Preacher to Preacher

From Dan Copp

Is there anyone else like me who finds metaphors helpful in visualizing what it means to be a preacher? For example, simple metaphors illustrate the importance of prioritizing my personal soul care as a preacher. Metaphors like the awesomeness of an iceberg or beauty of a sailboat remind me the sermon I preach is highly visible, but it is really about what is below the waterline that counts. Or the large jar reminding me I need to intentionally place the big rocks in first (before the pebbles, sand, and water) in order to assure there is room for making the “first things first.”

I love the way Eugene Peterson borrows from trigonometry to use the triangle as a metaphor for pastoral ministry. Peterson calls our attention to the importance of the three small but critical “angles” that really determine the shape of everything else in pastoral ministry. He identifies preaching as one of the three highly visible “lines” of pastoral work, along with teaching and administration. But it is really the three angles that ultimately determine the trajectory of the lines. The three angles are prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction:

The three areas constitute acts of attention: prayer is an act in which I bring myself to attention before God; reading Scripture is an act of attending to God in his speech and action across two millennia in Israel and Christ; spiritual direction is an act of giving attention to what God is doing in the person who happens to be before me at any given moment . . . Pastoral work disconnected from the angle actions—the acts of attention to God in relation to myself, the biblical communication of Israel and church, the other person—is no longer given its shape by God. Working the angles is what gives shape and integrity to the daily work of pastors and priests. If we get the angles right it is a simple matter to draw the lines. But if we are careless with or dismiss the angles, no matter how long or straight we draw the lines we will not have a triangle, a pastoral ministry1.

Being a preacher during the seasons of Lent and Easter is a high calling and privilege. God-shaped preaching during this holy season will be the fruit of “working the angles.” Our preaching resources for Lent and Easter 2008 come from two “working the angles pastors,” Dr. Scott Daniels and Rev. Rob Prince. Scott is serving as senior pastor for First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, California. Rob is serving as senior pastor for Central Church of the Nazarene in Lenexa, Kansas. I trust these wonderful pastors will contribute to your leaning into the angles as you proclaim Resurrection hope! I pray also:

the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms . . . (Ephesians 1:18-20).

1. Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 3-5. r