{"id":33367,"date":"2022-09-10T20:46:06","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T01:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/use-your-imagination\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T20:46:06","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T01:46:06","slug":"use-your-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/use-your-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Your Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent article for Pastors.com, Greg Atkinson writes: \u201cOver the past 12 years when I have spoken at pastors and leadership conferences, I have urged pastors to, \u201c<strong>Paint a picture with your words<\/strong>. Don\u2019t underestimate the power of imagination.\u201d\u00a0. . .<\/p>\n<p><strong>The honest truth is too many communicators rely too much on tech<\/strong>; they\u2019re lazy in their preparation and it shows. If you were to preach on a Sunday when the power went out and you couldn\u2019t use any visuals, PowerPoint or videos, and your sermon fell apart, you\u2019re basically admitting you had nothing to say.\u00a0<strong>Videos and graphics are supplemental enhancements\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 they can\u2019t be the meat of what you communicate. Read those last two sentences again.<\/p>\n<p>Please know I\u2019m all for using media and have taught on it widely, but I always caution my audience to not let the \u201ctail wag the dog.\u201d You should never say, \u201cHey, I found this cool video clip. Let\u2019s build a message around it.\u201d This way is backwards. Plan to preach what God has laid on your heart, rooted in Scripture, and if there happens to be a video clip which supports or illustrates one of your points, great! But it must be in a supporting role.<\/p>\n<p>Not only is Jesus the perfect model for leadership, he is the perfect model for communication.\u00a0<strong>Jesus was the greatest preacher who ever lived<\/strong>. You only have to read the Gospels once to see how Jesus captured the imaginations of all who came to hear him. Jesus understood if you can capture one\u2019s imagination, it will take them on a glorious adventure and have far greater impact than a picture or video we try to show them. Jesus, through parables, led people on a journey of discovery and insight by using words and illustrations which got across the message he was trying to teach. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Mark Batterson wrote an article titled \u201cPostmodern Wells.\u201d In it, he said, \u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong: the message is sacred. But methods are not. And the moment we anoint our methods as sacred, we stop creating the future and start repeating the past.\u00a0<em><strong>We stop doing ministry out of imagination and start doing ministry\u00a0out of memory<\/strong><\/em><strong>.\u201d <\/strong><strong>Are you doing ministry out of imagination or out of memory?\u201d [Read the full article]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_container the_champ_horizontal_sharing' data-super-socializer-href=\"https:\/\/www.preaching.com\/articles\/use-your-imagination\/\">\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_title' style=\"font-weight:bold\">Share This On:<\/div>\n<div class=\"the_champ_sharing_ul\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent article for Pastors.com, Greg Atkinson writes: \u201cOver the past 12 years when I have spoken at pastors and leadership conferences, I have urged pastors to, \u201cPaint a picture with your words. Don\u2019t underestimate the power of imagination.\u201d\u00a0. . . The honest truth is too many communicators rely too much on tech; they\u2019re &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/use-your-imagination\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Use Your Imagination&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}