Preaching Re-imagined - Pagitt

So this is the latest book I have read. The book is about preaching. The guts of it is simple.

Preaching now days is in general more akin to a lecture. This does not work. Instead the author suggests we should use a technique called Progressional Diologue. This basically means that preaching should be more like a conversation in which all participants can do just that; participate.

This strikes me as what was going on with Jesus as He taught and then people questioned and He explained and then they lived it out.

This book has a couple of sentences which I would like to share...

"Our churches should never be places where the practices of faith are allowed to become stagant and predictable in the name of stability... Every part of our life as a community can and should be open to fresh ideas of the always-active Spirit of God". (Pg 112)

This connects with me.

Interestingly the author provides a whole chapter on the lecture (or speaching as he calls it) approach to preaching. He provides the arguments for this approach. He doesn't try to argue them away in this chapter. He just says that he disagrees. He invites those that sign up to this view point to exercise their right to a refund from the publisher rather than finish the book. He suggests they won't get the point of the book. He says the book is for those who alreaady sense that we need to look at things a bit differently. This is quite an interesting approach.

Well worth a read if you think we can do church better and are open to different ideas.