So, the academics and the activists have "the same shortcoming in common. As different as they are, they both appeal to the intellect in one way or another." And the answer suggested here is "imagination"? Isn't that just another activity within the mind?

Your diagnosis is right. Your prescription is askew. James nailed it: "Be doers of the Word, not hearers only."

Live it! Don't just think it!

Hi, Jarrod. Good point. But, no, the imagination is not purely an activity within the mind. I wish I'd had more space to make that clear. Your point is taken.

Thanks for the really prompt response, Brandon. If imagination isn't a way of thinking, then I guess I don't understand what you are saying in this post. Sorry.

Jarrod,

I've given it some more thought. Maybe this is a good way of thinking about it--an analogy. It is imagination that allows an architect or builder to visualize a building that doesn't yet exist. Good ones have the spatial capacity to sketch a plan and know--just from that--what the rooms will feel like, etc. Their intention to build and possibly live in the building makes it different from just an intellectual exercise--they aren't concerned about the history of building, for its own sake, or for the fine points of physics, etc. But they aren't just "doers"--not just hired hands that do a job and leave. They have the imagination to conceptualize the place plus the intention to bring it about.

That's what I mean about the imagination for Christians. It's not simply intellectual--the least educated of folks can have a Christian imagination. It's not just doing--there are lots of nonChristians who feed the poor, etc. It's catching a vision of the kingdom with the intent of participating in it.

Does that help?

Brandon, I too, was raised on testimony of God's provision at the 11th hour (along with right belief and right practice). As adults, my husband and I have experienced it more than once. I have long believed that the Christian life is one of obedience to the Word of God (meaning the Bible) and trust in God when those very things are the most difficult to do. This relationship is an affair of the heart. Sadly, many folks who are trying to be 'good' Christians have not experienced that definite change of heart which only the work of the Holy Spirit can bring about and spend a lifetime striving in their own strength to attain some imaginary spiritual goal. The admonishment to "love" is something I cannot accomplish in my own strength - ..."the fruit of the Spirit is love...".

Maybe the term 'imagination', like the term 'scandal', is misunderstood here as both of those terms have different common understandings than what are used in this post. My understanding of 'imagination' creates a view of my own thoughts, something that will never take me to God's thoughts. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8&9)

Thank you for a good post.

If you consider the human imagination as being that spiritually rich, when normally it is spiritually dull, corrupt, and selfish, you must be definining it as when believers are filled with the Spirit and are seeking to obey what God asks of them without seeing it first - walking by faith, not by sight - things hoped for but not seen.

Yes, the power of the testimony of God's power at work in believers lives - a key form of preaching / "proclaiming the glories of Him who called us out of darkness into light..." - what "royal priests" are supposted to do by nature - has been set aside for Bible lectures from hired experts. Participation by normal believers as being a key factor in building up the saints is gone. No one has any confidence in the power of believers "considering how they can spur one another on to love and good works" and "encouraging one another"... even though God has told us this is what he wants to use to prepare us for "the approaching day". Heb. 10:24,25

Do you think an improved imagination will help us do what this verse says?

Tim-

Yes! In fact, I think an improved/sanctified imagination is the crucial ingredient. The first step, at the very least.

"They have the imagination to conceptualize the place plus the intention to bring it about."

I think the past forty years of Christian activity in this nation is loaded with too much imagination, and boy howdy does it show.

If I go back further in time, I find that Christian "imagination" is really front-loading the future with unrealistic expectations, and foisting on us in the present a whole ton of garbage we have to sift through.

If I go back to the Medieval period I find that Christian "imagination" is truly corrupt if not plain ignorant, so back in the capsule guys, this period blows chunks.

If I go back to Y'shua, I find that Christian "imagination" doesn't exist, thankfully, and Christ does...impressive when we go to the source how the source reveals how dull and nebulous our imaginations have been all along.

I think we need less imagination and more obedience to G-d...because you know, Y'shua used that word a lot.

"He who loves me obeys me."

There you go, Imagination 101, obeying G-d, what a trip it's been...and we still seem to have a problem failing that class.

Excellent post Brandon. As a preacher, this is something I think about a lot. I especially wonder about the role of the imagination in the formation of church. People formed by strong cultural values of autonomy, personal preference, etc. will always struggle with our new identities as God's people.

Testimonies, like you suggest, are a great way to provoke imagination. I also find that experiences where we experience our corporate life in Christ can be very helpful. This can include meals, service projects, Bible study, etc.

