Troeger: the use of imagination in preaching

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Some notes from this interview with Thomas Troeger:

The imaginative process can be likened to the art of sailing a boat.  Two realities are at work: the wind (over which you don’t have any control), and your own senses, with which you can survey the situation and set your sails accordingly.

Three kinds of imagination: conventional, empathetic, and visionary.

Conventional imagination is that which is inherited and shared.  Hymns such as ‘Silent Night’ at Christmas and ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today’ at Easter form part of the way we imagine the faith.…

Mark 12:41-44/Luke 21:1-4 – ‘The widow’s mite’

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Mk 12:41 Then he sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing in large amounts. 12:42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny. 12:43 He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others. 12:44 For they all gave out of their wealth.…

What, then, is expository preaching?

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Erik Raymond has helpfully collected a range of contemporary definitions:

John MacArthur: ‘The message finds its sole source in Scripture. The message is extracted from Scripture through careful exegesis. The message preparation correctly interprets Scripture in its normal sense and its context. The message clearly explains the original God-intended meaning of Scripture. The message applies the Scriptural meaning for today.’ (Preaching)

Bryan Chappell: ‘The main idea of an expository sermon the topic, the divisions of that idea, main points, and the development of those divisions, all come from truths the text itself contains.…

A biblical case for expository preaching

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Expository preaching may be defined as that which seeks to explain and apply a unit of Scripture, such that the main point of that unit of Scripture becomes the main point of the sermon.

Can a case for expository preaching be made from the Bible itself?

James F. Stitzinger thinks so.  He reasons as follows.

Preaching in the Bible is both revelatory (declaring new truths) and explanatory (explaining and applying known truths).

Old Testament

Old Testament examples include

  • Moses (Deut 31-33)
  • Joshua (Josh 23:2-16; 24:2-27)
  • David (Psalms 8, 9, 16, 22, 24, 34, 68, 75, 89, 93, 105, 110, 119, 136, 145 reveal the nature and character of God, whereas Psalms 1, 23, 32, 37, 40, 46, 50, 66, 78, 92, 100, 104, 106, 118, 128, 150 – see esp.
…

Revelation 14:11 – ‘No rest day or night’

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Rev 14:9 “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and takes the mark on his forehead or his hand, 14:10 that person will also drink of the wine of God’s anger that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and sulfur in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb. 14:11 And the smoke from their torture will go up forever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image will have no rest day or night, along with anyone who receives the mark of his name.”…

Romans 5:18 – ‘Life for all?’

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Some have taken Paul to be teaching universalism here. For Kasemann, ‘all-powerful grace is unthinkable without eschatological universalism.’

In The Lost Message of Paul (ch 19), Steve Chalke insists that, for Paul, ‘all people’ must mean ‘all people without exception’.  The gift of life is co-extensive for ‘all men’ with the sentence of condemnation ‘for all men’.  To interpret otherwise, he says, is not only ‘disingenuous’, but also renders Paul’s language incoherent.  I think that Chalke’s summary rejection of alternative views, together with his dismissal of those who hold them as ‘disingenuous’ is irresponsible.…

The genealogical Adam and Eve

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Very often it’s put to us as a stark choice: either you accept the biblical account of human origins, or you accept the scientific account.  Either you believe that we are all direct descendants of Adam and Eve, or that we are all products of a long evolutionary process, stretching back a million years or more to a (non-human) common ancestor.

But can we have our cake and eat it?  Can we hold both to the essential factual historicity of the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, and to the validity of evolutionary science?…

Conditional election

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Down the centuries, various attempts have been made to avoid viewing divine election as God’s unconditional selection of individuals for eternal life.

In their concern to avoid pagan ideas of fatalism, many early church Fathers taught a synergistic view, in which the human will co-operates with the divine will in achieving salvation.  Origen (d. 254) wrote:

‘Foreknowledge precedes foreordination.… God observed beforehand the sequence of future events, and noticed the inclination of some men towards piety which followed on this inclination; and he foreknew them, knowing the present and foreknowing the future.…

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Marriage: antidote to loneliness

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There is an epidemic of loneliness today.  This is due, not just to the (hopefully) short-term effects of Covid-19 lockdown.  There is the wider, and more persistent, problem of loneliness which is linked to the decline in marriage rates and the increase in marriage breakdowns.

God, in his wise and generous love, has provided a wonderful blueprint for flourishing marriages, and has used this blueprint to point towards a yet deeper and more lasting marriage – that between Christ and his people.…

Why we need to be back in church (as soon as possible)

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I totally subscribe to the maxim, ‘Church is people, not buildings.’

But we are God’s gathered people, and something is missing when we are not able to gather.

David Gunderson and Peter Mead have both written about this, and what follows is based on their thoughts.

It’s important for us to gather, because

  1. We are embodied people.  See Gen. 1:26–27; 2:18–25; 3:20.  As a grandparent, I have learned afresh from my 3-year-old grandchildren that seeing and hearing people online is not the same as seeing and hearing them in the flesh. 
…