SCRIPTURE. We can study it carefully. We can listen to sermons on it and read what the experts say about it. But in the end, says Anna Carter Florence, Scripture needs to be rehearsed and encount
SCRIPTURE. We can study it carefully. We can listen to sermons on it and read what the experts say about it. But in the end, says Anna Carter Florence, Scripture needs to be rehearsed and encountered—and we can do that best in community with others. In this book Florence offers concrete, practical tools for reading and rehearsing Scripture in groups. Suitable for new and seasoned Bible readers alike, Florence’s Rehearsing Scripture invites solitary readers to become community readers as well—to gather around a shared text and encounter God anew together.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
— author of Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People
“This book is a gorgeous invitation to experience the Bible as a living thing. Anna Carter Florence nudges the reader, saying ‘Can you feel the breath of it on your skin? Can you see how it moves? Can you hear what it’s saying in your own ear? Can you taste both the bitter and the sweet?’ She knows that if we do this, Scripture will always, always hand over the goods. I’m so grateful for her work, her love of the Bible, and her insistence that in it we find truth.”
Walter Brueggemann
— author of Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks
“Anna Carter Florence issues a cunning, compelling invitation to her readers, namely, to recover the reading of Scripture as a communal, oral, contextual, dramatic enterprise—as though in a theater. This book is a rich resource for church folk (clergy and laity) who clamor for ‘more Bible’ but do not know how to get it. This is how to do it!”
Samuel Wells
— author of Incarnational Ministry and Learning to Dream Again
“In this book Anna Carter Florence goes on a wild rumpus invigorating God’s people to be a repertory church searching for something true. Treating Scripture as a fridge full of promise rather than a ready-made meal waiting to be microwaved, she provides a recipe to enliven Scripture reading and performance in our lives. Her Rehearsing Scripture will renew your practice and awaken your imagination.”
Justo L. González
— author of A Brief History of Sunday: From the New Testament to the New Creation
“A fascinating and fruitful guide for reading and living out Scripture. If you believe that the Bible has something important to say but find that Bible studies are often tedious, repetitive, or confrontational, this book is for you. If you wish to hear the Bible anew, this book is for you. If you are part of a Bible study group that seems to have lost its original energy, this book is for you.”
William H. Willimon
— author of Who Lynched Willie Earle? Preaching to Confront Racism
“Into this lively book Anna Carter Florence pours her experience as an outstanding preacher and teacher of preachers. Scripture is known in its performance. The test of my preaching is in its enactment in the lives of my congregation. Florence’s love of and deep engagement with Scripture are infectious. Fresh insights are found here on every page.”
Thomas G. Long
— author of The Witness of Preaching and What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith
“For any preachers who have glided blithely through a biblical text on the way to writing a sermon, Anna Carter Florence calls us to repent and to pay close attention to the text again. Under her guidance the biblical passage is transformed from a sermon pretext into a rich drama bursting with power. Verbs, flattened by hasty and inattentive readings, now loom as mountains of meaning, and characters, once hardly noticed stick figures, become animated, articulate, and forceful. As a result, preachers do not ‘preach themselves.’ Instead they point a trembling finger at the text, saying ‘I can’t wait to tell you what’s happening in there!’ ”
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Anna Carter Florence is the Peter Marshall Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Her other books include Preaching as Testimony.
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