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Preaching & the Emerging Church: Why I Wrote This Book
Why I Wrote This Book
I had two main goals in writing Preaching and the Emerging Church. First, I wanted to give pastors a tool to judge the preaching advice coming out of the movement. I made my assessment based on the biblical pattern and precepts that support expositional/text-driven preaching (Neh 8:8), which by nature seeks to glorify God, exalt and exult in the person and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit. My second goal was to show the implications of emerging church preaching for evangelical (expository/text-driven) preaching. Two concluding implications are as follows. First, modeling the preaching ministry of the revisionists will lead to a diminishing of the role of traditional, evangelical preaching. Second, modeling the preaching ministry of the relevants will lead to delighting in the role of traditional evangelical proclamation. 
So What?
What significance do these two observations have for the church? The former, having emerged from a low view of Scripture, leads to a culturally driven conversation concerning an unorthodox gospel. The latter, having emerged from a high view of Scripture, leads to a text-driven heralding of an orthodox gospel—one that Jude calls the church to “contend earnestly” for, knowing that it has been “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). 
Furthermore, since it pleases God “through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21) and to establish the church as the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), preaching then is of grave importance to the culture and to the church. As Piper states, “Preaching is God’s appointed means for the conversion of sinners, the awakening of the church, and the preservation of the saints.” Therefore, choose wisely when discerning over the preaching counsel of the emerging church—for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, the proclamation of the gospel, the edification of the church, and the advancement of his kingdom in the context of this emerging yet passing culture. From Preaching and the Emerging Church, Chapter 11 (pgs. 332-335). Available here.