The Candler School of Theology at Emory University will host a memorial service April 9 for world-renowned preacher, scholar and author Fred Brenning Craddock, who died earlier this month.
Craddock was the Candler School’s first Bandy Professor of Preaching and New Testament from 1979 until he retired in 1994.
Called a “preaching genius,” Craddock developed an open-ended, participatory storytelling technique instead of the traditional three points and a conclusion. His innovative style influenced pastors worldwide.
“Fred Craddock overturned the lecture approach to preaching,” said Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler. “He told stories, gritty, earthy kinds of stories with much more a discovery process in which he let you conclude the sermon’s meaning.”
Craddock, who had Parkinson’s disease, died March 6 in Cherry Log, Ga. He was 86. His funeral was March 9 at Cherry Log Christian Church.
The April 9 memorial service will begin at 4 p.m. in Cannon Chapel on the Emory campus, followed by a reception in Brooks Commons.
Craddock was born in 1928 in Humboldt, Tenn. He grew up poor and had a gift for storytelling. His childhood home had two books, a Bible and a book of Shakespeare that his father, who regaled family and neighbors with his tall tales, often quoted.
After graduating from Johnson’s Bible College in 1950, he and his high school sweetheart Nettie Dungan married and had two children. Ordained a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), he graduated from Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Okla., in 1953 and received his doctorate in theology from Vanderbilt University in 1964. He taught at Phillips until he moved to Atlanta to teach at Emory.
At 5-foot-5 with a voice he once described as “the wind whistling through a splinter on a post,” he had to stand on a box to be seen above the lectern. His first sermon, in the traditional lecture style, flopped. Craddock quickly realized he’d have to compensate for his lack of a booming voice or an imposing stature.
“He was a very small man with a high squeaky voice. He learned how to take his liabilities and make them an asset,” Long said.
During after-church fellowships, Craddock noticed that parishioners were hanging on every word of his stories. So he took those homespun yarns from the church steps to the pulpit – interweaving Scripture, a surprise ending and leaving the rapt flock to ponder the point. Congregations loved it.
His approach transformed the preaching world and his ministry life. His books became required reading. Pastors packed his classes and studied his sermons to emulate his style. Ministers admired how he preached without being preachy, recounting everyday encounters at an airport or a hardware store.
“You felt the message was for you even though he didn’t know you,” said Neal Ponder, retired associate minister of Peachtree Christian Church. “He was not just a great preacher, but an excellent New Testament scholar. He used the stories of the master storyteller Jesus and his own stories in an appropriate way to make real the message.”
In 1996, Baylor University named him one of the 12 most influential preachers in the English-speaking world. In 2010, Preaching magazine ranked his 1985 book, “Preaching,” No. 4 on its list of the 25 most influential preaching books of the past 25 years. Other popular books include “As One Without Authority” and “Overhearing the Gospel.”
As his reputation grew, frequent speaking engagements kept him on the go.
“People liked his personal touch, his humor and that he didn’t come across as a big shot,” said his son John Craddock of Marietta. “He’d treat a person on the street with the same regard that he’d give to the president of the United States.”
After retirement, Craddock moved to North Georgia and became the founding pastor of the Cherry Log Christian Church. He also started the nonprofit Craddock Center, which provides literacy programs and cultural enrichment for needy families of southern Appalachia and offers preaching workshops for pastors of the region’s small churches.
Jerry Johnson, chaplain at Georgia Mountains Hospice in Jasper and a retired pastor, said Craddock invited him to a preaching workshop in 2003. He ended up attending about a dozen. “The stories became the sermon,” Johnson said. “Fred emphasized saying it in your own words and not formal scholarly words. He was a highly educated man, but he had a heart for those who did not have that level of education.”
Although Parkinson’s disease slowed him down, his recall of details remained sharp, and he stayed active as a center board member until the end, said Julie Jabaley, the center’s executive director. They discussed his legacy during a meeting two days before he died.
“Dr. Craddock always said we enrich lives through service,” Jabaley said. “He felt everybody was equal and merited a good life. To me, that’s his legacy.”
In addition to his son John, Craddock is survived by his wife, Nettie Craddock of Cherry Log; daughter Laura Lee McMahan of Oklahoma City; brother John Alvin Craddock of San Diego, Calif.; four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
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