Conceptual Metaphors
Be Kind: 42 Seconds Sermon Notes 1 of 4
Editor’s Note: This resource supports preachers and congregations in the use of the book 42 Seconds: The Jesus Model for Everyday Interactions by Carl Medearis. You can visit the 42 Seconds Resource page at justinrossow.com to see more. The Big Idea “It’s basically impossible to introduce people to Jesus if we’re not kind to them” (page […]
Heading in the Right Direction
Metaphors shape the way we think. Metaphors shape how we make decisions. Metaphors allow us to experience one thing in terms of something else. The following is a sermon produced by a student in a course I teach on metaphor theory. The assignment was to put the basic elements of metaphor theory to use in […]
Paul and Lydia
By Justin Rossow Sometimes you preach a metaphor IN the text. And sometimes you preach a metaphor FOR the text. In Acts 16, Paul meets Lydia at a river. A literal river. Nothing metaphorical about it. But the sermon below takes the image of a river–of tubing and whitewater rafting on a river–as a metaphor […]
How Speaking of Jesus Changed My Preaching
Speaking of Jesus: The Art of NOT Evangelism isn’t intended to be a book on preaching. It’s a book about the primary ways we interact with people who don’t know Jesus. So it’s a book about evangelism, or, as the subtitle suggests, a book about NOT doing evangelism the way we used to. As I read […]
Source and Target, Target, Target Domains
If you know even the basics of contemporary metaphor theory, then you know that in the metaphor “Richard is a gorilla,” what we know (or think we know) about gorillas is the “Source domain.” The metaphor works by taking what we know and expect and how we reason about gorillas and mapping those inferences and […]
Passing on the Faith
In a sermon series called “Family Matters,” we wanted to talk about the importance of passing on the faith to the next generation. But we also wanted to share some of the results of a Family Needs Survey the congregation had taken a few months before. The results of this survey showed a sense of […]
Abide With Me: A Case Study
Part 2 of a 2-part series. (You can go to part 1 here.) “Abide with Me” and A Lifetime is a Day My professor, David Maxwell, encouraged me to do a close analysis of the hymn “Abide with Me,” by Henry F. Lyte (1793–1847), and he mentioned that it was one of his favorites. Well, […]
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