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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.
