PREACHER TO PREACHER

From the Editors

Every vocation has its tools. A carpenter has a hammer. An accountant has a calculator. A plumber has a wrench. The vocational tools of preaching are imagination and words. Of course, the Word of God and the anointing of the Holy Spirit are foundational and central for preaching, without which all preaching is in vain. However, Word and Spirit are not tools--they are gifts! Imagination and words are only vehicles to communicate those vital gifts.

In his book Reality and the Vision, Philip Yancey reflects on the temptations of every writer. We have chosen to replace the words "writer/books" with "preacher/sermons."
Popular culture, including popular religious culture, sometimes encourages what Dorothy Sayers called "the snobbery of the banal": people who look down on classical music as highbrow, who prefer lazy worship, who would choose television over a book any evening, who want art mainly as decoration for religious calendars and fiction mainly as another weapon in their arsenal of propaganda. Those of us who make our living by writing [preaching] feel such temptations too. South Africa, abortion, racism, the inner cities--these urgent problems need solutions, and they tempt us away from the quiet reflection that gives us strength to look at our world with the long view, the half-millennium view. We are tempted to write [preach] "how to" books [sermons] on coping in this world, substituting the easier task of telling people what to do for the far more important task of telling them how to be. James Elroy Flecker once said, "It is not the business of the poet to save men's souls, but to make them worth saving." In the end, that is what art [imaginative preaching] can do for all of us.*

While Yancey's cultural diagnosis appears bleak, he may be closer to the truth than we want to believe. Many in our congregations live their lives devoid of passion, lacking creativity, and drowning in their tedium. Day after long day they go through the monotonous motions of living, unprepared to approach even their religion with anything but indifference. But religion does not become faith without passion!

Preaching is not a science because the shape of Scripture is not scientific. Scripture is not to be dissected like a frog in biology class--it is meant to be poetic. It is meant to breathe life! It is intended to inspire people to God! Therefore, the proclamation of that Word must be artistic and passionate.

Renewing passion may be the primary role of preaching in a culture that lacks breadth of both culture and imagination. In a society stimulated by a casual reading of USA Today and a cursory glance at the 10:00 news to catch a glimpse of the weather and a tidbit of sports scores, perhaps the deepest, most profound word that many American congregations will hear in a week is in the sermon. Therefore, our sermons must be not only a responsible word from the Lord but also a creative, imaginative, artful piece worthy of our most thoughtful reflection. Preaching's inspired words, animated by the Spirit, have the power to shape the unsculptured spirits of our people.
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*Philip Yancey, ed., Reality and the Vision: Eighteen Contemporary Writers Tell Who They Read and Why (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990).