Introduction

At its heart, practical theology is an act of imagination. For imagination enables the apprehension of theological possibility, occurring where revelation and human experience touch, the place of practical theology. Where the theological possibility to be apprehended is eschatological, a reality both now and also not yet, a specifically prophetic understanding of imagination is necessary. Woven with storytelling regarding the genesis of Ecclesial Leadership as Friendship from within the author’s own church leadership experiences, the Introduction presents Walter Brueggemann’s fourfold description of the prophetic sub-community as offering form to practical theology in the mode of prophetic imagination. In imagining alternatives to the dominant consciousness, acts of prophetic imagination are, first, born of an expression of pain: for the status quo to endure is considered unbearable. They depend, second, on a long and available memory upon which the prophetic sub-community can draw and, third, require the establishment of a richly coded mode of discourse. Finally, they are expressed in active practices of hope.