So the hottest homiletical tool seems to be a piece of software called Wordle . Cut and paste the text of your sermon into the appropriate window and Wordle creates a verbal mosaic, calling out key words in various colors and designs. (You can also try that with your denomination’s confession of faith .)
Want to know whether your sermon is sufficiently Christ-centered ? Wordle will give you a snapshot. Look at the words that pop. Fair chance those are the words that will be ringing in your congregants’ ears.
I, of course, put Wordle to an even higher purpose—I pasted in text culled from the screenplay for Twelve Monkeys , director Terry Gilliam’s underrated fear-the-future sci-fi magnum opus:
(I don’t need you to tell me I should get help, BTW . . . )
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
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