The Living Church Podcast Poetry for the Church with Abram Van Engen
Sep 25, 2025
Join Abram Van Engen, a humanities professor and author of Word Made Fresh, as he dives into the transformative power of poetry for the Church. He passionately defends poetry as relational and meaningful, challenging the idea that it's esoteric. Abram shares how Scripture is rich with poetic elements, emphasizing its role in worship and personal encounters. He offers practical tips for reading and appreciating poetry, highlighting its ability to connect us across experiences and enhance our spiritual lives.
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Churchgoers Have A Poetry Advantage
- Churchgoers already practice poetry through psalms, hymns, and liturgy and thus have a leg up in reading poems.
- Abram Van Engen argues we simply often fail to recognize these practices as poetry.
Defamiliarization Reawakens Wonder
- Poetry defamiliarizes the familiar, jolting us to see ordinary things anew and praise them.
- Van Engen compares this to weekly liturgy resetting our perception and preventing staleness.
Begin With Poems You Actually Like
- Start with poems you like and allow yourself to dislike many poems as part of exploration.
- Then ask why you like them and why others like poems you skip to broaden conversation and taste.
