Preaching Dangerously...Continued from page 3

So I think what we try to do is keep that clearly in focus?that the life of our church is really marshaled around that one central affirmation. We want to be a faithful church in Berkley rather than a church that is trying to follow or imitate the rabbit trails of endless agendas, advocacies, politics, personalities. I learned a long time ago that I would rather be a conservative in a liberal environment than a liberal in a conservative environment. So I love being in a place like Berkley where there is an implicit and explicit challenge to justify your faith. It feels like a legitimate and compelling mission to me.

PREACHING: Tell me about your preaching. Do you preach in series, and how long is a typical sermon for you?

LABBERTON: We typically preach in series, I and our staff. They are typically what I would think of as expositional series through biblical books. Periodically there are also topical series. Exposition in our tradition sometimes means a sermon that goes through text in a verse-by-verse kind of way. We have tended to define exposi­tion in a little broader terms than that?it is to try to expose the central meaning of the text and then to try to explore some of its implications. I think the text is central and it is typically in a sequential pattern of exposition. A typical sermon is about 30 minutes.

PREACHING: How many Sundays a year do you preach?

LABBERTON: I have tried to develop a preaching team at First Pres., so I only preach about 30 Sundays out of the 52.

PREACHING: Do you have other times out of the week that you teach?

LABBERTON: I teach a class most Sunday nights for an hour and a half regardless of whether I am preaching or not. I am pres­ent in worship whether I am preaching or not. I am not off doing something else while my associates preach. We are also committed to having international preach­ers. We have a very strong commitment to the larger conversation of how does the church of North America hear the church of the majority of the world.

PREACHING: What is a typical week for you in terms of preparation for preaching?

LABBERTON: I do a lot of preparation in a large block of time in the summer, spend­ing a couple of weeks just working on the preaching for the upcoming year. I spend a lot of time reading, praying, reflecting, adjusting and developing how series and texts could be developed. I write up a master plan of next year’s preaching. All of this is done very carefully and discussed with associate pastors that I work with. So that sets up a lot of where we go.

Monthly our pastoral staff discusses all of the next month’s texts. That has been another careful look at the text regardless of who is preaching. Then the next layer is my own personal preparation on the weeks that I am preaching. I spend Mondays pretty much just in study, and then I do more of that on Wednesday. By the end of Wednesday it is fairly clear to me what shape the sermon is going to take.