Preaching workshop with Herbert O'Driscoll

Yesterday I attended a preaching workshop led by the great preacher and thinker Herbert O'Driscoll. The workshop was held at St. Andrew's, Seattle, which flaunts an inspiring stained-glass cross in the glass wall at one end of the church. I made the painting above while I was there.

O'Driscoll is the former Dean of the Cathedral in Vancouver, British Columbia and the former Dean of the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C. He's the author of numerous books and is internationally known for his preaching genius.

His message to us was that we have entered a postmodern age that calls for new methods of communication. People don't want more information on Sunday morning - they have too much information already. People want to have an experience of God, and we communicate that experience by use of the imagination through images and stories.

He urged us preachers to enter the scripture texts with our imagination and try to encounter the text intimately. Today's preaching has to be self-revelatory, he said, in the sense that people want to hear our honest encounter with God through scripture. He said:

"Preaching is not God overhearing what we're saying to our people, but our people overhearing what we're saying to God."

O'Driscoll said that preaching today is incomplete in the sense that we don't offer final answers. The image of the preacher is no longer that of an authority figure speaking from on high, but a wilderness guide helping us grope through the wilderness without knowing the way out.

He urged us to be more honest and intimate in our preaching and move from "constructive sophistication" to "profound simplicity". In the last part of his presentation he offered us a number of practical helps in sermon preparation for the new year starting in Advent.

I found O'Driscoll very refreshing. His deep wisdom encouraged me to go deeper in my own encounter with scripture and to be as honest as I can with myself and my message. A very worthwhile day.
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