On July 6th I linked and responded to a blog entry by David Fitch at Out of Ur. Fitch wrote a piece called The Myth of Expository Preaching & the Commodification of the Word.
And now Fitch follows his first post up with The Myth of Expository Preaching (part 2): proclamation that inspires the imagination.
Great post. Fitch reflects on narrative theology and speaks about moving from “explaining to proclaiming” and from “textbook to drama.”
I have been thinking about narrative a lot, especially in light of the Narrative Life and Family class I just finished up at Fuller.
Fitch says:
The primary move of preaching will not be sentence-by-sentence exposition & explaining, then an application. Instead the primary move of the preacher will be to describe the world as it is via the person and work of Jesus Christ, then invite the hearers into this reality by calling for submission, confession, obedience, or the affirmation of a truth.
In Brueggemann’s words, we preach to “fund imagination.”
I love what he says here.
He continues:
Preachers must resist all modernist temptations to see the Scriptures as a propositional textbook of religious facts…..
The hubris of pastors thinking they can exegete a text better and more accurately than the thousands that have gone before gets in the way of the Main Thing, the glory of his majestic work and what he is working for in history. This is where our imaginations will be fed. This is where we will be formed as missional people.
