PEOPLE IN PRINT
April 1, 1990
From the Church To the Church
The Witness of Preaching by Thomas G. Long, Westminster, $13.95
Reviewed by Calvin Miller, pastor, Westside Church, Omaha, Nebraska Many preachers step into the pulpit perplexed: In the community of believers, they have encountered Christ and been nurtured in faith. Yet they are called to stand apart from that community and speak an authoritative word to it. What can they say to the church which discipled them in the first place? Thomas Long, associate professor of preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, knows that tension. But he accepts it, and, in The Witness of Preaching, uses it to inform and clarify the task of preaching. He does so by binding our pulpit work to one of our prime callings as Christians: to be witnesses. The preacher is a witness of Christ because he has seen Christ in and through the church. Preachers, says Long, are never "visitors from clergy-land . . . ambassadors from seminary-land . . . We are members of the body of Christ . . . to whom we are about to speak." He put it engagingly in a conversation we had: all witnessing comes from the church to the church; we but tell what we have seen and heard in the church. Naturally, that view of preaching will curb preacherly pride. But does viewing the preacher as one of the community dilute his pulpit authority? Not at all, argues Long. It simply precludes false authority in preaching. The preacher recognizes that a sermon's spiritual clout comes not from within him, but from somewhere else. The source of authority is made clear when Long outlines his thoughts on witnessing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's insights, he says a witness is, first, not a volunteer, but one who is sent. Second, God has a claim on the life of his witnesses. ...
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