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The Preaching Life

By David Busic

“Words and Imagination”

Every vocation has tools. A carpenter has a hammer. An accountant has a calculator. A plumber has a wrench. A preacher’s tools are words and imagination. Therefore, a preacher must love words and nurture imagination. The Bible and the anointing of the Holy Spirit are not tools. These are gifts, and without them there is no authentic, biblical preaching. But the preacher’s creativity is what complements these gifts to assist in making the Word of God come alive for one’s hearers.

Preaching is a search for meaning in the life of God. Words are our transportation. Because this is true, preachers are much closer to artists than to mechanics. We learn our trade by reading, listening, and writing. If we lose the ability to signify and name something in the world, we also lose the ability to communicate. The following are some helpful exercises to help nurture our imagination and explore creativity in our preaching.

1. What’s It Like To Be?

Fred Craddock, the father of inductive preaching, suggests the preacher should prepare sermons as if the members of their congregation were peering over their shoulder as they write, asking questions of the text. He then recommends this exercise both to nourish imaginative words and to help us connect with our listeners.

Take a blank sheet of paper and write at the top: “What’s it like to be?” Beneath that heading write a phrase descriptive of one concrete facet of human experience. Examples might be: “parents of a runaway,” “facing surgery,” “living alone,” “going into the military,” “unable to read,” “fourteen years old.” Then, for the next few minutes write down on that page every thought, recollection, feeling, experience, name, place, or sound that comes to your mind. This exercise may take some time to become accustomed to, but you may be surprised how this kind of free association will spark your mind and thoughts around the different human perspectives and experiences of your congregation.

2. Painting Word Pictures

Good preaching never explains to the listeners what it can evoke in their mind. When telling image-based stories the words and metaphors of preaching should help paint word-pictures that do more than explain. Rather than saying, “He put on his shoes,” say, “He slipped on his polished wing-tips.” Rather than saying, “She put on her coat,” say, “She put on her red windbreaker.” Rather than saying, “He wiped his hands on his pants,” say, “He wiped his large, calloused hands on his faded overalls.” Each of these descriptive phrases identifies the image of a person you are intending to describe. A man putting on his shoes could be anybody. Polished wing-tips signify a businessman. A man wiping his hands on his pants is generic. “Large, calloused hands” and “faded overalls” might identify a farmer.

3. Five Senses

The most memorable sermons are those that engage all five senses: hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. To help spark your creativity think of a person, place, or event you could describe in sensory ways to another person.

An example: What do you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste at a college football game? Put yourself there. How would you describe it in sensory ways to someone who has never been to a college football game? Here are some examples of things you might say: “I hear the sounds of a marching band. I hear the snap of a snare drum and the blat of a tuba. I see an ocean of red in the stands (or whatever the team colors happen to be). I hear the roar of the crowd and the crunching of shoulder pads. I smell burning leaves in the air and buttered popcorn. I feel the cool, fall air on my cheeks and the aluminum bleachers underneath me.”

The more specific you can be in your descriptive words, the better. Don’t just say, “I hear drums.” Say, “I hear the snap of a snare drum.” Don’t just say, “I hear players running into each other.” Say, “I hear the crunching of shoulder pads.”

Another example might be: What do you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste at Ground Zero, New York City, on September 11, 2001? “The smoke is burning my eyes. I smell the acrid scent of burning jet fuel. I hear sirens blaring and people screaming. I see firefighters and emergency workers running.”

This exercise will also help you in biblical story-telling. I was recently preparing to preach from the story of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10. I wanted to know what it was like to experience the story from Bartimaeus’ perspective. To “experience” it I decided to filter the story through my five senses. I went to a dark room in the church, blind-folded myself, sat down in the corner, and replayed the story in my mind. I tried to imagine what Bartimaeus was hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, and even seeing. What would it be like to sit by that dusty road, day after day, begging for food from people I could not see? What would it be like to hear a crowd coming down the road and know that Jesus was coming?

The text says Bartimaeus began to cry out to be heard above the din of the crowd. People told him to be quiet. He persisted even louder. Finally, Jesus told him to get up and come to Him. Obviously, he was blind and couldn’t see where he was going. But the Bible tells us that Bartimaeus leapt to his feet and ran to Jesus. I tried to do that in the dark room. I was stumbling over chairs and had to use my hands to see where I was going. I was disoriented and felt very vulnerable. Then it dawned on me: that was probably exactly how Bartimaeus felt at that moment. It gave me a new insight into the kinds of feelings Bartimaeus must have been feeling at that moment, and just how desperate he must have been to put himself through that kind of public display. That sensory experience helped me to retell the story to the congregation in vivid ways, and helped them to catch a glimpse of passionate discipleship.