Preaching Dangerously...Continued from page 1

PREACHING: Where does preaching fit into all of this?

LABBERTON: I think that preaching is the lifting up of the living Word of God?the written Word of God?in such a way that it can do this explosive work. So I think preaching is a seminal piece of this.

For example, now I am doing a series through the book of Amos. Part of the pur­pose of that series is to say: here is a set of mirrors that are being used by the prophet Amos in relationship to Israel’s life. At a time when Israel was prospering, the kingdom was divided, but Israel itself was in a good season and could well had parked itself in a kind of proverbial wisdom that it had clear­ly received God’s blessing. Then along comes the prophet who, in one way or another, nukes that perspective. So if we scratch beneath the surface we find a radically dif­ferent story, so radical in fact that God makes it clear that He hates their worship.

The handling of the Word of God, the proclamation of the word of God, is letting it actually resound in the nooks and crannies and patterns of our lives. That is a very big and important thing.

PREACHING: How much does one’s view of Scripture impact how dangerous preaching is?

LABBERTON: You would think that one’s doctrine of the Bible should actually influ­ence that. Yet I think it would be hard to make a case that the people in the American church who have the highest view of the Bible necessarily are the people who are the most willing to allow the Scripture to speak. Part of the dynamic that every preacher, every communicator, every Christian has to face is whether our message is fundamentally shaped by cul­ture or whether it is fundamentally shaped by the Bible. That is not exactly a question that is settled by an affirmation or a nod about the Bible’s authority, at least as another doctrine. That is by your practice, like the worship experience itself. My doctrine might be good, but my practice of that doctrine might be weak or inadequate or gone. Then the chances of it doing that work are smaller.

So in the same way I think there is an enormous challenge to allow the practice of a high view of Scripture to actually shape how we come to the preaching task. How we dare to believe that the Bible will do its own convicting work and that we are really trying to unleash it in its potency to the congregation. That means that we have to do our own work, not just biblically and exegetically, but also our own work spiritu­ally and theologically, really dying to the idolatries that actually shape a great deal of pastoral ministries.

The reason it often doesn’t happen isn’t that we don’t have a high view of the Bible, but we have competing with it a high prac­tice of idolatries of various kinds that sim­ply distract us from really wanting the Bible to do its work.