Listening to the Hispanic Sermon Listener

Team Members/Contributors

Danny Román-Gloró Sunset Congregational Church Contact Me

About this pastoral study project

Despite the uniqueness and the longevity of Christian preaching as a form of human communication, there is a limited amount of empirical data that can help scholars and practitioners understand the impact that the sermon makes in the lives of the listeners. This reality has begun to change as a growing number of scholars have begun to “listen to the listener,” by learning from the listener what makes for an effective sermon. However, this kind of research has not occurred within the Spanish-speaking US Hispanic community. The Spanish-speaking US Hispanic Community represents an amalgamation ethnic groups that are united by the common use of Spanish and their immigrant experience. This group represents a rich tapestry of customs and cultural perspectives that shape their individual and collective listening experience of the sermon. As a Spanish-speaking pastor faced with this collage of people, I struggle to understand what elements of the preaching event make for an effective communication event, and thus transformative experience. The purpose of this research is to conduct a study of Spanish-speaking US Hispanic sermon listeners with the goal of discovering how this audience “hears” a sermon, so that preachers can learn to craft sermons that can communicate effectively within that community. The study will use in-depth interviews and focus groups to capture patterns and elements that make a sermon, an effective sermon, in the mind of the Spanish-speaking US Hispanic listener. The results of this study will be crafted into a presentation for an academic conference such as the Academy of Homiletics and/or the Association for Hispanic Theological Education (AETH), and an article for publication in a scholarly journal.