Preaching Dangerously...Continued from page 4

PREACHING: How many hours do you typ­ically spend on a 30 minute Sunday sermon?

LABBERTON: I would say all together maybe 10 hours.

PREACHING: When you get away for the summer and plan for the year, are you also planning the Sundays when some of your team members will be preaching?

LABBERTON: Yes, as I am trying to shape a series, I look at how that week is going to stand out in comparison to other weeks. But when we then have staff discussions as it gets closer, I am certainly not trying to shape what my other associates are trying to preach. I feel they need to have their own integrity before the text and before the people on the Sunday they are preaching.

So as we are talking about it they are free to change the title, though probably not the text because it is in a sequence. But even that can be slightly modified. If they wanted to develop that differently from how I originally envisioned it that is fine, provided that there is a sense of continuity. We are trying to develop a long conversa­tion. I really see preaching as a long con­versation with the congregation. So I don’t measure it by week by week effectiveness; it is really a much longer measurement.

PREACHING: Where did you serve before going to Berkley? And have you had to adapt in a setting like that?

LABBERTON: I became a Christian in col­lege and part of the influence of that is a call to be a pastor in a college/university setting. I feel like those are the settings that fit me. That’s a mission field that too often local churches abandon to parachurch groups or abandon period. So I have a strong sense of calling.

I served as an intern and church direc­tor of college/university ministries at University Presbyterian church in Seattle. I had an opportunity to work for about a year and a half as John Stott’s study assis­tant. I came to Berkley the first time to be the college pastor; I was there for six years in that role. I went to do a Ph.D. and came back to the U.S. and served an 18-month pastorate in Wayne, Penn. I came back to Berkley 14 years ago. So that is the map of where I have been.

In Wayne, the call was different because it is an upper/middle class, largely white suburb of Philadelphia. That was not a nat­ural fit for me. It was a difficult and chal­lenging season for me to figure out how to communicate there. One of the reasons that I accepted the call to Berkley was in part a call away from Wayne?really feeling I was not the person to be the pastor of that church. It was partly because I didn’t understand how to preach in that setting.

PREACHING: What are the things you most enjoy about preaching and what are the things you find the most challenging?

LABBERTON: I do love the fact that it is a really long conversation. I love the fact that when you get to preach regularly you do get the sense that you are engaging in a very organic, mysterious humbling process, by which you are trying to invite people into an engagement with God and the Bible. So what I love about it is all those dynamics that are active and living, the astonishment that I regularly have that God chooses to use me?and also preach­ing, period?as a channel of communica­tion. I just find it stunning. So it is a gift of grace to me to preach; it is an extraordinar­ily privilege and it is not one that I am entitled to or that I take for granted.