“Because we’ve been wed to speaching for so long, we’ve trained our communities to respond to our speeches by asking themselves, How does this apply to me? As though the word of God is some topical ointment. More often than not they will come up with some generic application - be nice to my neighbors, be honest in my relationships, and so on. But is that really the best we can offer our communities? A better response, one that comes out of a progressional approach to preaching, is one that invites those who take part in the sermon to ask, “If this is our story, what will this mean for our lives?” Consider what would happen if the people of in our communities felt implicated by the story of God, if our preaching became the impetus for them to become part of the story itself and start arranging their lives around it.
We want our sermons to live on in the lives of our people, to know they are being changed week by week. It is my contention that speaching prevents this from happening, primarily because speaching is centered on application, not implication.
Our post-Enlightenment ways of thinking move us to want answers rather than more questions, to seek instant take-away rather than long processes, to seek out solutions rather than ponder the problem itself. We have little patience for ambiguity or uncertainty. As a result the question of the church has increasingly become, “What does the Bible have to do with my life today?” Preaching as progressional dialogue calls for a different reaction from those who hear a sermon. Where applications asks, “Do you see what I see?” or, “Do you know what I know?” implication asks, “What do we do now?” The difference is crucial to the ways in which we understand ourselves as God’s people. Application allows us to remain disconnected, to think of our faith in individualistic terms. But nowhere in the Bible do we see faith as an individual endeavor. It is always a communal practice. The sense of us that comes through implication opens our communities to the notion that we aren’t simply people who gather once a week for a common experience, but we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Suddenly, we tap into the power of the community to be a source of formation, of life change. Implication takes down the walls that exist between the people in our communities and allows us to be vulnerable with one another as we share in the journey of faith.
Application is about how a piece of information fits into your life. Implication is not about fitting; its about redefining. Its not value-added suggestion; it’s a call to see the story and join in it.”
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I really love the distintion between application and implication. The first seems to ask “how can my life be better based on what I have heard?” The emphasis is on personal benefit, or Pagitts words, a value added suggestion. Implication requires an entire redifinition of our lives. We can’t simply add the word to our life to improve it, we must see our lives in an entirely different light. One asks: how can this scritpure fit like a brick into the wall of my life, improving it? The other asks, where does God want to place the brick of my life into the wall of His Story? Really, it seems to be an issue of control and how attached we are to the vision that we have already created for our lives. We are not building a wall, rather, we are a brick awaiting re-shaping and placement in a bigger vision.
Can’t wait to read this whole book.
Implication definitely causes a redifinition of our lives. It surrounds us rather than just touching parts of us. A huge difference that requires so much more from us.
I also like how Doug points out that implication moves us closer together as a community. When we get out of the individualistic mindset of how we can apply God to our lives and instead jump into Gods story, we begin to ask: how are we all implicated by God’s story not only as an individual, but as an entire community.
there are some great metaphors that help articulate the distinction–and I’m sure you two have heard them before–but just in case.
Application vs. Implication
1. The difference between reading about a child abduction in the newspaper, (so sad, bad things always seem to happen but I feel somehow removed from the crime, as a distant audience) and driving past an amber alert notifying drivers of an abduction with details of the vehicle’s make, model and lic #. Immediately we know our part, and we find ourselves participating in the story.
2. Implication has also been describes the feeling that comes over you when the police arrive at your doorstep with your son or daughter. The question you’re asking at that point isn’t “How does this apply to me?”