Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 36

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FEATURE

B

ut, on the other hand, adding
media to both worship
and preaching can offer
an important additional
communication channel for your
congregation: not all of us learn by
listening. In the twenty-first century,
many of us choose to learn and
engage much more through the visual
than through the aural. What’s the
saying – a picture paints a thousand
words? As such, it is increasingly the
case that preachers and worship
leaders feel compelled to hunt for the
visual resource that will impact their
congregation and supplement the
sermon or liturgy that is being shared.
But where do you start? Faced with
the kind of needle-in-a-haystack
abundance we found when we
searched for ‘resources for preaching’,
Preach asked the CODEC team to
offer a head start of where we might
want to begin the search, and to give
some pointers of where they had
found useful information online as
preachers and worship leaders.

CODEC HAS PRODUCED
IMPORTANT RESEARCH ABOUT
THE DECREASING LEVELS OF
BIBLICAL LITERACY IN THE
UK AND THE CONTINUED
IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING.

PREACHING

CODEC began in 2009 as a
research project in St John’s
College at the University of
Durham, integrating first-class
research with a prophetic voice
for the church about biblical
literacy, digital culture and
preaching. It soon became a
listed research project of the
Department of Theology and
Religion and, in July 2015, a full
Research Centre of Durham
University. It has become one
of the few places in the UK, and
indeed internationally, to integrate
theological reflection on digital
culture with the development of
practical projects to resource the
Church.
CODEC’s research is
fundamentally ‘applied’ research
– listening to voices from the
public, the pew and the academy;
both a servant of the Church
and a prophetic voice to the
Church; developing the practical
outcomes of its research into
reports, resources and training
opportunities for the Church
and other religious bodies and
organisations. CODEC has
produced important research
about the decreasing levels of
biblical literacy in the UK and
the continued importance of
preaching, and pioneered new
ways of engaging with the Bible;
through bigbible.org.uk,
their Bible Engagement
programmes, and the Durham
Preaching Conferences, now to be
expanded into special mentoring
programmes for young preachers.

Kate Bruce, Director of the Centre
for Communication and Preaching,
has taught preaching and homiletics
in seminars and to hugely popular
preaching conferences for many
years. During this time, she has
recommended a whole host of
resources for preachers – from blogs
about preaching and the art of
preaching to more specific resources
for different liturgical occasions and
denominational contexts; online and
offline; written and aural.
Kate suggests that in order to find
the most helpful online resources, it
is useful to be precise about what you
are looking for. So, you might want
some occasional nuggets on preaching
from The Preacher’s Blog, written by
Richard Littledale, a Baptist minister in
Teddington (richardlittledale.me.uk).
Or across the Atlantic, there is Kenton
Anderson’s site (preaching.org),
offering a mix of personal thoughts
on preaching alongside a growing
collection of curated content, book
reviews and some interesting
material on integrative preaching.
Both provide encouragement and
guidance on preaching from the
experience of personal engagement
in preaching. There are lots of others
who do the same, and others that
come from a corporate/academic
standpoint such as Preaching Today
(preachingtoday.com) or Desiring
God (bit.ly/desiringgodresources) or
Preaching Today (preachingtoday.com).
And of course there is the excellent
Preach site – preachweb.org. There are
even sites that provide direct guidance
for the sermon itself and often takeaway sermons: sermoncentral.com,
sermons.com, sermonbase.com, and
episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw.