Thursday, April 10, 2008

Preaching As Concept Creation, Not Just Contextualization

John Piper has a great little article here on the need not only for preaching to contextualize but also to create new conceptual categories in people's minds. Here's the opening paragraph:
As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.
Read the whole thing.