Ten Strategies for Preaching in a Multimedia Culture

In a brief and user-friendly way Tom Troeger offers insight to pastors seeking to engage their congregations in creative ways that move beyond traditional concepts of what a sermon should be. His opening chapter presents a reminder that even the gospels were written with a specific direction in mind to tell the story to a particular community, in such a way that the audience would receive the most benefit and understanding from the Word. As times change, so do the most effective and creative ways of communicating the good news. Stained glass windows, large cathedrals, native language translations of the Bible, hymns written to familiar secular tunes, all are different ways of communicating God's story and responding to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Troeger gives us ten examples he has used to meet the needs of Christians seeking to hear a story that relates to their world today. He does this by briefly presenting a strategy and offering an example from his own preaching life. In a chapter entitled Assume There Is More to the Story, preachers are encouraged to imagine in greater detail the events surrounding a particular Bible story or passage. He uses the wedding feast at Cana based on John 2:1-11. "And I would like to think that when the celebration was over and the couple left for their honeymoon and the guests had departed, that some friend or family member of the couple, poured the wine that remained into smaller containers and corked them, and when the couple returned, presented them with several crates of wine. `Here this is the wine the rabbi from Nazareth supplied. I thought you might like to have it for special occasions.'" Other strategies involve playing with a biblical image by creating a drama, writing a sermon like a movie script, playing a game and using the outcomes as a message, and listening for muffled voices in a text, among several others.There is a brief conclusion that focuses on how to develop your own strategies.

Troeger provides 10 innovative strategies for presenting Scripture in a contemporary context. These ideas not only are engaging for the congregation as they see them unfold, they also incorporate the congregation in participation with in the Scripture texts. The congregation becomes a part of the Scripture texts as they perform it and engage the text as part of it. These ideas do not cost anything and yet bring new life to Scripture using current issues and concepts.