Igniting the Heart

Kate Bruce

Description

Kate Bruce argues that imagination can help to engage the hearer in a sermon which seeks to evoke rather than to inform. Imagination frames how we see the world and ourselves in it. As such it has a vital role in how preachers see the preaching task itself, which in turn affects how we go about the task.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334053217
• Langue: English

Extrait

Igniting the Heart
Kate Bruce has done congregations a great service by offering preachers a feast of ideas, insights and worked examples on the underexplored theme of preaching with the imagination. Her analysis is anchored in careful theology and attentive awareness of the contexts and cultures in which preaching is offered and received. The result is a gracious, well-argued and timely book, a treat-in-waiting for all preachers still alive to their task.
Bishop John Pritchard
Tired of dull boring sermons with no theological depth? And tired of dull boring books on preaching which equally lack theological depth? This book is the solution! Kate Bruce is an outstanding practitioner and teacher of preaching. Out of that expertise she shows how the interaction of the imagination with both the biblical text and contemporary culture can transform the preaching event and allow God to work in exciting and relevant ways. Honest, humane and humble, this is the book for all preachers who have a passion for God to speak.
Revd Professor David Wilkinson, Principal, St John’s College Durham
Expect to be enriched, challenged, encouraged and inspired by this book. Kate Bruce argues that the sermon is essential in the life of the Church and that imagination is essential for preaching that ignites the heart. An exploration of the theology of imagination and language, examples from sermons, models of preaching and guidance for good practice are offered in a book that will appeal to a wide readership. I commend this book to all preachers who hope that through their sermons God will be encountered as the Spirit breathes life into their words and hearts are warmed.
Revd Ruth Gee, Chair of the Darlington District of the Methodist Church
Just occasionally weary preachers stub their toes against treasure hidden beneath the surface of a well-trodden path. In this book Kate Bruce draws on her considerable experience as school teacher, parish priest, theological college tutor and stand-up comic. With an assured grasp of homiletic theory and a passion for creative sermon construction, she shows us how the imagination can disclose new worlds, turn our assumptions upside down, provoke us to ask ‘what if?’ and help us live in the minds of other people. In this she follows the example of Jesus who did not despise the parable, the haunting image, or the disturbing paradox. This is a book for preachers who would prefer their sermons to dance and sing rather than trudge, hobble and plod.
David Day
Kate Bruce skips the conventional wisdom related to preaching and tackles the peculiar challenges and demands of the craft itself. She walks the reader through the creative process towards a fuller realization of the sacramental imagination. Her valuable book will remind us all − whether beginner or busy pastor − to love and cultivate the art we practice.
Richard Lischer, Duke Divinity School, author of
The End of Words and Reading the Parables
Igniting the Heart
Preaching and Imagination
Kate Bruce
© Kate Bruce 2015
Published in 2015 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
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978 0 334 05319 4
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Imagination – What it is and Why it Matters
2 A Theology of Imagination
3 Preaching in the Lyrical Voice
4 The Sacramental Potential of Preaching
5 Imagining the Preaching Task
6 Lighting the Blue Touch-Paper – Implications for the Practice and Teaching of Preaching
Igniting the Heart – Concluding Thoughts
Appendix – Sermons
Bibliography
This book is dedicated to David Day on behalf of the many, many people who have benefited from his inspirational preaching and outstanding teaching of the art of preaching.
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks go to David Wilkinson and Jeff Astley, who supervised the PhD underlying this book. Thanks to them for wisdom, patience and insight.
Many thanks to Maeve Sherlock for time spent reading and commenting on a draft, and assuring me that she hadn’t lost the will to live.
To the students who have been part of the preaching classes at Cranmer Hall over the years: thank you for your generosity and engagement. I hope I taught you at least as much as I learned from you.
To all the delegates at the Durham Preaching Conferences, as well as friends in the College of Preachers and people who have attended preaching events I have offered nationally: thank you for your support and encouragement.
This book would never have been written without the permission-giving congregations with whom I have worked; people who have joined me in the serious ‘play’ of preaching and given me space to try, to fail and to learn. Thank you especially to Holy Trinity Ripon, St John’s College Durham, St Oswald’s Durham and St Mary Magdalen, Belmont.
Thank you to colleagues at Cranmer Hall for your friendship and for covering my workload, enabling me to take a period of study leave to finish the PhD. Thanks too to colleagues in CODEC ( www.dur.ac.uk/codec ) for your challenge and imagination.
Much of the work behind this book was undertaken as Fellow in Preaching at CODEC. This post has been funded by contributions from Bible Society, Joseph Rank Trust, Halley Stewart Trust and the Maurice and Hilda Laing Trust. Thank you for your generosity.
Thanks also to the Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust Fund for contributing to the cost of PhD fees.
And finally, to all those rather fabulous people who have cheered me on over the years: thanks – you know who you are.
And finally, finally, underpinning it all, my deepest thanks to the Master Preacher.
Introduction
Picture the scene. It’s Wednesday. You are sitting at the dining-room table surrounded by scribbled notes on screwed-up pieces of paper. You have done your homework. You read the passages earlier in the week and have been praying and pondering over them. You’ve now focused on and wrestled with the text, identified possibilities and difficulties, chased down ideas in commentaries, prayed and pondered some more and yet you have nothing concrete to work with. The laptop is fired up, but you are not.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking.
Sack it all. You snap the lead on the dog and head for the hills. The internal panic monster growls in your ear . As you walk, ideas and snippets of the text come to mind and drop away. A possibility starts tugging at your sleeve, but as you turn to look it flits off – a half-baked idea, it is dismissed. Returning home, other things press in and occupy your attention. The sermon worries are set aside. Meanwhile, as yet unnoticed, deep in your imagination something starts to stir.
At this stage in the sermon preparation process I have learned to trust that somehow it will come together – an approach that mugs the panic monster. When I return to focused preparation I discover that while my conscious mind was dealing with the day to day, the sermon was taking shape. Something seems to have happened in the incubator of my imagination. Impressions gathered as I strolled through the biblical landscape might tug insistently at my sleeve. Odd thoughts connect with ideas I might have picked up in a commentary or a conversation. Perhaps overheard snippets from the supermarket queue will float into consciousness and offer themselves as illustrative material. Scripture speaks to Scripture and sets up resonances. Links are forged: a scene from a film; a picture in the paper; a headline; a Facebook comment; a line from a song; a Tweet. Seemingly random materials seem to fuse together and the sparks start flying. The structural framework emerges from scribbled ideas. Scripture, image, day-to-day instances and applications are welded into shape; form and content inform each other.
I picture the preaching space and play with delivery ideas as I pace around the living room: gesture; eye movement; use of space; tonal variation; verbal emphasis. The dog looks quizzical. I rehearse possibilities on the stage of my imagination, playing with the sermon material, hammering it out on the anvil of possibility. I find myself engaged, absorbed and focused. The blue touch-paper is lit. The heart ignites. Boom. We are on our way.
This is invariably my experience in sermon preparation, which is a process that takes me through the valley of creative despair (where I have no ideas and on a bad day don’t want the hassle), up to the heights of delight in the privilege of exploring with people the power of the ancient text alive in the present moment, inexorably pulling us towards the love of God.
Of course, working on a sermon prior to the delivery is only half the story. Arguably the sermon doesn