Despite its popularity, the movement to see preaching as story-telling has needed depth and
augmentation, Richard Eslinger argues. His book provides a short course on narrative hermeneutics
and imagination theory, along with a proposal for integrating the two in preaching.
Eslinger shows how narrative can underpin the sermon or homily, anchor biblical preaching in the
community's own faith commitments, and build on the church's identity. But he also shows how
imagination theory's stress on symbol, metaphor, and image opens attractive possibilities for
Christian preaching.
Stories and imagery are worlds that powerfully shape us, and Eslinger's proposal enables preachers
to tap into these wellsprings of personal and communal meaning.
"Richard Eslinger has drawn together a diverse literature -- narrativity, imagination, literary theory,
hermeneutics, phenomenology, theology -- and written a must-read book on homiletics. A smart,
insightful book!"--David G. Buttrick, Vanderbilt Divinity School
About the Author: Richard L. Eslinger earned his doctorate at Boston University and is
pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Niles, Michigan. He is author of A New Hearing:
Living Options in Homiletic Method (1998) and editor of Intersections: Post-Critical Studies in
Preaching (1994).
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