sustain:if:able kiwi

preaching as the engaging of multiple stories

I was interviewed about how I prepare to preach today and I suddenly realised how different my preaching preparation is now than say 4 years ago. I have also been following chris erdmans blog, and been increasingly uneasy about the text centred approach being advocated.

Today clarified some things. But first, some of my unique context
1. I’m by nature a theologian. (Update. It’s a discipline that works in a matrix of text, experience, tradition, culture, reason, revelation). It’s in my training and perhaps its in my personal makeup and approach to life. So I do a lot of reflecting.
2. I’m fairly busy. I used to put a lot of time into exegetical preparation. I just don’t have that time now. But that need not mean I am not preparing, for ..
3. I have done quite a bit of study and reading in the last few years, doing a masters and a PhD. So could their be some opportunity to draw on the theological reflection and resources of the last few years? And …
4. I work in multiple job/s, as pastor and lecturer and speaker. So I am constantly in multiple conversation with people and spirituality and life. So could these engagements in fact be gifting me reflections and insights?

So it is my sense that one of the spiritual disciplines of this season of my preaching journey is to trust God by doing less preparation and spending more time intuitively drawing on the learnings from the past few years and from multiple conversations. I don’t find this easy. It requires a greater need for inner centredness and willingness to trust my creative intuition.

What does this mean practically?
Tuesday I sit with the text. Without commentary or exegetical rationalisation I contemplate the Spirit of God among the text.

Wednesday-Friday I sift stories; in the lives of people, in my life, in the culture, I search for the stories that challenge, amplify, de-stablise Tuesday’s text. This is based on the belief that the Spirit of God is among the people of God. If this text is a-live by the Spirit, then I dare to believe that the a-liveness is not just with my individual preparation, but is among the community and in the world. I contemplate the angles and the jarring juxtapositions.

Saturday I write. Often I am surprised by what I have written, as if from deep within something has opened. This is not a mindless process, but somehow the written words capture a more intuitive knowing.

Sunday I speak. I don’t take myself too seriously, but offer some stories, some reflection on a week of sitting with text and people.

I dare to believe that the gospel might be for all people, inside and outside the church, that all people are broken and talented, busy and searching and that the gospel will engage with all of life. It is a text for all, offered not only for me, or for my community, or for society, but freed among many stories and entrusted to the ongoing resonnance to the goodness of the Spirit.

visual learners

This was the “visual” of my sermon today.

I was talking with Adrian on Saturday after the Stirring the waters prayer and justice gathering. We talked about developing our writing and journalling. He then casually mentioned that he often diagrams his learning. It reminded me that people have different learning styles:
V – visual
A – aural
R – read and write
K – kinesthetic.

I try and bear this in mind when I communicate, but keep slipping back into my strengths – aural and read/write. I’m not strong in the visual learning. Visual learning is not about art images or video (that’s kinesethic), but about diagrams and mind maps. So I tried to visual today’s sermon. It involved a simple paint program and added a new visual part as I moved through.

Update: For the Aural learners, here are the discussion questions a small group is using.
text questions
1. The sermon used the image of dryness and the example of being dry because we are busy. What other ways does dryness become part of our lives?

Application
5. What has struck me most tonite?
6. What one thing would I appreciate prayer for?

Can anyone guess the text or the point? If you want to check your answers (or you give up or can’t be bothered thinking …)

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a blokes christmas! yeah right

Christmas can be hard for men.

I mean, the pressure to buy the right gifts.
The pressure to talk to the relations
The pressure not to play with your kids toys.

To make things easier for us blokes
we have the “yeah right” billboards

Those distinctive black and orange advertisements,
dotted along the nation’s roads.

Tongue in cheek statements, followed by an ironic “Yeah right”.

5 billion chimneys in 1 night. Yeah right.
Designed, according to the advertising company. For blokes. Blokes who find Christmas hard.

So here’s Christmas, through the eyes of a bloke, Joseph, with a nod to “Yeah, right”

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theres something about Mary

It suddenly struck me this week that Mary might have a whole lot to say about pre-marital sexual ethics and about being a teenager today.

So here are the notes from Sunday nite.

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the wearing of underwear when preaching

Exegesis is like underpants. It makes the preacher feel secure and comfortable wearing them when up-front. Indeed, the more creative the sermon approaches, the more the need for the security of underwear. Further, approaches like storytelling or inductive work best over the top of underwear.

