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Monday Morning Preacher Podcast

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Episode 66 | 26 min

How to Preach with a Biblical Imagination

Drawing elements from the arts, poetry, and screenwriting.
How to Preach with a Biblical Imagination

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How can you preach with a Biblical imagination? Alison Gerber, pastor at Second Congregational Church in Massachusetts explores that question with our co-host, Kevin Miller. She uses the imagination, to help the Biblical narrative come alive for her listeners. Gerber said “If we do have this purpose to see lives change. Some imagination is going to be required.”

Her first phase in sermon prep is nailing down the big idea. Gerber still employs Haddon Robinson’s method of preaching: “exegeting the text, reading the text, word studies, and coming down to the core central idea.”

After that, she starts writing and developing the sermon. If it’s a narrative sermon, she asks herself the question “how am I going to tell this story, or enter into it?”

“Really my goal with all of this is to bring the senses into the sermon,” said Gerber. Putting your congregation into that space, of the Biblical text. Describing tactile elements help paint a picture, so that listeners can listen and see what’s happening in Biblical story – that may feel foreign to them, otherwise.

Learn more about Alison on her website.

Check out what was referenced on the podcast:

Edwin M. Yamauchi, and Marvin R. Wilson's book A Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity, Hendrickson Publishers. 2014

Kevin Miller is pastor of Church of the Savior in Wheaton, Illinois,