Preaching Re-Imagined, pt 1.

Even before I opened the book, I knew that it was going to be different than most books I had read. I had read and loved another book by Doug, so I assumed that he would bring something fresh with this one too. And right off the bat, he does. The first "section" contains the usual introductions. The whats and whys and whos of the book. But the first thing that reminded me of the authorship of this book was that within the first section there is a "How to Read this Book" heading. Doug writes books differently. The first book I read of his was a book about his church, Solomon's Porch. The margins of the pages had journal entries from people within the church body. That was a weird, yet refreshing way to read a book about a church. This "How to..." section falls right in line. He explains that Section 2 has sentences and phrases which have numbers attached at the end. The numbers can take you to that particular chapter found within 4 different sections. He writes this to explain things:

For example, you might not be interested in the story of how I became a preacher but would prefer to go right to my suggestions of rethinking the role of the pastor. If so, you can skip point number five and go right to point 23.

I was really intrigued by this and found myself flipping through the book to figure out how this actually works. Doug explains that his reasons for this is because he wanted to write a book that felt more like a conversation rather that a "stagnate place of information" (my words). In this first section he shares a few phrases that seemingly elude to phrases that will become a foundation to the book: "progressional dialogue" (a phrase that he made up), and "speaching" (also made up, to refer to "the style of preaching that's hardly distinguishable from a one-way speech.")

I'm an underliner, a margin-writer, and a dog-earer, and Doug encourages this. He writes that the "book should not be left in its impersonal, published form. If it is, then it hasn't done its job of engaging you in the conversation." I like that. I can handle that.

Here's some things that I underlined and bracketed:

I find myself wanting to live life with the people of my community where I can preach-along with the other preachers of our community-but not allow that to become an act of speech making. Instead I want it to be a living interaction of the story of GOD and the story of our community being connected by our truth telling, our vulnerability, and our open minds, ears, and eyes-all brought together by the active work of the Spirit of GOD as we "Let the message of Christ dwell among (us) richly as (we) teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to GOD with gratitude in (our) hearts." (Colossians 3:16)

These words remind me about the desire I have to be apart of a community that doesn't just rely on the history of faith to give us something to sing about, but creates expressions based out of our own personal history. I love the phrase "living interaction of the story of GOD and the story of our community... ." It reminds me that the purpose of the community is to find it's place within the redemptive story of GOD, and if the community isn't doing that, then it isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing. Here's one more quote:

The church is best understood not as the exclusive proprietor of all the things of GOD, but rather as the home base for those committed to living in rhythm with GOD. It is a means by which we extend GOD's hopes, dreams, and agenda in the world, not an end goal in itself. Nor is preaching an end in itself but one of the many ways we as Christians ought to seek to tend to the things of GOD.

These two paragraphs have given me much to think about within the past day and a half. Let me know your thought if you have any. I think I'm off to bed and on to Section 2.