How Do We Witness Meaning

Henry Mitchell does a great job of focusing on a few main arguments in Celebration and Experience in Preaching. These arguments center around the experience of the Word and the vehicles of experience. Mitchell starts the book by stating that he believes that salvation and spiritual growth come through a spiritual encounter with the Word and that preaching at its best is used by the Holy Spirit makes this experiential encounter possible. Mitchell contends that this experience is not a coming to faith moment. But, rather the experiential experience is one that helps to “describe, interpret, and help communicate” the faith experience. An experiential encounter with Word happens when three major elements are present. The first major element that needs to be present for an experiential encounter with Word is a Biblical text that encourages trust in and obedience to Word, along with a behavioral purpose calling for real-life application. The second major element needed is a basic understanding of hearing and other senses and how they relate to belief in Word. The hearing experience must consist of vivid details and images, some sense of familiarity, and homiletic moves in consciousness. Mitchell believes that details allow for a greater sense of meaning for believers, familiar associations call to mind similar experiences that bridge the gap between then and now, and the homiletical moves break down abstract concepts bringing them to life for the hearer. The third major element

One can hear a sermon any day of the week, because there are many preachers out there in the world. Many sermons are retold Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments that tell how our ancestors lived, and teach us life applications of how to glorify God while we are living our lives. For over a thousand years God’s word has been preached by many faithful men who follow Him. However, there were some of those faithful men who used God’s Word and their own improvisation to convict sinners and to put their trust in God. Those times resulted in an era called the Great Awakening of the 18th century and they also put an end to the segregation era of the 20th century. Two of the faithful men during those eras were

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.

Slang: a type of language that consists of words that are regarded as informal, and is most common in speech, and is typically restricted to a particular context or group of people. Nearly everyday, even without noticing it, most people use slang in their speech on a daily basis. How people speak can be interpreted very differently to listeners depending on their background. Many areas have their own type of speech that usually, only people who come from that background will understand. After reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and making an FJAVE dictionary and examples, it is easy to see that speech holds so much power, especially when the people communicating are born around the same time period or if they live in the same area.

The article, When I Witnesses Talk, covers the issue of eyewitness testimonies and their reliability with memory conformity. Often when two people experience the same event they both have very different recollections of the occurrence. One event within the journal article incorporates the murder of Jill Dando, within this investigation there was a lineup where 16 witnesses were asked to identify the suspect, where only 1 of the 16 witnesses recognized him. The police conducted a second lineup where for example one witness stated that they were 95% sure that the suspect that they identified was at the scene of the crime, yet in the original lineup that person was unable to identify anyone from the lineup. One key piece of information was discovered,

Since the beginning of time, the way that people, communities and churches deliver the word of God has evolved into a global multimedia event. Now days the word of God is being delivered in many

The beginning of chapter one in Grasping God’s Word discusses the four steps of ‘The Interpretive Journey’ that are designed to navigate readers through the Bible, but as a whole, it is designed to help readers “grasp the meaning of the [Bible that] God intended” (Duvall & Hays, 2012, p.21). In order to understand the intention God has for each passage of His word, there must be a substantial understanding of the context according to the original audience, therefore the first step is titled “Grasping the Text in Their Town” which answers the overarching question of ‘What did this message mean for people of that time’? As this question is inquired throughout Ephesians 2:1-10 , the reader is instructed to make simple yet meaningful observations,

Witnessing is an intimate and unique event that depends on both the people involved. The exact details of how one would witness cannot be assumed, so this is an overview of different ways “The Lottery” might be included in it. It is vital to be in prayer before witnessing. It can also be useful to come up with questions to allow the person to apply “The Lottery” and the Bible to their

I.Witnessing is sharing the truth of God Ps 145:10–12; Lk 24:46–48 See also 1 Ch 16:7–9; Ps 71:15; Mt 27:54; Jn 1:35–36; Jn 4:29

In summary, McRaney noted that the witness “should prayerfully and persistently pursue the presence of lost people, then proclaim and persuade at the prompting and in the power of the Holy Spirit” (p. 73). The next several chapters

We are living in a secular culture and it is important that we do our utmost best to try and reach this culture. The biggest difficulty in the church today is reaching this culture. It 's very difficult for the church to tell this secular culture about Jesus Christ. So the question is what types of practices we can use to get the message of Jesus Christ out to the world?

I have been working on making my preaching very easygoing and approachable, and even beyond that, I find that I absolutely love the exegetical work that goes into sermon prep, and bringing that into my sermons as well so that my congregation goes on the same exegetical journey I went on. Rose calls this conversational preaching and says that in this style, “the preacher and the congregation are colleagues, exploring together the mystery of the Word for their own lives, as well as the life of the congregation, the larger church, and the world.”

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is not your average psychological research text. In fact, much of the book’s information is based on his own experiences at Auschwitz: the infamous Holocaust death camp. Having experienced the worst of human nature, one might think that Frankl would argue that man is a product of his environment. However, this couldn't be farther from the truth; according to him, character is determined by a person’s decisions, not their habitat. He came to this conclusion while in Auschwitz, saying that he saw “some of our comrades behave like saints while others behaved like swine”. This comparison is applicable to any tale of imprisonment, including the captivity narratives of Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and Puritan settler Anne Rowlandson. On one hand, Rowlandson decides to, for the most part, play the part of the pig, denying any facet of her Native captors’ humanity; de Vaca, on the other hand, is slightly more understanding.

The first world congress of consecrated life held in Rome in 2004 says “religious life needs fewer professionals more witnesses.”2 We Christians/religious have been worrying about our identity for a long while now. Who are we? How do we fit into the fabric and structure of the church?

At the core of our faith is the living Christ, the incarnation of the triune God. During his time among us Christ brought us a new covenant based in grace and salvation through alone, setting up the beginning of theological tradition that would become the Christian. After his death and resurrection Jesus ascended into heaven leaving the immediate task of continuing his mission to us. How we carry the mission of Christ out today is known as our theological task or the process by which we are “drawn into a deeper relationship with ‘faith’s pioneer and perfecter.’” This is no simple task and so as United Methodists we turn to Wesley for guidance. “Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture,