Then he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.†All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. Luke 4:21-22.
Two weeks ago I wrote a post on “Expository Preaching.†On the one hand, I was surprised with the number of sympathetic comments and excellent discussion (both on my blog and the Out or Ur Blog) that recognized the realness of this problem of “commodification of the Word.†On the other hand, there were some folk who implied that I was either denigrating Scripture, diminishing the importance of preaching, or making “meaning†unstable so much so that it wasn’t worth preaching anymore. To me, these were the very things I was working against by alerting us to the danger of “the commodification of the Word.†And so I promised a second post that would explore how we might preach more faithfully in our times. To this end, I offer the following four directives. There is this warning however. This is the longest post I have ever posted. To those who have little time I suggest you read the four headings and glean what you might from the suggestions that interest you. However you proceed, let us have a vigorous and charitable discussion. Let us work together for the reshaping, restoring and reclaiming of preaching as a practice for our times.
1.) QUIT EXPLAINING AND START PROCLAIMING. Let us preachers quit explaining the text so much. Instead let us proclaim the reality revealed in the text so that we all might live in it. In other words, let us preach to unfurl the reality revealed in the text that we could not see apart from being engulfed in the story of God from creation to redemption. We will no doubt, need to explain some things in the text. But the primary task of preaching on Sunday morning is “proclaiming†the reality of the world as it is under the good news of the gospel that renders all things new.
What can this possibly mean? Unfurling? Reality? It means our first task, as preachers, is to describe, not prescribe (although prescription will flow out of the description). The primary move of preaching will not be sentence-by-sentence exposition & explaining, then an application. Instead the primary move of the preacher will be to describe the world as it is via the person and work of Jesus Christ, then invite the hearers into this reality of Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord by calling for submission, confession, obedience or the affirmation of a truth “for our lives,†We used to exposit sentence by sentence and offer an application to take home and do something with. Now we describe the world as it is under the One who died, rose, sits at the right hand and will come again. And then we invite people to live under this reality and respond accordingly.
To sum up in a few short words, we preach to “fund imagination†in Brueggemann’s words. Through preaching and proclaiming the Word, the Spirit reorganizes perception, experience, and even faith so as to enable hearers to live in the reality of Christ’s work, respond to Christ and obey. This kind of preaching subverts the dominant habits of thinking and the ways our imaginations have been taught to see the world. Instead of dissecting the text making it portable so as to be distributed to isolated Cartesian selves for their own personal use, the preacher renarrates the world as it is under the Lordship of Christ and then invites people into it. And it is from such preaching that we, the hearers, can receive a new self in Christ.
When I preach, as I stand in front of the open Scripture, before His people, I see my role as the herald of the new world that has been inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Christ. Whether in the Old or New Testaments, I am unfurling the world as it is under the work of God down through history and ultimately in Jesus Christ. I always start by narrating a common experience out of a personal story, a movie, a piece of literature. I try to paint the way of seeing we might be caught in via a movie or a story. I try to expose the way we might be living under an alternative interpretation of the way things are. But then I move to the text for the day, read it and start to unfold the reality as it is in God thru Christ, either in contrast, or in fuller magnitude through the text of the day. I seek to paint the view of this reality, the way we must see things because of God’s work in Jesus Christ as revealed here in this text (It can be either Old or New Testament – but all is informed by God’s revealing himself in His Son). I then move faithfully to invite the gathering into this, looking for responses we all must make to live more faithfully out of who He is, what He has done, is doing and where He is taking us and the world. Some call it narrative preaching, some call it story, Brueggemann calls it “funding imagination. I’d like to think of it as “proclaiming the reality of the good news over our lives.â€
2.) PLEASE, LET’S COME TO SCRIPTURE AS DRAMA NOT A TEXTBOOK
Let us preachers resist all modernist temptations to see the Scriptures as a propositional textbook of religious facts. Instead, let us see the Scriptures as alive. Scripture is real accounts, testimonies and witnesses of God’s people, through the prophets and the apostles, to what God has done and said and will do. So let us read and speak as ones invited to see ourselves as invited in to participate in the continuation of all this! This might mean we might have to see the Bible as a Narrative (as became so popular in the 80’s.) More recently von Balthazar (Theo Drama), Sam Wells (Drama – Improvisation) and Kevin Vanhoozer (The Drama of Doctrine) have all taught us to think of Scripture as Theo Drama where we become the participants. This is the metaphor I believe we must follow in our preaching.
