Steve Taylor is one of the most thoughtful bloggers around. His words about preaching yesterday struck a cord with me. The weekly task of seeking to connect the Scriptures with our complicated lives:
I’ve been wondering if the last line actually captures some of the task of communication in general, including preaching.
It’s a fact that the Bible is complicated. Multiple genre’s, from poetry to story, from apocalypse to epistle, from gospel to poetry, from proverb to parable. The literature emerges from lives spread over hundreds of years, across diverse languages (Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew) and unique cultures (nomadic, Ancient near eastern, Israelite, Greco-Roman). It’s complicated.
So to are the lives of people. Every Sunday a range of lifestories eye me up. Some are high, others low. Some are forgiven, others burdened. Some are open, others closed. All are trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world and the complications of life in a credit crunch.
Into all this complication comes the cry for simplicity, to be clear and sharp, to say one thing well. Preaching becomes “Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline”! I’m not saying this is good or bad, it simply is. Nor am I saying anything about how one goes about the preaching task - whether one exposits, or discusses, or imagines or creates. Simply that the task seems to be summarised by the juxtaposition between complicated/simple.
It’s a fact that the Bible is complicated. Multiple genre’s, from poetry to story, from apocalypse to epistle, from gospel to poetry, from proverb to parable. The literature emerges from lives spread over hundreds of years, across diverse languages (Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew) and unique cultures (nomadic, Ancient near eastern, Israelite, Greco-Roman). It’s complicated.
So to are the lives of people. Every Sunday a range of lifestories eye me up. Some are high, others low. Some are forgiven, others burdened. Some are open, others closed. All are trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world and the complications of life in a credit crunch.
Into all this complication comes the cry for simplicity, to be clear and sharp, to say one thing well. Preaching becomes “Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline”! I’m not saying this is good or bad, it simply is. Nor am I saying anything about how one goes about the preaching task - whether one exposits, or discusses, or imagines or creates. Simply that the task seems to be summarised by the juxtaposition between complicated/simple.
You can read the full text here.
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