Amen" coda sounds like a gimmick, a hackneyed piece of theatricality.

I learned, however, that ancient cultures centered on oral discourse valued a polished and familiar expression — an evocative phrase, a proverb with the ring of truth, a convincing story or fable, a treasured song — that a public speaker would use repeatedly precisely because the speaker knew it so well and the audience yearned to hear it afresh. The ancient rhetoricians called these powerful assets commonplaces: places, because they were like a reservoir of resources for effective, compelling speech; common, because the assets could be used on any occasion, for nearly any purpose.

I realized I was becoming a commonplace preacher in drawing from the great reservoir of tried and true expressions whose gospel message was so compelling that they found their way into my very flesh and bone. When called to give "an account of the hope within" me, I realized I had a ready reserve of material — narratives, songs, turns of phrase, even vocal inflections and facial expressions — and I was drawing on that commonplace treasury.

Despite the great flood of creativity in today's media ready to be played on your iPod, I believe such commonplace preaching is effective because the overwhelming majority of Christians hear preaching in real time, without pause or rewinding. They bring hearts and hands with their heads, all of which are easily distracted and frequently burdened. For these listeners the polished originality of a literary sermon often fails to engage.

Originality of thought and expression in oral speech demands alert minds prepared for complex reasoning and nuanced expression. Usually this is better received in print by readers.

Sunday's Coming
Commonplace preaching, by contrast, moves the heart and body with the mind precisely because hearers know from the simple and familiar language exactly where it is headed. The preaching in African-American congregations illustrates how familiar commonplaces — the call and response, the deliberate use of sung and spoken refrains, the frequent revisiting of familiar and treasured Scripture narratives, even the repeated encouragements to the preacher — engage the congregation fully and deeply. Most important of all is the completely predictable destination — the place that is common to all authentic Christian preaching: the cross and empty tomb of Jesus. The power is not in some surprising insight or clever twist by the preacher but in the sure and steady journey to the common place where God's powerful love intersects human life, led by language that is tested and true.

At the ELCA Youth Gathering in Dallas, Texas in 1991, Tony Campolo gave one of the most powerful and memorable speeches ever presented to any ELCA gathering. Those present undoubtedly remember the refrain "It's Friday ... but Sunday's comin'" in a powerful proclamation of hope amid hardship. We live in a Friday world, he said, shadowed not only by loss and failure but also by real evil. But, Sunday's comin' — the new day, the new creation that God promises — and so you can live with courage, conviction, and hope in this Friday world. (Notice how my prosaic summary doesn't carry the same punch as the repeated refrain?)

Campolo's presentation that day was far from original. He has used "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'" repeatedly, and it is the title of a book he has since published. It has inspired numerous sermons by others as well as a handful of amateur videos on YouTube. What is less known is that Campolo borrowed this simple commonplace from an African-American preacher, who himself was borrowing from the rich oral tradition of his community of faith.

Campolo is an impassioned speaker. Undoubtedly "It's Friday, but Sunday's comin'" is new to many of his hearers. It succeeds, however, neither on Campolo's passion nor in the novelty at its first sounding but in its repetition, in its crescendo, in its relentless retracing of the story every Christian knows but yearns to hear again — the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

Preaching is at the heart of my calling, and often I have wished that I were better at it. Often that yearning was to be more exceptional. Now, however, I think exceptional is a selfish distraction, and I hope to be nothing more or less than a commonplace preacher.

Marcus R. Kunz is senior pastor at St. John Lutheran Church, Cedar Falls, Iowa, and a member of the Publication Committee of Lutheran Partners.