If this is true however, we will need to put historical exegesis in its proper place as a limited tool grounded in history that must be submitted to the traditions and history of God’s work in the church. We need not spend countless hours translating each text thinking we have reached the original meaning somehow by our own brilliance. Instead we stand in a long line of preachers, and the vast theological realities have been interpreted and shown out of Scripture down through the ages. We must pay attention to these great overarching Grand themes. And unfold the glory of God’s Story in Christ and His mission in the world. Historical critical methods still have service, but they must serve the explication of Scripture’s narrative. Authorial intent is not the main issue although this may be of importance for understanding the text at certain times. What is important is the reality being unfurled about God in Christ and how we can best respond so as to live into it until He returns. The hubris of pastors thinking they can exegete a text better and more accurately than the thousands that have gone before gets in the way of the Main Thing, the Glory of His Majestic Work and What He is working For in History. This is where our imaginations will be fed. This is where we will be formed as missional people.
3.) FORGET THE APPLICATION POINTS! GO FOR THE LITURGICAL RESPONSE
By “liturgical†I mean the activity of responding to God, who He is, what he has done, what He has said. It is what shapes us into relationship with Him. It makes no sense then for the preacher who proclaims the Word of God to conclude with more notes of applications and “to do” lists. Instead the Word invokes postures of response: i.e., silence, submission, obedience, affirmation in faith, confession before the Lord, and of course the Eucharistic celebration of participating in the receiving of the Body of Christ. Each time I respond, each time I submit, each time I affirm the truth about the reality as it is under Christ, I am changed and I grow. Slowly I am formed over time through the faithful preaching of the Word and the ever hearing, responding, submitting, obeying, confessing, affirming and acting in faith. This is why the silence, when it follows the preaching of the Word, is often the most powerful moment in the sermon.
This means our understanding of sanctification in preaching might have to change. For what is happening here to the hearers is not a.) the cognitive digestion of some information about God and moral life, from which we b.) understand and assent and then c.) tell our body to do it. Instead we hear proclaimed the reality (“redescriptionâ€) of the world through the good news, a declaration of the way the world is, from which we are invited to enter in through submission, confession, repentance, and affirmation, from which we cannot help but be changed and engage the world differently. Our character changes, the way we see the world changes, the way we see the poor, the way we see our money, the way we see the children changes and we naturally respond to obey and move in faith. In Christ, by the Holy Spirit, “the eyes of our imaginations are opened, and we receive a new self.â€
4.) THE ACT OF PREACHING CAN ONLY BE THE TIP OF A COMMUNAL ICEBERG
If preaching starts and ends with the sermon on Sunday, and it is distributed to individuals as portable property to be taken home in notes or a cassette tape, it cannot help but be the means of fostering interpretive violence. Because it will inevitably put the text at the disposal of the listening or speaking subject’s own structure and agenda. The violence comes when we put our own meanings or agenda onto Scripture. The violence comes when the preaching of the Word separates us as individuals over against one another armed with the interpretation we want because we do not come together in mutual submission to discern the Scripture’s meaning for our lives today. If preaching is to avoid this violence, it must foster communal practices among us that allow us to submit to one another in the work of the Spirit to interpret the Scriptures. We do this not as a democracy, but as a Spirit filled community where we submit to each other’s authoritative gifts. Of course, to even think of doing church this way requires a new imagination.
At our church, many of us meet in small triadic fellowships, to read the texts from Sunday, confess sin, sit and listen, and practice speaking truth with love and submission. We have a B&B (Bible and Brew … uh … coffee) session every Sun a.m. to read the texts together and ask what these texts speak about God, His mission in Christ and how we must respond. We need more places to read and listen and speak into each other’s lives out of the preaching of the Word.
I believe each local Body of Christ is the fertile ground for the forming of our imaginations through the interpretation of Scripture. Here in community we learn the virtues necessary to interpret Scripture for the local challenges of the Christian life. Stephen Fowl, calls these communities “vigilant communities†in his book Engaging Scripture. He says faithful interpretation requires vigilant communities that engage in regular practices of truth telling, forgiveness and reconciliation (ch. 3). Humility and the skill of listening are prerequisite for anyone being transformed by Scripture. These are the tools for the reshaping of imagination by the Holy Spirit. Humility and listening (i.e. patience) can only be learned in communities who practice worship and mission in ways that foster these basic Christian skills. Without becoming vigilant communities, I fear we all fall into modernist temptation, to believe that Scripture is perspicuous (to me), its meaning is automatically self evident to each individual (as long as they agree with me), and I know Scripture (well enough to justify my life to myself): the ultimate denial of the hermeneutic task.