A few years ago, the fashionable preacher was advised not to show their underwear. It was considered distasteful and inappropriate.

However, in these changing times, I am now suggesting that a certain amount of underwear needs to be shown. Letting the audience know that Biblical text and culture is valued and explored adds a certain “holy~ness,” a certain sensual promise of more.

Reading text in a new context

The video played and the camera panned over a V8 classic car; shiny, grunty, engine throbbing.

The driver turned off the engine, opened to Colossians 3 and began to read:
Since then you have been raised with Christ
set your hearts on things above
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

Someone said aloud; you can’t possibly read the Bible like that.

Why not? Reading the Scriptures in this context will asks different questions of the text; very different questions than if the Bible is read in abstract in a church context.

And so today, we showed the video and asked what it meant, practically, to live Colossians 3. And I think I touched a male spirituality in a new way.

While church is generally run by a male leaders, by and large it is a feminised spirituality. To show a video of a V8 classic car, to explore Scripture in that context, in some way touched new dimensions of being.

I am not sure of the impact, but I am convinced the car driver enjoyed the ride.

what lurks deep

Storytelling. It’s the mantra of postmodern communication. All roads lead to a story. Stories, stories everywhere.

We explored the place of story and storytelling in contemporary communication in class today.

I get so sick of being told the theory of storytelling ie we need it. Much more practical, much more useful, to run a storytelling workshop. So I did. Lets actually do the storytelling.

I was a bit mean. I threw them a gospel story, gave them 5 minutes to compose a first, last and climatic sentence. Times up, so in 2’s tell your story.

The time pressures bring a number of issues to the surface.

Firstly, to tell a story requires detail … and so the reminder that good storytelling requires good background knowledge, good exegesis. It requires you to read and research, to be in the commentaries and guides to early Biblical times.

Secondly, that the Bible is story. And so I provocatively pushed the class. Go on, be Biblical. Stop preaching and be Biblical. Let the story be a story.

re:reading the prodigal

I don’t often put my sermons up on the site, as they are very place (ie Opawa) specific. But I found preaching the prodigal son today very moving.

We are the elder son. Our Western culture is the young son who has runaway from home. The biggest challenge in the parable is not to the young son, but to the elder son, to accept the outrageous grace of God. The shock is that the parable has no ending, the guests wait, the musicians pause and God asks each of us what we will do in response to grace.

My bibliography included Kenneth Bailey’s Finding the Lost. I invited people into a journey of imagination. I ended with power point images of reconciliation and a song by Lucid 3 (thanx Jan and Tony); which way is west … runaway … help me, I do not know which way to go …

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sermon bibliography

most essays I have marked this week have included a bibliography.

So what would a sermon bibliography look like? Well this week, I would like to acknowledge .:
The Bible
John Driver’s Understanding the atonement for the mission of the Church
Dr Suess’, Horton the Elephant
U2’s, Pride in the name of love
James Belich’s, History of New Zealand.

A very eclectic mix!!

experiential learning

It struck me afresh yesterday how empowering experiential learning is.

I had talked briefly in the evening church service to introduce a theme of “reflect the light.” I then explained three “stations”, three ways for people to engage with the theme. Each station involved people doing something. I put on a track of music and invite people to participate. People wandered around for a while; writing on mirrors, eating fresh bread, sticking stars on a drawn map of our city.

I then gathered people back together and opened it up for discussion, asking what people where struck by, or had learned.

A woman has been coming for the last 4 weeks. She has absolutely no church background. And as she chipped in a comment, I thought, “Wow, in most church settings you need to feel like you know a whole lot of Christian stuff before you can speak.”

Yet by creating an experience, everyone is on the same playing field, everyone can engage in doing something, and so contribute to the conversation.

It puts a whole new spin on seeker services – rather than passive listening posts, why not get people learning experientially? They are likely to learn more and be immediate contributors and shapers of the community of faith.

contemporary preaching

I am teaching this course in Semester 2, 2004;

Introduction: “Preaching in a postmodern world is a little like playing pin the tail on the donkey. A scarf has been draped over our eyes and we have been turned around and around. In the postmodern world, not only are we preaching blindfolded, but our target is moving. Just when the church was beginning to get used to the rules of the modern era, suddenly we find these rules have changed on us and even disappeared.” according to here.

Yet, The Lord of the Rings showed us that we can take ancient text and re-tell it for an image-eyed generation.