What is often missing from these experiences is the Biblical language necessary for people to interpret them as something other than collections of individuals. Reclaiming our Biblical language can help move us from wishful thinking to imagining a life that, as you say, is available to us now.

"As a preacher, this is something I think about a lot. I especially wonder about the role of the imagination in the formation of church."

Oh boy...so, correct me if I'm wrong that what you're saying is you buy into what Mr. o'brien is saying with...

"Practically speaking, this means we church leaders need to move beyond telling people what they ought to believe and how they ought to behave."

Because the gospels are replete with Y'shua being completely coy with his disciples, and not telling the Pharisee's the error of their ways. Nor did he take the Samaritan woman to task for not believing correctly, and neither did he tell the woman caught in adultery to stop sinning...

/facepalm w/ a sigh

sometimes, guys, sometimes I wonder if you realize your trying to reinvent the wheel here, and haven't figured out the whole circle thingy yet.

teach obedience...it's an amazing concept...try it, seriously, just try teaching your parishoners to obey G-d...and herein is the thing...you're going to find that to be the biggest challenge yet of your ministry.

Thank you for going the extra mile with me, Brandon. This concept might be beyond me. Maybe I'm imagination impaired or something. But your kind follow ups are appreciated.

Imagination is hard given the contemporary context of most churches prefers monologue over dialogue.

Imagination is, when done well, dialectical. Yet too many folks try to see it as linear.

Of course this is the plague of New Testament churches in hypermodern America.

What I read here in this call for a great imagination is the call for story, for hearing the reality of God's presence in a world where God seems so not present. But what I read in the responses is the usual "be obedient."

I would suggest that part of obedience is the use of the sanctified imagination to see how we can do kingdom of heaven living in a world that seems to want to stay blind to the possibilities.

So, the director of the day care of my church drove by a family with five small children standing in front of their house and immediately prayed, "God, please give us a way to serve that family with Christian care for their children if they are in need so such services."

Fast forward a year. Because of community need, our 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. program suddenly switched to 6 am-6 pm hours. We became state-certified, giving us the possibility of reaching low-income families with excellent care and instruction with state subsidies of tuition. At a board meeting last week, I, as pastor of the church, requested they consider offering to the church 10% of their income (the church has carried much of the physical expense, meaning much lower fees than are ordinary). The Board noted that, with the current enrollment, it would mean adopting a budget that showed a negative bottom line because of fixed expenses. Then the Spirit of God began to nudge everyone around the table, and all agreed, "This is the right thing to do. We choose obedience to God even when we cannot see the outcome." They adopted the impossible budget.

The next day, the mother of those five children called the church. I took the call, having no idea who she was, but immediately impressed with her concern for her children and her wish to have them all together in a program that would give those children a Christian start to life. Five days later, all five children are enrolled, clearly enjoying their first days with us. And when the director put those numbers into the budget, the shortfall not only disappeared, but left with a possible surplus of ten times the shortfall, a surplus that will immediately be plowed back into the program to give even better care.

All because of a prayer, the love of children that reflects the heart of Jesus, hearts of obedience, and the use of the sanctified imagination.

But I am guessing that this movement of the Spirit, this use of the sanctified imagination, will immediately be rejected by the readers of this blog because I, as pastor of a thriving, healthy, serving, embracing-the-outcast church, am a woman. And most imaginations just can't stretch that far, no matter how much life and light we bring to our small community.

You have no idea (or maybe you do) the refreshing breeze across my parched soul which your article provided!

No, as of yet I cannot really say I've sparked the imagination of our folks at church; but, then, I am beginning to get feedback that the message is being heard. In fact, one of our adult classes dreamed of and created a food pantry.

If God allows I intend to continue emphasizing the fact that being made in the "image" of God speaks to the point of being designed to be "imagine-ative demonstrations of what He is like. I also hope to continue to develop the skill of story and a responsiveness to dream and vision. In fact, I have come to think that Peter's quote from Joel indicates that one of the functions of the Holy Spirit is to enable older men to dream and by those dreams to give the Holy Spirit the tools to give the young men vision. I try to imagine for our church family a fellowship where the older generation speaks less of how things were and more of what things could be while, at the same time, the younger generation hears their dreams and dares to say, as one politician put it, "I dream of things that are not and ask, 'why not?'"

Thank you so much for your encouragement.

@Harold

I try to imagine for our church family a fellowship where the older generation speaks less of how things were and more of what things could be while, at the same time, the younger generation hears their dreams and dares to say, as one politician put it, "I dream of things that are not and ask, 'why not?'"