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That’s excellent, thanks. I especially agree with point 2, about the Bible as drama.
pax et bonum
I was wonder’n (and this may have been covered in the repsonses on the other post [I'll have to go back to that]) how this new imagination would actually be practiced. Is this to say that there is no room whatsoever for the a speaker to stand up in front of people and speak? It seems that even Pagitt (who’s book you slightly criticized for being too democratic) still has a place for this. He just adds the “conversational approach” somewhere in the middle of the week, such that both approaches are at work in his particular fellowship (FWIW, even when he does speak from the pulpit, his sermon is discussed with a group of people beforehand, such that he is not the “Lone Ranger” in the development OF the sermon). If it is the case that this will still exist, how will this fit into the life of a particular local body? It is this which I was hoping you would respond to. Thanks.
P.S. By the way, as you are well aware of, even institutions of theological training have this one-way type of approach (i.e. a guest theologian will come and speak at a school, or seminar [is he somehow preaching less the "Word of God?"]) and so I wonder if the “conversational approach” can be applied in this setting as well. If so, how?
great, thought provoking stuff David. I will be entering the pastorate in the future and I’m keen to hear people hashing through the nuts and bolts of preaching.
Great stuff. I have been desiring recently to do things diffrently when I preach/proclaim. You have put into words what has been pretty amebic in my brain lately. Lot’s to process and I know it’s a bit of a discovery, but this is great to read!
Absolutely amazing stuff, David. Thank you.
Absolutely amazing stuff, David. Thank you.
My note again. DUDE THAT WAS AWSOME
Sorry, not the most “academic” response. But man, that excites me. I mean, I guess just the idea of it, since, again, I’m no pastor. Anyway, I can really relate to the idea of preaching that “funds imagination”. I really like that. I was floored when I learned that one of my favorite archtiects from whom I learned so much thought of an architectural plan as a “springboard for the imagination”. In a key sense it sounds like an architectural plan is much like a sermon, according to what you are saying, Dave. It’s an issue of representation. To draw a plan is to put your faith in an unseen reality to be fulfilled in the future, but available to the imagination. And not just the personal private imagination of the architect and his intentions, but the plan “describes” or even “proclaims” (well, in architectural language, “proposes”) an action available to and seen by all.
When I do speak in church, the process that I use I think is similar to what you described. Now don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t give sermons. I just get the opportunity to speak every now and again. For example just today I gave a portion of my testimony in 8 minute form. This notion that “no thing is a representation of itself” (Meister Eckhart) is ingrained into my thinking. When I considered the story I wanted to tell, I started with a story in scripture to act as a springboard to the idea in which my story participates. Then the story was able to roll from there without just being an “explanation” or a voyeur-like public screening into my private little Cartesianly notated/located life. I ended up with a spring of tears that seemed to mysteriously well up in others as well. So apparently it REALLY WASN’T just MY story, nor justy my interpretation and/or explanation of a text that happens to be able to be “exposited” or confirmed by my story (which would have been ironic).
The thought of trying to do something similar in telling the story of a whole community of folks scares the crap out of me. Makes me not want to do it even more than I didn’t want to share my story this morning. I really respect/appreciate someone who can “preach well”. That’s pretty cool. Thanks again, David for posting/sharing.
I particularly appreciate point 4.. and I wonder if achieving this is possible in most places where the preacher is a hired professional and not fundamentally one of the people.. suffering with, bearing, loving and loved, enduring, following Jesus together, engaging in justice, engaging in finding meaning together, walking in communitas… Apart from this immersion, there can only be an engagement in new method and mere technique..
I agree with len … the proclaiming of the gospel into and over people’s lives must come from a position of “amongness, even along-side-ness”… This is the notion of leadership, in Christ’s words, of “not lording it over them”… I think that too often, as churches get bigger, preachers cannot be preachers, they cannot preach to people they know and walk with. I am always surprised then, when attenders at local mega-mega churches refer to the one who preachers as their pastor. I ask have you ever met the man/woman? have you ever had a single conversation with him? The answer of course is always “no.” Well then why call him “pastor”? Is (s)he a pastor or a lecturer? And the same folk always seem amazed when they say “it felt like he was speaking directly to me?” Should people be amazed at this? I don’t think so if we restore preaching to what preaching is. The proclaiming of the gospel into and over a people we walk along-side.
