People often assume that preachers who read widely are on the prowl for illustrations. These people are right. Preachers are hunter-gatherers, searching not only the world's literary masterworks but also contemporary fiction, journalism, and biography. But preachers are not merely in search of useful stories. Reading deepens the preacher's knowledge of human cries of the heart. In fact, the preacher's reading deepens preaching because it deepens the preacher. In this workshop, Neal Plantinga and Hulitt Gloer discussed their highly successful "Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching" seminar, which the two have co-led the last five years as a multi-week summer program. This workshop will help participants begin to explore the possibilities and homiletical impact of engaging in an ongoing, vigorous program of reading for preaching.
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Recent Media Resources
Playing Well with Others: Musical Collaboration in the 91ÁÔÆæ Service
Musical collaboration in worship can be rewarding: it can build relationships, enrich the musical life of a congregation, and add more colors, timbres, and textures. 
Public 91ÁÔÆæ, Health Care, and Illness in Early Christianity
Explore how Christians in the earliest centuries of Christianity preached and prayed about illness, pain, and health care and shaped practices of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and funerals in response to illness and injury, including during pandemics—all so that we can learn from their pastoral, theological, and practical instincts as we seek to be faithful witnesses to Christ in our own globally diverse contexts. ​
Morning Prayer with Nate Glasper and the 7:9 Project
Nate Glasper and the 7:9 Project, a multicultural group of Calvin University students, lead a time of morning song and prayer firmly grounded in scripture. Inspired by the vision of Revelation 7:9, this gathering reflects the beauty of “every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the throne and before the Lamb.â€
Playing Well with Others: Musical Collaboration in the 91ÁÔÆæ Service
Musical collaboration in worship can be rewarding: it can build relationships, enrich the musical life of a congregation, and add more colors, timbres, and textures. 
Public 91ÁÔÆæ, Health Care, and Illness in Early Christianity
Explore how Christians in the earliest centuries of Christianity preached and prayed about illness, pain, and health care and shaped practices of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and funerals in response to illness and injury, including during pandemics—all so that we can learn from their pastoral, theological, and practical instincts as we seek to be faithful witnesses to Christ in our own globally diverse contexts. ​
Morning Prayer with Nate Glasper and the 7:9 Project
Nate Glasper and the 7:9 Project, a multicultural group of Calvin University students, lead a time of morning song and prayer firmly grounded in scripture. Inspired by the vision of Revelation 7:9, this gathering reflects the beauty of “every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the throne and before the Lamb.â€
Wealth, Church, and Leitourgia
How did early Christians understand and practice wealth in relation to worship/service and care of the poor?