Thanks so much for this, this is amazing. Love it!

For the older men to see not their past but the future, and to inspire the young men to rise up and change the world.

Thanks for this view!
Daniel

When I think of evangelical imagination, I'm reminded of this verse:

"For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

When it comes to completing these good works, it takes a bit of imagination. Not so much imagination that we make up our own good works. Just enough imagination to ask "God, what could you do through me in this situation?"

When we ask this question, and imagine God-sized works that he might want to complete through us, I think we might start to experience the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.

The imagination is fueled by the rational mind as well as the obedient body, is it not?

All three, in my mind, are so closely related that one cannot thrive without the others. If the imagination, the rational faculties, and attention to practice are not each kept actively engaged in the Christian life, atrophy will soon follow, not just for that which is neglected, but for the capacities of all three.

I couldn't help but notice that your imaginative description of the prophets and of Jesus, and the future hope that Christians have, depends first on utilization of the intellect, the rational faculties. In order to imagine that future, great thought must be enacted to grasp the biblical narrative and to make determinations if that narrative is true. Then, if that narrative holds, the conscience becomes convicted and obedience should follow. Our obedience in the present is informed by what we both grasp rationally and imaginatively. The hope is both present and future, because it has been grasped by knowledge (epistemology, anyone?), and because we are confident of things to come (imagination, faith).

I've also been convinced of the need for renewed imagination for some time, and am glad for this article to fuel further thought!

One of my favourite quotes emphasizes the importance of imagination to leadership, as well as its implicit activity. Bill Hybels in Outreach magazine:
"The central work of diligent leadership is to move people from 'here' to 'there.' And that is primarily a work of stimulating a person’s imagination."

I find this post and the comments very interesting. I think The author is very accurate in his assesment of the truth. The Pharasees taught obedience which put huge burdens on the people. Sometimes I think Christians live in the new covenant as if it's basically the old covenant with less rules. This to me is a tragedy.

I'd like to suggest that the kingdom of God is active but it is also an experience. Show where it's not an experience. The Word is full of stories/testimonies of individuals experiences with God through their successes and failures. There were some very disobedient people yet they still had an experience with the Lord. I think imagination as the author describes it plays a huge part in this.

You continue to preach obedience and intellect from the pulpit and people may be moved and yet not changed. If you can offer them a door to a real life encounter with the Lord they will be changed for ever.

Very stimulating to my imagination. I have attempted to obey God's Word for decades and yet I am convinced beyond words that using our Holy Spirit imagination to be social and spiritual entrepreneurs and innovators. The cookie cutter ideas that seem to drive us are usually so redundant and boring that mature innovators cannot stand. For example, many leadership materials think innovation is building one more big box with a Video Screen to broadcast their show from. There are 80,000 Seasoned Citizens in Cincinnati yet not a single church has a way to engage them in meaningful release of their talents, gifts and wisdom. I would guess that 95% of all churches in America, especially contemporary ones, follow structures with almost no variety no matter the spiritual or experiential age of the audience. No other educational institution is so lacking in imagination.

"I would guess that 95% of all churches in America, especially contemporary ones, follow structures with almost no variety no matter the spiritual or experiential age of the audience. No other educational institution is so lacking in imagination." Except maybe public schools.

Sheerahkahn, God seldom looks for mindless obedience.

"You continue to preach obedience and intellect from the pulpit and people may be moved and yet not changed."

I have seen the teaching and explaining of Obedience do more than just move people...it actually has changed people's lives...I am one of those who is learning what obedience entails...and it is far more than a Pharisee could ever hope to attain because being obedient and loving is a lot harder than telling people to "Do this, that, and the other thing!"

e.g.

People who are moved by the teaching, "love your neighbor as yourself" WILL unwittingly qualify that command and think the pastor is talking about their family, best friend, aquaintances, coffee/beer buddies as their neighbor; but when taught that the atheist or agnostic gay couple next door who bitterly fight all the time are also your neighbor...wow, suddenly those same "love thy neighbor" christian bobble-heads who nodded vigorously in church get cold feet and mew "but they're gay and they don't care about G-d."

Anyway,

The problem is that sure...imagination can be a wonderful thing...but what does it produce?
How do you turn an imaginative idea into something real?

You see...I've seen so much of this that if I could forge all the "imagined" idea's that I've witnessed parsed by the individual Christians into a club I'd beat the entire thread here into a quivering mass of spiritless pulp.