In relation to -b’s comment. I cannot totally get on board with pastor Paggit’s progressive dialogue. I believe preaching, proclamation of reality is a Spiritual (Spirit filled and transformational) event. It is only democracy and ill formed ever-deferring forms of Derridian postmodernism that seek to eliminate all forms of totalizing discourse. I choose to go Foucaultian and see that no one no where can escape formation under a discourse. The ground zero of that formation for our (Christian) discourse is the preaching of the Word. Having said that, the kind of preaching I have been complaining about too easily gives away the formation of meaning, language and reality to alternative discourses. So let’s preach! from a pulpit.. its ok! Unless of course you’ve succombed to the American way which teaches us “we each must make up our own mind,” “yeah right” … I could tell myriads of great stories and workings out of the symbolism of our pulpit, what we wear, where the pulpit is placed in the church, all to make sure we are being intentional as to what the preaching of the Word is … but maybe in a later post..
Thanks to everyone for this great “conversation”…
David, thanks for clarity in your response. The horizon IS set before us and does indeed have a claim over our lives.
Hi David,
Regarding point 2, I agree with you. Many preachers have a tendency to read the Bible as a textbook and/or a scientific document. This is absurd, being that the whole of the Bible was written in pre-scientific times. The creation account suffers greatly from this tendency. The point isn’t that it all happened in exactly 7 days, it’s that God created everything with care, and we are his creation. It’s so important to get in to the story, to realize that it’s a part of you.
Thank you for your words.
Hi David,
Regarding point 2, I agree with you. Many preachers have a tendency to read the Bible as a textbook and/or a scientific document. This is absurd, being that the whole of the Bible was written in pre-scientific times. The creation account suffers greatly from this tendency. The point isn’t that it all happened in exactly 7 days, it’s that God created everything with care, and we are his creation. It’s so important to get in to the story, to realize that it’s a part of you.
Thank you for your words.
Dear David,
So good to read your follow up from the last entry you made. I appreciate your time and effort to clarify your view and points. And there is so much I agree with and also which to respond to in a concerned way.
I agree with your paragraph about the primary move of preaching to be to describe the world as it is via the person and work of Jesus Christ… This is profound. Expositional preaching should have this as its goal, to demonstrate, to unfurl, as you said, from the text, the meaning of this earthly existence, this world and the times, this state of affairs, and the hope that is found in Christ’s atoning work on the cross. I agree that movies are often excellent avenues to communicate the truths of reality through metaphor. I can think of dozens of movies, like the Matrix (perhaps one of the best metaphors of spiritual reality, though, as with all movies, it does fall short). Conversations can and should perhaps begin here and end with the gospel. Too much conversation from the pulpit, however, entertains without ever going to the point, the substance, the Truth.
You wrote, “If this is true however, we will need to put historical exegesis in its proper place as a limited tool grounded in history that must be submitted to the traditions and history of God’s work in the church.” I think I understand what you are saying, but I might have worded it like, “We need to come alongside other great Christian writers and thinkers who read, meditated and wrestled with Scripture in their own day and time with the issues and evils of their own day and age.” This is the immense value of biblical/Christian history. If we are called to encourage each other as long as it is called today, and today is as long as a thousand years to the Lord, then we can take encouragement from men and women of faith who walked decades, centuries and millennia before us.
You wrote, “Authorial intent is not the main issue although this may be of importance… I like the sentence that follows, and I agree with it. But I also believe we should not deemphasize authorial intent. If we hold the belief that the writers of these God-breathed texts were indeed inspired by God, then their intent IS the meaning of the text. Certainly, the context we live in will determine the application of that intepretation, but intent is vital to making sense of our only source of authority, sola scriptura, the living word of God. Were the inspired Apostles, or the Holy Spirit, ignorant of the circumstances we encounter today? Sexual immorality, idolatry, homosexuality, broken homes, divorce, corruption… They speak to these time and again. Was the Apostle Paul ignorant of any corruption or fleshly disorder we encounter today? His epistles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, speak to each and every situation, now and evermore. Nothing needs to be added to this Book.
