http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/504456121

Equipping the saints for witness and service, preaching and teaching the stories of the faith

Preaching has long played a key role in the work of equipping the saints for their ministry of witness and service in the world. In Protestant churches, the sermon has traditionally served as one of the primary means of teaching the congregation the lessons of the faith. Of course the Gospel is more than just information; it is an invitation, a call to a new way of seeing, a new way of living. For that call to be effective it must do more than just inform, it must also engage the hearer. The question then is this: How can preaching serve both to engage and inform? Augustine's famous quote about faith seeking understanding expresses well the primacy of faith in the process of discipling or equipping the saints for lives of witness and service. His insight suggests that our experience of faith precedes our understanding of it. Indeed, our experience of faith makes us desire to know more about it. Experience, therefore, precedes reflection. Based on that insight, one way to make preaching more effective is to create for the congregation an opportunity to have an experience of faith, then lead them through a time of reflection upon that experience. One of the most effective ways of creating such an experiential opportunity is through story and narrative. The thesis project reported on here found that a model of preaching that begins with a story or narrative experience and is followed by reflection offers an effective tool for the preacher as she seeks to equip the saints for their ministry of witness and service in the world.

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