"Images are a way to explore realities that cannot be fully investigated or explored by objective study or measurement."
- Donald E. Messer, Contemporary Images of Christian Ministry
What picture most appeals to you in regard to preaching? Eugene Lowry, who depicts preaching as plot, has collected some suggestions: “We not only have [H. Grady] Davis's tree and [Fred] Craddock's trip, but also R. E. C. Browne's gesture, Tom Troeger's music of speech, David Buttrick's move, Henry Mitchell's celebration, Lucy Rose's conversation, David Schlafer's play, and Paul Scott Wilson's spark of imagination.”1
I encourage my students to develop imaginative models or images to portray preaching. One wrote this:
Preaching is sort of like painting a picture. There is something you have seen. It is most outstanding — beautiful in a startling and breathtaking way. Everything inside you wants to capture it on canvas so that it can be shared with others. Painting requires paying attention to the details of what you see and imagining how to shape it on the canvas. Each color is lovingly chosen. Every brush stroke brings the scene closer to being alive. And finally comes the time for the unveiling — the scary, humbling, and joyous sharing of the beautiful grace of God.
In the past, I have pictured the preaching event as a ski-jump2 and a mountain climb. But I have long been searching for an image that resonates with the 360-degree preaching model and embodies the weekly journey from text to sermon.
When a seminary invited me in the mid-nineties to lecture on how I preach each week, I was forced to reflect honestly on what I had actually been doing each week for twenty years. (I commend not waiting twenty years before undertaking this revealing exercise!) I realized that my weekly practice involved a "journey" through a sequence of actions that involved not only study and technique but also my relationship with God. Actually, what mattered most in this process was not me trying to be fresh and original but God drawing me into discovering more of him and his Word, inviting me to live in its power, and encouraging me to work hard with him.
As I thought about how best to describe this journey, I eventually focused on the picture of a "preaching swim." Perhaps my Baptist background attracts me to water, though I confess I am a weak swimmer and feel acute anxiety when in too deep, especially when buffeted by waves and crosscurrents. I am reminded of my call to preach with its sense of being plunged into something that would always be uncomfortably too deep. Any text about preaching overwhelms when its challenge is taken seriously, such as, "We are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us" (2 Cor. 5:20). C. W. Koller regarded this as perhaps the New Testament's most important text for ministers.3