I absolutely love your third point, especially from the sentence that begins: “It makes no sense…” and moves on to “Instead the Word of God invokes postures of response.” Amen and Amen. The Word of God is living and active and has the God-ordained power to invoke this response without aid of preacher or counselor. And silence is warranted much more often than we allow these days.
Thanks for the well-thought-out essays you have written. I am encouraged by you words and heart and a proclaimer of the Word of God.
Your brother,
Ron
wow, really, really good stuff. Thank you. I have been thinking about expository preaching for quite some time so I’m glad I visited your site! Have you read “Echoes of Scripture” by Richard Hayes? I’ve found it very helpful when it comes to hermeneutics and preaching.
I am much agreed w/ you on the are of “application” but I’m wondering if there isn’t room to paint a picture of what our world (personal or corporate) might look like if we lived out the story/teaching of Scripture. I’m not in disagreement about the liturgical response, but I’m wondering if some specific pictures of how it might look couldn’t fit under the category of “application”. This wouldn’t look like…three ways to apply this principle…but would be much more narrative in approach.
wow, really, really good stuff. Thank you. I have been thinking about expository preaching for quite some time so I’m glad I visited your site! Have you read “Echoes of Scripture” by Richard Hayes? I’ve found it very helpful when it comes to hermeneutics and preaching.
I am much agreed w/ you on the are of “application” but I’m wondering if there isn’t room to paint a picture of what our world (personal or corporate) might look like if we lived out the story/teaching of Scripture. I’m not in disagreement about the liturgical response, but I’m wondering if some specific pictures of how it might look couldn’t fit under the category of “application”. This wouldn’t look like…three ways to apply this principle…but would be much more narrative in approach.
David,
I like what you wrote. In fact, on multiple levels, I agree with you. I think your 4 points are spot on, but I believe the issue is not with Expository preaching. The problem is with the preacher who is NOT expositing properly. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the very nature of Expository preaching is to proclaim the Gospel.
Per your Point One: Yes, there must be some explaining of text but only to the extent that it leads you to the purpose of preaching – the proclamation of the Gospel. I’ve been under too many preachers that only explain the text with the Gospel tact on as a last moment thought. That really irks me!
Point Two: Many of the expository preachers I have been under only explain what the text says and means (at many times rightfully so) but they only look at the immediate (or as I call it, micro-) context instead of looking at both the micro and macro contexts together which inevitably demonstrates Scripture’s drama. To merely look at the micro context without a thought of how it relates to Jesus and His Gospel is not expositing correctly and relegates their preaching to a classroom lecture at best and moralism at worst.
Point Three: Let me say, I abhor “to do” lists. Albeit, they are needed at times but only to the extent that when God IS speaking to us, we’ll know what we should do as response in worship to Him. Much of the time, however, we the hearers/responders will know what we need to do because God has placed His finger on the area needed to be addressed. Anything less than this promotes moralism especially when the Gospel is not the motivating factor behind the doing.
Point Four: This point is not the fault of Expository preaching, per se, but the preacher failing in his exposition of Scripture, as well as, the hearer failing in understanding what REALLY is at stake. This most likely leads us to the fault of the preacher – He may be proclaiming many truths that pertain to the Gospel, but he’s not proclaiming Gospel-Truth.
What you’re criticizing Expository preaching for really relates to the preacher himself. The issue is not that Expository preaching goes too far, but that today’s Expository preaching does not go far enough! We NEED Expository preaching. The problem is, Expository preaching has been inaccurately represented (and implemented)!
David,
I agree with Cruz, any problem with expository preaching rests with the one doing the preaching. Is man to think he has something to offer in a person’s sanctification? If expository preaching is wrong, then we need only look to the Sermon on the Mount and say, “Shame on you preacher”.
May we men never think we can offer what God has already declared.
Hey all …
I have been up in Canada isolated from internet except for the quickest e-mail … I’d like to respond more … and hope to do lately … What I think some of my friends may have missed is that my description of expository preaching is a caricature … one that subtley promotes “the myth” of un mediated authority from God and individualized Christainity. All the problems I have discussed about expository preaching could just as easily be part of any Americanized preaching including topical, yeah even narrative preaching. But it is expository that carries a hubrius with it that I wish to subvert … I hope to say more … I’ll be home in a week.
Blessings David Fitch
Dave,
I have some of the same convictions you do about expository preaching but I need to ask a question or two. I like doing battle with bad ideas too. But is it really necessary to subvert the perceived hubris that you say expository preaching carries? And another question, honestly, does this “hubris” have a face and a name?
