Preface
First of all, I want to thank my wife Betty for all the help and encouragement she gave me in the writing of this book. Most authors put this at the end of the Preface, but since this is a book on imagination, I’m putting it at the beginning to show the reader how creative I can be.
This is a book about preaching and teaching the Word of God. Its aim is to help us so proclaim the Word that the people who hear us will experience the power of God’s truth changing their lives.
I’m sharing with you the burden of a preacher, writer, and occasional seminary instructor who got weary of bringing skeletons into the pulpit and producing cadavers in the pews. I have a concern to challenge our preachers—and those who train preachers—to move out of the academy into the marketplace and to start communicating God’s truth the way God communicated it to us in His Word. We’ve analyzed and outhned the Bible to death. Now it’s time we released the living Word to accomplish its powerful ministry in our needy world.
These chapters record the attempt of an amateur to bring together insights from many disciplines to help us find out how to do biblical preaching. Biblical preaching is far more than the proclamation of Bible truth, although that’s certainly an important part of it. Biblical preaching means declaring God’s truth the way He declared it, and that means with imagination.
I repeat: this book is the work of an amateur. I readily admit that I’m not an expert in the disciplines from which I’ve drawn material for this book. If I had waited until I mastered semiotics, hermeneutics, and all that’s involved in modern literary theory, this book would never have been written. I’d become like the fellow who attended university year after year and kept postponing his graduation. When his father was asked what his son would be when he graduated, the father replied, “An old man.” At my age, I can’t afford to play such a waiting game.
So I send this book forth. I trust that others, better qualified than I, will catch the vision and write better books that will correct my mistakes, explain things more precisely, and teach us how to be more effective preachers and teachers of God’s truth. This book is a courageous attempt on the part of a novice to point out some neglected paths on the homiletical landscape. My prayer is that better guides will also come along.
It was Dr. Warren S. Benson, Vice-president of Professional Doctoral Programs at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deer-field, Illinois, who first challenged me to investigate this subject and then to teach it in Trinity’s Doctor of Ministry program; I’m grateful to him for his encouragement. I’m also grateful to the students whose varied responses and insightful questions helped me find my way through the frightening maze. Some of them taught me far more than I taught them, for it’s in the give-and-take of honest discussion that all of us learn more. Obviously, Dr. Benson, Trinity, and the doctoral students are not responsible for the errors and deficiencies in this book, although they can certainly take credit for making it a better book.
I also owe a sincere thank-you to my friend Mark Sweeney, Corporate Vice-president of Scripture Press Publications and Publisher of Victor Books. Mark often discussed the book with me and encouraged me during the difficult process of writing it, and I’m grateful. Some publishers don’t seem to know what authors go through, but Mark is an exception. Thanks too to Robert Hosack who oversaw the editing of the manuscript and gave me many valuable suggestions.
Our pastor son David W. Wiersbe read the manuscript carefully and gave me many excellent suggestions. I find that as I get older, I need to keep in touch with the ideas and insights of the younger generation of preachers; David has helped me do that. I’m also grateful for the help given by other friends who read the manuscript and graciously shared their suggestions.
Let me add one word of caution: if you’re tempted to skip Parts I and II and dive immediately into the “practical discussion” in Part III, don’t yield to temptation. It’s important that you get the theoretical and biblical foundation first; so keep reading, and you will see that all of the text relates to what we’re all seeking: more effective communication of the Word of God.
I’m only too conscious of the shortcomings of this book. But if what I’ve written helps you strive toward preparing and preaching more effective sermons, then it has been worth it all.
Warren W. Wiersbe