What’s happening with the Cultivating the Gift of preaching initiative (CGPI)

Our new participants are settling into their cohort groups and will have their second online meeting this August. Their focus this month is on the role of imagination in preaching. The role of the imagination is not of course to make things up but rather to connect with those to whom we are called to preach. One of the books that our participants read is the now classic A Sermon Workbook: Exercises in the Art and Craft of Preaching by Thomas Troeger and Leonora Tubbs Tisdale. They write of the role of imagination that it is “is connected with empathy, with our ability to sense what others might be feeling: ‘We imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes.’ Preachers frequently invoke imagination in their sermons, asking listeners to imagine a scene from the Bible or common life.”

Good preaching and Bible study often asks us to imagine ourselves in a biblical story, asking us to consider, for example, if we are the Israelites grumbling in the wilderness or the faithful remnant, if we are the rich young ruler who walks away from Jesus or the disciple who faithfully follows. But it also asks us to put ourselves into the shoes of our neighbors, to ask how we would want to be treated and cared for if it was we who were suffering or enduring persecution. In light of all the division that plagues our society from the national level to our local communities, churches, and even families, such imaginative empathy and compassion is a necessary characteristic of good preaching – why do our neighbors – some of whom we may consider enemies – speak and act in the way that they do.

Our second year participants will be focusing on preaching with conviction. They will be reading from Jared Alcántara’s The Practices of Christian Preaching, in which they will read about several models of conviction in Scripture and in church history and consider spiritual practices that strengthen living from conviction. These include prophets like Nathan, Elijah, and Amos, New Testament figures like John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul, and post biblical examples like John Chrysostom, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jarena Lee.

In such polarized times, we all need to cultivate these gifts of imagination and conviction as we prayerfully consider how we are called to faithfully serve the Triune God and proclaim the Good News!

Matthew Aragon Bruce

Matt[at]synodofthecovenant.org