Wav,
Hoping to close the obvious circle (but not to end the conversation), I think Dave’s point is that the face of the hubris is expository preaching. I think in your questioning of the place of hubris in expository preacing, you are actually questioning the link between the IDEA of the stated presence of hubris BEHIND expository preacing and the actuality of the preacing itself. Therein lies the conundrum, since the whole problem with expository preaching is in exactly such a separation. The hubris is found in the his-tory of how and why (for what goal, end or purpose) did that separation happen. And that gets a bit complicated, but, as far as I’ve seen, Dave explains it QUITE well (and will probably do so more in later posts), especially in his book.
Even, however, if one were to explain away (or toward) how idea and reality aren’t so separated, you could still be left with the question of the connection between the hubris and the expository preaching. That’s where the historical goals/ends/purposes of modernity come into play, and the fact that they run directly counter to those of God and the church, even intentionaly and explicitly. By the whole “intentionally and explicitly” thing I do not mean to get into a Darwinism vs. Creationism debate. Expository preaching is a technology; techne means “end/goal/purpose”. As I think Dave either explained or hinted at, expository preacing (as we now hear (or speak) it) occurs under the pretenses of the goals, ends or purposes of a modern kind of knowing with a modern kind of hope.
The very word “mode”, for example, that is the basis of “modern” implies a RISIGN UP to a place where we have the RIGHT to choose in what mode we want to operate. I don’t know if pride explains the rising up, but at this point in the story, the rising up implies a pride.
“I believe that on that day, I first became aware of the mystery of the iniquity whose exposure marked the end of an era and the beginning of another. The dream comcieved by Westerm man in the eighteenth century, whose dawn he thought he had glimpsed in 1789, and which until August 2, 1914, had become stronger with the advent of the Enlightenment and scientific discoveries – that dream finally vanished for me before those trainloads of small children. And yet I was still thousands of miles away from imagining that these children were destined to feed the gas chambers and crematoria.” – from the foward to Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT, by Francois Mauriac.
Jason
Oops, meant “techton”, not “techne”. Whatever. It all leads to the same place. Brain fart. Sorry for any confusion.
Dave. When you wrote “the preacher renarrates the world as it is under the Lordship of Christ and then invites people into it,” it reminded me of Peter preaching in Acts 2 where he re-tells the story of Jesus and his resurection and cut to the heart, seeing the truth, and they respond saying “What shall we do,” and Peter replies “repent and be baptized.” It seems to clearly follow the prescriptions you are suggesting. Now, if only I ( being a former student of dave’s) had actually completed one seminary class paper (for his class), perhaps I could back up your entire blog entry with some correct expository explanation as to why you are correct. OK, I meant to be kidding, but perhaps there is something there…
Peter proclaims Jesus’s resurection, tells the story dramatically, goes for the liturgical response (baptism and repentence in this case), and this is only the tip of a huge communal iceberg.
Peace, bro
I agree that we “fund imagination”. Please see my blog for my detailed thoughts around the matter.
It is human imagination that is the broken part of us. It is also what is behind our outward sin (words and actions). See Gen 6:5 < -- human imagination working out to living words and actions is the root reason God destroyed the earth with a flood. If you do any kind of study around the word imagination, you will find NO WHERE is God pleased with it.
Paul picks it up in Corinthains and says how living for Christ involves being aware of vain imaginations, casting them down and bringing every thought into the captivity of Christ.
To be more pragmatic, please take note of your own self. When you feel a painful emotion (anger, fear, frustration, rage, hate, etc), look at where your mind is: about 95% of the time, you’ll find your mind was deep inside a made up mental story and your emotions and feelings are responding.
Moreover, have you ever been in a conversation and you’re not really fully listening to what other people are saying, but you’re inside, imaginging what you’ll say next, how you’ll respond? We ALL do it. We disconnect from reality and the present moment and go chasing off into our made up mental stories and trying to have power and control over the present moment or figure out how at some future moment we can have power and control.
Please take some time to explore my blog and give me feedback as you like and want. I am always open to hear.
[...] reading by me on the subject of expository preaching, you can look here, here and here, here , here, and here and of course the 5th chapter of The Great Giveaway. If people want to see what preaching [...]
[...] Preaching (2006). Back in June and July of 2006 I wrote a few posts ( the other two are here and here) on the problems inherent in expository preaching. It was picked up in the blogosphere (including [...]