Growing Edge
January 1, 1995
IMAGINEERING THE SERMON
Warren Wiersbe on how to make your preaching more imaginative.
The preacher must develop the pictures embedded in the stories, metaphors, and even the words of Scripture. So believes Warren Wiersbe, former pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago and teacher for the Back to the Bible radio broadcast.
Why? Because people act on the pictures hanging in the gallery of their minds. Our house, our car, and our word processor were all born in somebody's imagination. So are acts of obedience and worship. We picture them first and do them second.
Steve Mathewson, a Montana pastor, visited with Warren Wiersbe about his recent book, "Preaching and Teaching with Imagination" (400 pages, Victor, $21.99).
MATHEWSON: Do you find preachers are comfortable talking about the imagination?
WARREN WIERSBE: Pastors often confuse imagination with fantasy or the imaginary. But imagination is the image-making faculty in our minds. It helps us penetrate reality and better understand it, while fancy builds an alternate world. Generally, you don't find the imaginary in the Bible, but you do find imagination.
The point of my book is that the Bible is written with imagination. Take Jeremiah, for example. When he tells God's people what's wrong with them, he calls them a bunch of brides who have run off with the best man. He accuses them of drinking at broken cisterns. The biblical writers understood that the human mind is not a debating hall but a picture gallery.
MATHEWSON: What piqued your interest in the imagination?
WIERSBE: It started in the late 1970s when I began teaching as a visiting instructor in homiletics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. My students wanted a bunch of rules and formulas to turn ...
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