Prayer is foundational in spiritual transformation. So we interviewed Gregory Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of Seeing is Believing: Experiencing Jesus through Imaginative Prayer (Baker, 2004).

How do you introduce imaginative prayer to a church unfamiliar with the practice?

Carefully! Differentiate imaginative prayer from the New Age movement. Imaginative prayer is focused on biblical truth; whereas New Age uses the imagination to go on shamanistic journeys.

This is simply thinking about God in concrete and vivid ways. It's rooted in the biblical tradition.

What are examples from Scripture?

In Psalm 27 David says he wants to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in his temple. What kind of gazing is he talking about? A physical scene, or a spiritual scene? Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. This is spiritual seeing. All of this requires the imagination.

I often use 2 Corinthians 3 to introduce imaginative ...