The pedagogy of proclamation: Homiletical training among pastoral interns in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Americ

The purpose of this study was to describe the process and content of homiletical pedagogy occurring among seminarians in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) during their year of pastoral internship, to offer a preliminary assessment of factors contributing to effective homiletical training in this setting, to report on these same seminarians' assessment of the effectiveness of internship as a homiletical training ground, and to lay the groundwork for developing a systematic approach to the homiletical training of pastoral interns.;To provide a better understanding of the process of homiletical pedagogy as it takes place in supervised field settings, the researcher interviewed thirty seminarians at the completion of their year of internship in congregations of the ELCA regarding their development as preachers on internship. The internship supervisors of these thirty seminarians were subsequently interviewed to better understand their role in the process of homiletical pedagogy. The sample was comprised of internship sites in nineteen of the ELCA's sixty-five synods and seminarians drawn from three of the ELCA's eight seminaries. Interview transcriptions were compiled and reviewed for common themes, striking differences, and any correspondence between the description of the phenomenon and components of classic homiletical training as outlined in the review of literature and traits of biblical preaching derived from an accompanying lexical review of the New Testament.;Major findings of this study include (1) internship, while a valuable venue for homiletical pedagogy and enthusiastically embraced by seminarians, has yet to be fully exploited in this regard; (2) support for Bresee's (Homiletics Teaching Methods) contention that the teaching of preaching suffers from being theologically top heavy and methodologically weak, even in a field setting; (3) the single greatest factor for effective homiletical pedagogy was a supervisor who approached the task in a systematic, active, and intentional manner; (4) the quality, quantity, and content of supervision of the preaching component varied greatly and focused more on evaluation than instruction.