Preaching Dangerously
Mark Labberton is the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkley, California. He is the author of a new book, The Dangerous Act of Worship (InterVarsity Press). Preaching Editor Michael Duduit recently visited with him about “dangerous worship” and preaching.
PREACHING: Why is worship such a dangerous act?
LABBERTON: It is dangerous I think, because it involves an encounter with the living God. I think there is a very strong sense that the dangerous act of worship is that if we really have an encounter with God it will actually change our lives. That puts a danger to anything that would fundamentally be set against God. I can say for my own life and the life of other people, that we have a great deal that is actually set against God in our lives. So, it will be a dangerous encounter for that reason.
It will be a dangerous encounter also because if we are going to dare to plan to worship God it means that God will hold us accountable for what we are planning and what we are doing. God weighs seriously the actions of our lives as the benchmark of whether we are really faithfully worshiping. The strongest language that is used?especially by Jesus and the prophets?are words of judgment against false worship by religious people. So I think it is especially dangerous when the church plans worship, because then we are really held accountable for our worship. There is something truly awesome and very bold about that.
PREACHING: Let’s be honest: there’s a lot of what we call worship that isn’t particularly dangerous. How do you identify what makes worship dangerous and special, as opposed to worship practice that doesn’t fit into that category?
LABBERTON: The first thing about biblical worship practice that would be dangerous and redefining is to get worship out of a box called a “worship service” that happens on Sundays within a certain time frame, especially so it fits into a neat and tidy hour. So I think the first thing biblical worship does is blows that whole category up entirely.
Worship is meant to be after the whole creative order, in which every agency of God’s design and purposes ultimately is given over to God’s glory to reflect the reality and purposes of God. Therefore, if we are going to say that we are worshipers then it is a call to worship God with the whole of our lives. So when we talk about worship practices then we are talking about every practice, not just what happens liturgically within the walls of our church. That is a very dangerous difference from the way that worship is typically defined in a neat and tidy package: “Well, I went and did my worship thing within a certain tidy time frame.” I think that is the first place to start.
I don’t think the main danger has to do with activities of the liturgical kind, as though the goal is trying to make them more dynamic, more fearsome or more dramatic in some way. I think it is more the heart of transformation that worship calls for, which is really to be a mirror of the heart and mind and priorities of God. That puts us into very challenging terrain. It has to do with everything from loving the forgotten to actually loving our enemies. That is going to mean rearranging my life if, in fact, I am going to take those words and worship practices seriously. So it is the practices of daily life rearranged in the light of the Kingdom? that is the trajectory of truly dangerous worship.