Worship Symposium archive » reading

Stories that Preach

wsymp10 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:54:48 +0000

This workshop included examples of contemporary short stories from writers such as Flannery O’Connor, Doris Betts, and Raymond Carver. Discussions centered on how these ostensibly secular stories resonate with New Testament themes and how such stories might be useful to preachers trying to find ways to relate contemporary themes to their listeners.

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Seeing What Is Really There: Preaching and the Imagination

wsymp10 — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:04:52 +0000

Frederick Buechner writes that people “as a rule see only what they expect to see and little more.” The preacher’s calling is see beyond what we expect to see and help congregations to do the same. This session discussed what the preacher can do to be faithful to this calling.

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Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching

wsymp10 — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:02:17 +0000

People often assume that preachers who read widely are on the prowl for illustrations. These people are right. Preachers are hunter-gatherers, searching not only the world’s literary masterworks but also contemporary fiction, journalism, and biography. But preachers are not merely in search of useful stories. Reading deepens the preacher’s knowledge of human cries of the heart. In fact, the preacher’s reading deepens preaching because it deepens the preacher. In this workshop, Neal Plantinga and Hulitt Gloer discussed their highly successful “Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching” seminar, which the two have co-led the last five years as a multi-week summer program. This workshop will help participants begin to explore the possibilities and homiletical impact of engaging in an ongoing, vigorous program of reading for preaching.