This course will explore some of the issues around preaching in a rapidly changing world of “txt” and “pxt” communication. It will take for granted skills in expository preaching, and deliberately seek to critically explore other ways to “txt” the Biblical text.

Course outline

The course has two main parts:

7 weeks teaching block (21, 28 July, 4, 11, 18, 25 August, 1 September)

Week 1 – text-ing in a pxt culture: the challenges for preaching today
We live in a visually orientated, sound-bited world suspicious of institution. This week will de-fragment modern notions of authority and suggest ways to re-align Christian notions of text, Spirit and tradition in community.

Week 2 – DJing with authority: Incarnation in text, texts, preacher and community
An approach to gospel and culture will be explored using the metaphor of the DJ. This will be applied to the task of preaching as the DJing of texts in Christian community.

Week 3 – txting the text: inductive, dialogical, case study, multiple approaches
We will explore a number of approaches to txting the text. These will include inductive, dialogical and case study approaches. Strengths and weaknesses will be outlined. Examples will be provided.

Week 4 – txting the text: Storytelling old and new
An exploration of the art of storytelling. This enables txting of both Biblical story and of finding God present in our lives.

Week 5- txting the text: emotional exegesis, Meditation/lectio divina, sensory engagement
We are made whole-bodied people. Our emotions and senses are a gift from God. A number of practical ways to use these gifts to both open up the text and present the text will be outlined.

Week 6 – txting the text: Curating the arts, the visual, the environment
Can creative arts preach? How to use the visual and tactile in preaching? How to modify and enhance our environment? This session will include input from creative guests.

Week 7 – creativity workshop
A workshop which will explore ways to enhance our creativity around the Biblical text.

(b) 3 week workshop (27 October, 3, 10 November)
Students will present assessment. This will continue the process of creative stimulation and critical reflection on txt-ing the text.

Note : Creative Commons license does not apply to this post. It is not allowed to be reproduced in any form without permission.

knowing

in response to the question What did your pastor preach on last Sunday, the Sunday before that, and three weeks ago:

The question assumes that it is important to recall and remember. It assumes the priority on cognitive recall of information. An interesting assumption … is the gospel about cognitive recall?

I don’t think so. Let me apply the question to other things in life; I can’t remember conversations with my wife, nor can I remember all the books I read or even films I watched. But they are still important in terms of building community and relaxation. I guess my point is – the question is a good way to beat up on preaching, but I think the question operates on a modernist assumption that knowing information is important. It fails to take into account a whole lot of other ways of being; space to process, rest, inspiration, confirmation, storytelling in the community, creation of shared values.

contemporary preaching

below are some questions I have as I draft the outline of a course I am putting together on preaching in the postmodern – how to use the Biblical text with integrity in our world. I’d value any feedback …

NB: the course assumes an awareness and competency in expository preaching and is aimed at those who want to explore other approaches that both maintain the integrity of the Biblical text, yet communicate in our postmodern world.

What are the challenges for preaching today?

What place authority in the matrix of text, texts, preacher and community?

What approaches to contemporary preaching have you experienced and appreciated? (My list includes inductive, dialogical, case study, multiple approaches, video sermons, storytelling old and new?)

What wholistic approaches to text have you found useful? (My list includes emotional exegesis, group lectio divino, multi-sensory, creativity workshops)

How can sacred space, including the arts, the visual and the environment shape our environment today?

filling a hole with the gifts of God

I am trying a new approach to preaching over the next few months.

The situation is that the church’s youth pastor has resigned, leaving a preaching hole in the evening service. The evening service fills a unique place in our church life – the music has a loud, hard edge and it is mostly a younger set.

I have limited time but I didn’t want a string of guest preachers. So I am going to pick up the preaching (meaning I speak 2x a Sunday). And I am trying 2 innovations.

a) a researcher :: the church is paying someone to research my sermons. The researcher (my wife) is paid to read and summarize some background reading for me each week, to surf for images and material and will input some creative ideas into the pot. The dream is to shift this creative input to a “creative team”, but in these early days, modelling is one way to suggest change.

b) digestion :: will become the name of the preaching slot, and digestion will be the aim of the service. (There is a video loop of humans digesting food to introduce the first night). I will preach the same text in the morning and evening. In the evening I will summarise the text (for people who just come in the evenings) and then introduce some participatory interaction. The aim is to not just talk about the text, but to allow us as whole people to engage with the text. Possibilities this week include praying with pastels, and next week building the mosaic of God.