So when I read something about "imagination" what I read is more along the lines of "I have a great idea, I hope someone else does something about it...how cool is that!?!"

since no asked me I'll volunteer it...

If you imagined a great idea, don't voice it JUST DO IT!

I'd add in the Nike swoosh, but Url would probably beat me senseless with trademark infringement...he probably will anyway, but them's the chances I take.

"Sheerahkahn, God seldom looks for mindless obedience."

Mindless?

That is what you think I'm saying should be taught?

/sigh...uh-boy.

I'm not talking about mindless obedience...Look, Y'shua talked more about obedience than...wait..how is it you don't know about this, already?

It's right there in the bible!

I am not presenting a new gospel here, I'm just repeating what is in the bible...how is it...how can anyone...it's right there for crying out loud!

I just don't know what to make of American Christians anymore.

I give up.

Sheerahkahn.
"Look, Y'shua talked more about obedience than...wait..how is it you don't know about this, already?"

Are you sure about this? I've read the word and I'm not conviced. The Kingdom of God, which Jesus preached, is not about following rules. In fact Jesus broke many of them. The Pharasees were constantly trying to accuse him of breaking them. The Gospel is the good news about the Kingdom. Not rules to follow or formula's to pursue.

I think the problem many Christians are having is that we are teaching formula Christianity from our pulpits. We are attempting to bring in the masses with glitz and glam yet lacking spiritual substance. We are teaching rules instead of a real accessable experience with the Lord. And we wonder why church attendance declines? Preach the gospel, preach the Kingdom of God, preach that God wants us to experience him.

Clyde Kilby's observation only serves to confirm something that occurred to me recently on another issue; people tend to respond to stories, not statistics or didactic statements of objective truth. The Christian "community" is sustained on story, as are the older living cultures on this planet (e.g. the Aboriginal culture in Australia). I'm not saying this is a bad thing; the Bible conveys its theology primarily through story. I suggest that one way to fire up the Christian Imagination is to find new ways of telling our old, old stories, and not to get too picky about what words we use to tell them. Too many times, I think, we Christians find fault because we don't hear the right language, even though the story might actually be superbly aligned to the Biblical perspective.

Surely part of the problem here is that 'evangelical imagination' often appears as a paradox.

The great root of evangelical belief is that the bible is the source life and belief. The bible speaks authoritatively into our lives. No wonder people who enter into christian life through this door distrust the idea of 'imagination'.

Of course, imagination is needed constantly to apply the Bible into our lives and to work our worldview into the wider view of life presented by the bible. Those acts of imagination should be Spirit lead and therefore prophetic in nature. Imagination matters because God hasn't stopped speaking.

But if you're working with terms then, it is a charismatic, rather than an evangelical, imagination that is needed; the freedom of the Spirit and the grounding in the truth.

The only problem is that put the words 'charismatic' and 'imagination' together and alarm bells ring across the western world because look out, here come the nutters!

The imagination in this sanctification walk on earth should be driven by the social and spiritual teachings of Christ. This is why it is so hard for me to understand my evangelical soul mates who take a very possessive and selfish view toward their testimony to others while addressing even the "political" issues of our time. Conservative theology does not equate in society with conservative political philosophy! In fact, it is counter intuitive.

In all the comments, and in the article itself, I don't find what seems to me to be a key element in immagination -- meditation. Today's world offers constant, instant input, balanced only by planning and action. It's no wonder that there is such shallow imagination. We don't have time to imagine! The Holy Spirit has to work his message in between the cracks of our focus. Even worship has become almost exclusively input/action. Our hearts and minds are not trained to simply be open, to allow ourselves to know He is God. (Obviously, we must avoid the danger of being open to simply anything, which invites heresy.) Meditation focused on the Trinity in light of the Word, eager, peaceful, deliberate invitation to the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts and actions, taking time to meditate on Scriptures and experiences and God-offered thoughts, is far from a waste of time. It is essential to holy imagination!

What happens when my 'imagination' and your 'imagination' are in conflict with each other?

About three years ago, as a church, we read through the gospels . . . not to understand or to study them, but to find out in what way Jesus is calling us to join Him in His radical Kingdom.
We then set aside a day called "Imagination Day." On that day we all got together and each of us "imagined" what radical "thing" Jesus was calling us to. We then grouped people around the commonalities they expressed and began several new ministries.
For us "imagination" became another name for "Spirit." We see imagination as God's incarnational Jesus self coming to us.

I don't think the evangelical problem is imaginative, though we sorely need more creativity. We do need more stories of God's faithfulness in the midst of our vain attempts to be obedient that enliven our concept of love in action.

