Well, this is exciting…

After six years we have set our eyes on the cover of our new book. Two Kiwis and two Latinos, have been working together on Zoom across two languages. Geoff has still not met Wilfredo or Esteban! I hope I can be present when it happens.

We could have published the English version a year ago. However, we were determined to honour the English:Hispanic nature of the collaboration. We think there is a big difference between publishing an English book which you subsequently translate into Spanish—and publishing a book in the two languages simultaneously.

So, here you have it: the Spanish cover, front and back—

To give you a further taste of the book, the publishers granted me permission to include a couple of extracts.

The Story

In the Foreword I share a bit of the story that led to the book. Here it is, with footnotes omitted for this setting:

More than thirty years ago, Thomas Long observed how “preaching a parable is a novice preacher’s dream, but often an experienced preacher’s nightmare.” These simple little stories attract the new preacher to them. It all looks so easy and straightforward. However, as the preacher lingers with the parables, going deeper in the study of them, they realise that there is much more happening then they had seen in that first encounter. 

The situation is complicated further by the fact the parable has had more written about it than any other genre in the Bible. Clearly, it is not so straightforward. And not all that has been written is helpful. Klyne Snodgrass, writer of the most comprehensive evangelical book on the parables, contends that “the parables are the most abused literature ever.” The experienced preacher easily becomes confused by the clutter of scholarship, so fearful of getting things wrong.

Nightmare and abuse. These are not pleasant words, especially when referring to the genre which is at the heart of the teaching ministry of Jesus. And yet I can raise my hand as one who has tasted these experiences. Armed with my Kenneth Bailey book, discovered at seminary, I commenced my pastoral ministry with a sermon series through the parables of Luke. But apart from the Parable of the Soils, only recently have I returned to the parables as a preacher. I journeyed deeper into the academic discussion, with the history of the interpretation of the parables forming the basis of my dissertation, and the experience froze me as a preacher. 

This situation, whether it be for me or for others, is unacceptable. 

There must be another way—and there is. It was at a Langham Preaching seminar in Hyderabad (India) in 2019 where things changed for me. Geoff New was teaching a session on preaching the parables in which he used a familiar model suggested by Warren Wiersbe, before extending it later. The parable starts as a picture, becomes a mirror and then a window, before providing the listener with a door. I took the model and began experimenting with it myself, especially over consecutive years as a trainer in the indigenous, grassroots preaching movement in Pakistan. 

The model seemed to work. People grasped what was happening as they moved through the stages. It was easy to remember and it appealed to oral preference learners. I began to wonder about the possibility of a book, primarily as a resource for our Langham Preaching family.

At about this time another strand in the story began to take shape. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there emerged a collection of poems, or laments, by Wilfredo Weigandt, in Argentina. So moved were we by his poetry that we decided to publish them in a booklet to help sustain people, offering them words with which to express their voice, during that dreadful time. The book travelled across the time zones, bringing comfort and strength to many. Trained as an architect as well as a writer of poetry, Wilfredo, the preacher, is blessed with a capacity to engage with sermon-making as both a science and an art. It is evident that the contemplative tradition has shaped him, as it has done Geoff, giving to them both a deeper perception into the text of Scripture. 

Might it be possible to draw these two people, unknown to each other and unable to speak a common language, into a collaborative effort that produces a book on preaching the parables? To do so we needed to find one more person, someone who could help bridge the gap between English and Spanish. Esteban Améstegui, in Bolivia, was the perfect solution in that he combined a facility in both languages with an expertise in media and communication, as well as learner-centered adult education.

Now it remained only to ask each of them if they’d like to participate. They agreed. And so it came to pass that we met regularly on Zoom over a twelve month period, with Geoff as our facilitator, and the book gradually took shape. Chapter 1 tells the story of parable interpretation, followed by the skills for parable interpretation in Chapter 2. The model is then introduced across Chapters 3 to 7, before it is utilized to create sermons on eight parables from Chapter 8 to 15, with each one of us making a contribution. Along the way, the journey is enhanced with sketches provided by our friend, the artist-priest, Fred Brunell. [NB: in the end it was a friend of Fred’s that provided the sketches].

Of all the many pages written on the parables, some of my favourites are found in the opening and closing chapters of a book authored by Paul Simpson Duke. On his very first page he imagines the Bible to be like a house in which the rooms represent the different genre, with one being “uniquely curious, beguiling, strange”.

One behalf of Esteban, Wilfredo and Geoff, I invite you to enter that room with us.

A Back Story

As mentioned above, I have wandered into the parables at a more academic level. In fact, the parables were the focus of my doctoral work, which took me 23 years to complete! Yikes. It started as a PhD for which I had written tens of thousands words but, for various reasons (good and far-from-good), I couldn’t pull the trigger and finish it off. After my candidacy had lapsed a few times, I switched across to a DMin and, with a slightly different focus, finished a thesis on The Role of Intrigue in the Communication with Sceptics in 2011.

The parable as a genre, especially the history of its interpretation, was at the heart of my research. At one point I owned 70 books on the parables, many of them covering different aspects of a (very) complicated story. So when it came to this book, we did need to ask the question, “Do we include a chapter on the story of parable interpretation?” Meanwhile I was sweating on a further question, “Is it possible to condense tens of thousands of words into 2000 words, and emerge with something useful for our (mostly) grassroots preachers, without an academic background, spread across the cultures and languages of the world?” Gulp!

To be honest, I am still not sure we did the right thing—and I am expecting some feedback along such lines! However, encouraged by my co-authors—and with Esteban leading the way to create some incredible imagery (see below)—we decided to ‘go for it’.

Yep, there is plenty of joy to be found in both the story and this backstory.

Working with Geoff, Wilfredo and Esteban was joyous. It is the joy of friendship. Seeing the two books come out at the same time is joyous. It resonates somewhere deep within me. But I can’t seem to find the right words to express that joy at the moment. Seeing fruit emerge from what had felt to me like wasted years, with their fears and tears, is joyous. It is the joy of resting my life in the purposes (and timetable!) of a good and sovereign God.

Now, I pray that the joy will be ‘shed abroad’ as preachers find a renewed confidence in preaching from the words at the very core of Jesus’ teaching ministry. But, please, please … don’t make the mistake that so many have made over recent generations: becoming so enamoured with preaching like Jesus that you lose sight of preaching Jesus.

nice chatting

Paul