The Preaching Life

by Roger Hahn

“The Preaching Life”* is a regular feature of Preacher’s Magazine where readers are privileged to sit in the classroom and read insights on current preaching models from some of the finest preachers. Roger Hahn is dean of the faculty and professor of New Testament at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City.

On the pulpit in the church where I first worked as a summer youth minister was a plaque that read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” The phrase appears in John 12:21 (KJV) on the lips of some Greek persons looking for Jesus. The plaque was a reminder to every preacher in that pulpit that the congregation’s greatest need was to encounter Christ, the Living Word, through the Written Word of Scripture.

The preaching life flows into and out from Scripture. Pulpit presence, rhetorical skills, and a sense of compassion are all important to preaching, but the way Scripture works in us, and we in it, is most important. Fred Craddock, well-known preaching teacher, describes the Bible as a different world from the world in which we live. We believe there is a word from God for us in the Scripture. It is the preacher’s task to go into the world of the biblical text, find the message that God has for us there, and then return to the world of the congregation and declare that message through preaching.

There are many tasks in ministry, in which we are caught up, that could be accomplished by lay people in the church. The question of whether the church people want to do those tasks, or whether we can do them better than the laity, is beside the point. The one task that belongs uniquely to the preacher is the task of entering the biblical text, listening until she hears the word from God, and returning to communicate that message to the people. This is the one task a preacher cannot surrender or compromise.

Obviously, a preacher must spend time with the text if this is to happen. Both devotional reading and professional study of the Scripture are essential. The preacher should not worry if homiletical thoughts intrude while devotionally reading the Scripture. The point for concern is when the preacher never reads the Bible devotionally, but only when he is digging for a sermon text. Because Scripture is communication from God to us, prayer is also essential in the reading process. However, that prayer is dialogical and clarifying. It is not telling God what He should have or must have said.

To understand the Scripture we must be aware of the genre (kind of literature) of a biblical book and the form (type of literature) of the paragraph. Narratives and epistles communicate differently. This means the message of God and the way we preach it will vary accordingly. A parable and a chronicle are quite different in form. Unless we understand that and preach them according to their design we, and our congregation, may miss the point of the passage.

The Psalms indicate that study of Scripture will bring great joy to any of God’s people. For those of us called to enter the world of the text, hear God’s voice, and bring back the message for our people, there is a special joy in being in the Word.

*Preacher’s Magazine is indebted to Barbara Brown Taylor for the title of this column.