Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 26

26 FEATURE PURPOSE It is important to be able to articulate what we understand to be the purpose of preaching, regardless of what form the final sermon takes or what medium it uses. Preaching seeks to facilitate encounter between the hearer and God. It may come with a sharp prophetic edge or a comforting pastoral encouragement. It is always about enabling new seeing, facilitating the disclosure moment when the penny drops and we see anew. Preaching is concerned with helping the hearers (which includes the preacher) envisage new possibilities, re-imagining the world in the light of the love and transformative power of God. It is about feeding the people of God, drawing them closer to the Bread that sustains and heals. Whatever it’s form, preaching is always about drawing the people of God into deeper insight and authentic worship in word and action. REVELATION The third foundation of preaching is theological confidence in the God who communicates with his people. The Scriptures record God’s revelatory impetus, communicating in a breathtaking array of genres and symbols, through many different people and ultimately in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In the sermon the Word is taken, broken, blessed and given, perhaps by one person, perhaps by a team, perhaps in real time, perhaps online. Laden with sacramental potential, it is potentially the place of the ‘aha moment’, when new insight is born. The final shape of the sermon should reflect something of the infinite communicative creativity of God. While there is nothing wrong with a three-point monologue, there are many other ways of cutting and shaping the sermon. In his teaching, Jesus implicitly communicates a call to think creatively about the use of story, anecdote, resonant image, and subverted expectation. He takes the familiar images of his everyday context – coins, bread, neighbours, sheep, fields, vineyards, fish, nets, and so forth, speaking the astonishing universal into the specific, the ordinary, and the mundane. Earthing the abstract idea is a task of the imagination in all its functions. This brings us to the fourth foundation stone of preaching.