Comments on Context:  Sermon Structures

Would these count as
Ladders and Jewels in Web Design
or Twin Design?

Excerpt from
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63
by Taylor Branch
about Martin Luther King Jr.'s years at Crozer Theological Seminary:

In lectures dealing with the preacher's tradecraft, [Professor] Keighton taught that a preacher should first prepare an outline based on one of the proven sermon structures. There was the Ladder Sermon, the Jewel Sermon, the Skyrocket Sermon, the Twin Sermon, the Suprise Package Sermon, and many others. The Ladder Sermon climbed through arguments of increasing power toward the conclusion the preacher hoped to make convincing. The Jewel Sermon held up a single idea from many different angles, as a jeweler might examine a precious stone. The Skyrocket Sermon usually began with a gripping human interest story leading to a cosmic spiritual lesson, followed by a shower of derivative lessons falling back to earth among the congregation. . . .King thrived on both the setting and the pressure. . . .The Negro students shared much merriment in contrasting Keighton's archly formal structures with their own homemade preaching formulas. Keighton might have his Ladder Semon, they joked, but they had Rabbit in the Bushes, by which they meant that if they felt the crowd stir, they should repeat the theme, just as a hunter shoots into the shaking bush on the assumption that a rabbit might be there. Keighton might have his Classification Sermon, but they had Three Points in the Palm of a Hand. . . .

What does this have to do with online education?

Sermons are one of the few communication forms that have not been reduced to sound-bites and sloganeering.  Good preachers do put a lot of effort into how they present their ideas and do not expect the content alone to carry the sermon.

Good instructors, too, should consider form as well as content. Online educators in particular have an opportunity to think about how content can be structured. A web site can do more than post a lecture with some relevant links. Do we use a "Ladder" structure or "Jewel" structure? There are many possibilities.

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