Preaching as creative act

9eec7f1d50a97224c5281632652fad6cIn my nearly ten years teaching preaching, and my 33 years of speaking and preaching, I have come to the conclusion that the best manner of summarising the job of preaching (in whatever context) is answering the question:

What is God proverb

to these people

at this time

through this text?

This roots preaching in the biblical text, but besides makes it rooted in the particular context in which 'preaching' is happening (whether this context is formal or informal, primarily to God's people or those who are non yet God's people). It holds it in close company with the prophetic task of proclaiming God's bulletin, connecting the 'there and and so' of Scripture with the 'here and now' of gimmicky ministry.

This leads to the task of preparation having three distinct phases. The first and the last are the more analytic, and tin can be done at one's desk-bound. The commencement is date with Scripture, doing the hard piece of work of understanding the words, sentences and ideas in the text, discerning (as far equally we can) the context in which these things were either first said or first written (or both), and so agreement both the significance and the rhetorical impact of the passage in its literary and canonical context. We must practise this, since what God is saying through this text today cannot be detached from what God was proverb then—otherwise the text becomes an empty vessel into which we pour our own meaning, and God's own spoken communication is silenced.

The last part of the chore is deciding how to say what nosotros are going to say—the words, the motion and structure, the illustrations, verbal and visual. My usual habit is to practise this at the terminal minute, since information technology depends on imagining myself in the preaching context, rehearsing what I am going to say, and making notes on that for when it comes to the 'performance'.

But in between these two 'analytic' tasks comes a creative moment. What is the connectedness between what we have been reading and understanding from our text, and what God is wanting to say in the context of those we are speaking to? It'southward important to recognise that this question is quite singled-out from the question of what the text 'means' or said originally, even if, in the first stage of preparation our listen jumps forward to questions of connectedness and application.


In that location are several key things to annotation about the creative task. First, to be creative is to express something of what it ways to be made in the prototype of God. In Genesis one, God is depicted as a creative craftsman, forming and and so filling the creation. Almost the end of this creative procedure, God creates humanity 'male and female, in his epitome' (Gen one.27), to continue to exercise his divine rule with delegated authorization—but too presumably with the same creative instinct. The phrase 'in his paradigm and likeness' (Gen ane.27, Gen five.1, Gen 5.iii) is applied to Adam's son Seth in relation to his father; this is about family resemblance. When we are being creative, we might observe 'Like Father, like son [or daughter]'. Interestingly, the idea of homo creativity has a distinctively Christian basis to it; in the classical earth art was mostly seen not as creativity but as imitation.

Secondly, creativity is closely associated with the piece of work of the Spirit. It is the Spirit of God who hovers, (fluttering?) over the waters in Gen i.2. It is the Spirit who overshadows Mary in the forming of new life in her womb (Luke i.35). Information technology is the same Spirit who volition clothe the disciples with power from on high, in very like language (Luke 24.49, Acts one.8). It is hardly surprising, then, that the forming of God'due south creative word to his people through the prophets is consistently associated with the piece of work of the Spirit. In all these examples, the new thing that is formed comes equally a gift, and then the primary activeness of the people concerned is to wait and to heed.

Thirdly, inventiveness needs infinite and time. I theory from the early 20th century (of Graham Wallas) suggested the creative chore involved five stages:

(i)preparation (preparatory work on a trouble that focuses the private's heed on the trouble and explores the trouble's dimensions)

(ii)incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening)

(iii)intimation (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its mode)

(four)illumination or insight (where the artistic idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness)

(v)verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).

Fourthly, at the centre of this process is the making of connections betwixt disparate areas of experience. Steve Jobs once said:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really practise it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.

And the linguistic communication that makes these connections is metaphor—conveying significant from one term or idea and connecting it with some other. This is why the most common grade of spoken language in constructive preaching is metaphorical. Nosotros read most David and Goliath and inquire 'What giants are we facing in our lives?' We read of Jesus calming the tempest, and ask 'Which storms do we demand to invite Jesus to calm?' (encourage past Matthew's own metaphorical expression for storm as 'shaking'). We hear Paul, equally information technology were, inviting the women out of the balcony in order to fully participate in the Spirit-gifted ministry of prayer and prophecy, and might enquire 'Who have nosotros put in the balustrade who needs to be invited down?' And then on…


All this has implications for the space we give preaching in our diaries, and the way nosotros organise our time. If the final 'analytic' task of putting things together happens shut to the occasion of preaching, so the first analytic task, of working with the text, needs to happen as far ahead of this as is practical in gild to make room for the creative task of listening to God and agreement the connections between our text and our context.

Slide25It as well has implications for where we spend our time. Think for a infinitesimal: in what places, at what times, are you most artistic? When do the fresh insights come? Where practise you best hear God? For me, there are ii (advisable self-disclosure warning!): in the forenoon when I shave and shower; and when I take time out and go somewhere for coffee. This morning I got up, walked the dog, sorted breakfast, read this morning's lectionary passages, checked Twitter and Facebook, answered the easy emails—all before heading back to the bathroom. And in that location the creativity flowed and I planned this blog post. If I had done things in the other order, and came from the bathroom to routine admin, and so the artistic moment would have been wasted.

In planning your calendar week, where then will you lot put the first task of working on the passage, and where will you program the 'downtime' needed for artistic space? The piece of work of preaching does involve some pulling at the oars—simply it as well involves hoisting our sails.


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