Interaction By Kristin Swenson Summary

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Interaction
Author Kristin Swenson, a teacher of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University explores spiritual illiteracy among Christian. The author define biblical literacy as, "An ability to identify significant passages and stories, people, places and things in the Bible; it means knowing something about the Bible's organization, wide - ranging historical contexts and original language . . . biblical literacy involves the recognition that there's always more to learn." Swenson indicates that many Christians are illiterate when it comes to the Bible, which is a very big problem. She provides a few eye opening statistics to support her thesis. Swenson state that,
Even though the Bible is the all-time best-selling book ----- according to a 2002 Gallup poll, nearly every American (93%) own at least one …show more content…

In all of us there is a deep and intense need to spend a lot of time with stories --- telling them, listening to them, reading them and watching them. In fact, storytelling, which feeds and exercises our capacity to imagine, is one of the most important features of our existence.
"Many homiletics experts have expressed well how much more easily people hear a story than a laundry list of points when someone is preaching . . . Jesus preach by telling stories . . . everyone would rather hear a good story than a laundry list of points or stern lecture about musts and shoulds."
The theological issue or topic for further discussion that the work raise is how to get Christian to move from just passively listening to the word to living out the word / applying it to their daily lives. The next issue raised by the work is what are the best ways pastors can encourage their parishioners to read the Word, study the Word, memorize the Word, and meditate on the Word daily. Lastly, I question whether pastors should be encouraged to change their delivery of their sermons from lecture [list of points] to storytelling?

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