The problem with developed imagination is that one tends to get crucified theologically for describing orthodoxy in different words. One is often scorned for expressing conscience in ways not deemed politically or morally acceptable.

Evangelicalism's main issue is judgmentalism. We attack ways of expressing faith that have not been vetted by those who see themselves as keepers of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Sheerahkhan,
Lighten up a little man! use your imagination!!

Thanks for your very thought-provoking post. I love your identification of imagination as a missing element in the Christian mind.

Along with a few other commenters, I do think story is a powerful kindler of imagination. Your post immediately made me think of how often and poignantly Jesus taught through story. The imagery of the tale of the Good Samaritan, the many parables of the kingdom with their vivid scenes of wedding feasts and harvest fields inform the way we understand the kingdom of heaven even today.

Perhaps the challenge for many is that imagination takes us into the realm of wonder, even mystery. Imagination deals in symbol and image, rather than a definable doctrine or action and so confounds our impulse to make a rule about what is acceptable in imagination and what is not. But our imaginations are simply formed by what we feed them. When they are informed by Scripture, by the imagery of the prophets and Gospels, by the beauty of the earth and the compassion of the people around us - and personally I would add redemptive expressions of art, music, and literature - they will help us to envision what God desires us to do and become.

I love the motto of the International Arts Movement: "engaging the culture and creating the world that ought to be." How can we create or act if we cannot envision, and describe, as the prophets did, the kingdom to which God calls us?

Great post.

Thanks for the post challenging and inviting us to a dimension that has become more or less atrophied in us.

I am going to go on a limbo...by saying this: In our desire to be faithful to God's revelation through the spoken/written word and given to us in the Bible, we have just about forgotten that God reveals himself through the things that he has made, namely, nature/creation as well. If we must recover/redeem our imagination then we must look afresh at nature. One has just got to read the gospels to see how the Lord himself made use of nature/creation to teach what he taught. I always wondered at the words of the seraphim in Isaiah 6, '...the whole earth is full of his glory'. How I wish I had their eyes to see what they saw!

Truth comes to us both from the Word and the World and both compliment each other. We have practically abandoned nature to the secular scientists and philosophers. And it is this neglect that us left us delinquent in our witness. I must add that one is not claiming that truth learnt from God's general revelations is salvific but a proper handling of it could lead to sensitizing the conscience and engender right thinking.

We need people who could communicate truth imaginatively through the story, drama, novel etc and not sound preachy. I am yet to come across a good novel which communicates truth about God and the gospel to a culture alien to the Bible.

Our lack of imagination is also a reason why there just seems to be no variety practically in the way we conduct our services. Universally there seems to be just one way of doing our meetings - programme-based and performance driven format! The organisational models we have followed too in running our churches and ministries reveals our lack of imagination - we are so stereo-typical and monotonous, as if the Creator of the whole earth has nothing else and nothing different to offer.

Brandon, thank you! You have well-captured the epiphany I also had which propelled me to look for an expression of Christian faith that facilitated a more whole person encounter with God (employing reason/intellect, acts of obedience, and also--through liturgy, sacrament, and the testimonies of the heroes of the faith throughout history--offering a consistent vision of Christ at work in the world and in His people--stimulating holy "imagination," if you will).

I quite agree those old testimony times in Evangelical Churches were often a small, but sometimes very powerful, facilitator of this faculty--with one caveat; sometimes those testimonies may have reflected not a real encounter with the Living God and His provision, but last night's pizza at work on a fevered imagination, or someone's wishful greedy thinking rationalizing a foolish or even sinful decision. I'm sure you have the more noble and reliable kind of testimonies in mind when you write, but I traveled in charismatic circles for a while, and so I know "testimony time" can sometimes be as much a revelation of man's sinful delusion as it can be of God's working in our lives, unfortunately, and often a little of both!

As indicated in some of the comments above perhaps, talking about "imagination" in our modern context tends to mean a specifically rational human willed activity and not an experience which is the result of a cooperation between man's spirit and will and God's loving Self-disclosure by the Holy Spirit. Because of the rationalist framework in which we tend to employ the word imagination, it perhaps doesn't quite do justice to that of which you really intend to speak. It seems to me, you might avoid this confusion by using the biblical terms "vision" or "revelation" or those from Christian theological tradition, "epiphany" or "theophany," to more fully express the phenomenon you are exploring here and to further amplify what you mean by this sanctified "imagination."

Again, thanks for this insightful and thought-provoking post!