The Preaching Task: Picking a Fight with the Text

Author: 
Lance Stone

The writer explores a narrative shape for preaching with its drive towards resolution. He proposes another approach, that of picking a fight with the text, where again the drive is towards resolution. Several examples are given. A related strategy is to pick a fight with common misunderstandings of a passage and again examples are given. In all these cases, a tension is created with demands resolution. Thus a sermon has a 'plot with unpredicable moves which may 'hold the listener's attention and help disclose the surprising, renewing world of God's Kingdom'.

Reference: 
Volume 44 2008/9, p30
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Lance Stone was ordained in Scotland and, following some years on the staff of St Nicholas in Aberdeen, he moved south of the Border. After periods in Hackney, London and teaching at Westminster College, Cambridge he is currently Minister of Emmanuel Church in the same city. He holds a doctorate from King’s College, London for a thesis on ‘Post-Liberal Theology with particular reference to the theology of Walter Brueggemann’, whose theology, he assures the Editor, is in keeping with a contentious, pugnacious style of preaching.