Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Preaching as Art

Darius Slater, is the Senior Paster of the Richardson Church of the Nazarene. He has written an excellent book on bringing art into our preaching. Over the next few blogs I thought I would share some of his insights with you.

He states, "The Bible abounds in repitition, alliteration, symbols, images, puns, allegories, analogies, metaphors, and parallels." These forms are often lost in translation (Our preaching?).

We live in a culture where icons, imagography, and screens are used more to communicate information then abstrct scrawlings on a page. We forget that the Bible was written far before any printing press came around and thus is filled with images and techniques that can stay in the mind and not on the page.

It is my assertion that in our zeal for form criticism and rationalism we have left out the beautiful presentation of God's message for mankind. biblical preachers spoke using visual icons. They didn't make three point sermons. They wrote in the context of relationships, not in scientific abstract theses. They were concreate and not etheral. They were raw expositions and not etheral reasoning.

Dr. Richardson notes how the messages of the scripture move people with artful proclamation. here are the methods Biblical writers and preachers used to communicate God's truth.

1. Unseen into the Seen
2. Ordinary into the Extraordinary
3. Profane to the Sacred
4. Redemption Out of Tragedy
5. Order out of Chaos
6. Dissonance to Relevance
7. Abstract to Concrete

Read some of the messages of the prophets and you'll see an abundance of examples.

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