Preaching: a word from elsewhere (Walter Brueggemann)

This short video clip by Walter Brueggemann, from 2008, has been coming back to me again and again since I first saw it a few years ago.

Huge demands are placed on pastors. But what is most important?

Brueggemann urges pastors to make sure they give to preaching the time and attention it requires.

I believe that many preachers finally get around to their sermon in their fatigue from everything else, and if imagination is the key to good preaching, you cannot be imaginative when you’re exhausted.

Fuelling the imagination requires us to spend time ‘elsewhere’.

If a pastor decides that [preaching is the main task], then the pastor is going to make more time for reading and study and prayer, which are the disciplines that cause the pastor to live to some extent in a different zone.

And if we are to bring a word from elsewhere, then we have to live, to some extent, elsewhere.