Steve Mathewson explains what good stories do:

Proclaiming a well-studied story in a well-prepared way will do what good stories intend to do: sneak past the listener’s defenses to penetrate the heart.

And I suppose this is painfully obvious, so please excuse my fatigued new-Dad-again state, but what we need to do as preachers is understand the stories we preach as well as possible, shape our messages as well as possible and then present our messages (including telling the stories) as well as possible.

Let’s hear a bit more from Steve Mathewson’s great book on preaching Old Testament Narrative (p157):

“Stories move.  They have tension, movement, interaction, emotion.  We cannot tell a story while standing like a four-storey building.  We need to consider motion, body language, and emotion in voice, face and gesture.  Consider how to physically and subtly represent the movement of the story on the platform.  Don’t get stuck behind the pulpit (Spurgeon called it a “coward’s castle!”)  Always point to Goliath in the same direction, generally let time flow from left to right from their perspective, etc.  Stories move.  Good storytellers generally do too.  And the best storytellers move physically, in large gesture and with clear expressions in a way that is consistently natural!  Being natural takes work!

Next week I want to probe preaching narrative a bit more.  For the most profuse genre in the Bible, my sense is that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in many pulpit ministries.

1. Be sure to grasp and preach the main point.  A story does not consist of details collected together to offer you numerous launch points for vaguely connected ideas and insights.  The story consists of details deliberately chosen to help make the story work, to make the main point effective.  Be sure to grapple with the main point more than you hunt for “preaching points.”

2. Be careful to honour the form as well as the content.  Why chop it up and preach it as discourse when God made it a story?  This means that the bulk of your message should involve the best retelling of the story that you can manage.  Speaking of which, two critical elements of powerful story preaching:

3. Put your energy into effective description.  Study hard so you can describe well.  Build your sensory descriptive vocabulary so you can describe effectively.  Read C.S.Lewis or another great fiction writer to get a taste of compelling description.  Turn on your imagination again, because if you can see it, they will see it.  Take enough time for your descriptions to form on the screens in the listeners’ minds.  And pour similar energy into describing the application of your message too.  Speaking of energy…

4. Present with energy through engaging dynamism.  To be blunt, people don’t listen to dull stories.  To be honest, we rarely tell dull stories in normal life.  Ask me about my littlest girl’s birth last week and I’ll be engagingly dynamic.  I need to let that version of me show when I preach a Bible story.  When you preach a Bible story, remember that if you really care so it shows, they will care too.

I think these four suggestions are the very essence of powerfully preaching a Bible story.  What would you add?

I’ve been trying to get hold of a commentary series on the books of Samuel that does a stunning job of demonstrating the interconnectedness of the individual stories (a rarity in commentaries on narrative books!)

I’ve been pondering how the gospel writers wove together events and parables in a way that honoured their historicity, yet communicated their own theological emphases under the inspiration of God.  The gospels are not simply four perspectives on a car accident, it’s much richer than that!

So as we engage a story, we must break open the blinkers of the section headings and get a sense of what is going on around our focus text.  The context almost always sheds light on the point of our focus.

What is true on a local level, is also true on a macro level.  To be effective preachers, we need to be whole Bible people.  That is, we need to have a sense of how the whole fits together, not just historically, but as a greater plot.

The tension underlying every narrative is the fall of Genesis 3.  The characters in every plot are people responding to God as they hear His Word.  The resolution to the problem of Genesis 3 can never be the moral successes of particular characters, but rather the amazing intervention of God’s grace incarnated.

While we don’t need to always finish the macro story, we must always be aware of how our particular text fits into that larger narrative.  Only then can we be sure to avoid the simplistic little niceties of sharing tips for successful living through ancient tales with moral morals.  For whether we realize it or not, how we live this Thursday is part of the great narrative of God’s grace being spurned or celebrated in the epic of history and the annals of eternity.

So on a book by book level, on a canon-wide level, and on a history as a whole level, we must see individual plots as part of the bigger plot of God’s great story.  As preachers we have the privilege of shining light both in narrow focus, and in broad illumination.

Plot – the skeleton of every story, both fictional and historic, is the plot.  Every story has a plot, for without one it wouldn’t be a story.  At its most simple, a plot consists in a tension eventually resolved.  A tension is created in the context of an imaginable situation.  Somehow that tension is then resolved, or left uncomfortably unresolved in some examples.  Our primary task as we interpret a story is to grapple with its main point, as it grapples with us, and that main point will be tied into the resolution to the tension (or a comment on it).

People – every story has characters, and those characters are people (either in human form, or sometimes personified).  People engage us, for we too, are people.  So we identify with one character, but disassociate from another.  We can’t help ourselves.  Well told story will always engage us, whether it is from the cinematographer’s projector, or from the pulpit.

In – here’s the key word, in.  The characters are in real life situations, living in response to a real God.  We listeners find ourselves in their shoes, and they in ours.  We enter into stories.  Stories enter into us.  We live life in stories, and every decision we make, we make in response to our God – how we view Him, how we perceive His love toward us, etc.  Every story of our week is somehow shaped by how we have been captured by the story of our God entering in to the story of humanity.

If we view Bible stories as mere illustrative material, then we are blinded, not only to the richness of God’s Word, but also to the reality of God’s world in which we live.

I understand the challenge faced by many preachers with other work commitments and family priorities.  I understand the feeling that some express, namely, that without borrowing the outlines and sermons of other preachers from the internet, they would never be able to preach a sermon on a Sunday.

Just as we close the week out, I’d like to offer an encouragement.  Even if you are limited for time and feel unable to do the work of fully developing a sermon for your listeners, consider not taking the short-cut of outline borrowing or sermon lifting.  Even if you are only able to develop what feels like an inadequate sermon for Sunday, try it anyway (how about next week?)

I suspect your listeners would prefer to feed on the real food of your Bible study in preparation than the canned contents of some internet repository.  Your intro may be weak, your conclusion may be unsophisticated, your illustrations may be lacking, your outline may be undeveloped and your main idea might be just plain, well, plain.

But if your heart has engaged with God’s in prayer for theirs, and you have spent time with the Lord pondering how to present this text with relevance emphasised, then your listeners will be better fed than if you offer a sophisticated super-sermon that is not your own.

When we have guests, it is always hard to serve less than an adundant feast.  But the truth is, visitors would rather have home cooked food than an abundant but canned meal.

You will also find that with regular practice, the process becomes more manageable, even on a very limited time budget.  Let’s go for fresh over canned, for the sake of souls: both ours and our listeners’.

1. Personal stagnation.  John Wesley is widely credited with saying “Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.”  (Apparently, though, he was quoting another preacher, and disagreeing with him.  We need to be careful when we recycle quotes!)  But there is a validity to the sentiment expressed by whoever it was.  If I always recycle the same message, I am missing out on all the growth of personal, devotional, spiritual biblical study and application, as well as the blessing of praying through new messages (since repetition of “successful” messages could lead to complacency and trust in the message rather than God).

2. Ministry burnout.  Too much recycling can lead to a dangerous equation.  An increase in activity (if I recycle I can preach in every possible gap in the schedule), combined with a decrease in personal feeding (since I can recycle in the wrong way without any time in God’s Word or presence), will lead toward burnout.  Easy to be a firework in ministry.

3. Preaching thin.  I mentioned this in passing the other day.  When I prepare over several days and then preach a message, the message is much more than the outline or notes I record at the time.  It is actually more than even the message I record and have on record as an audio file.  There is also all the wealth of exegetical study, the supporting biblical content that didn’t make it into the message, but was fresh in my heart at the time of preaching.  Returning to that message in the future means returning to a skeleton of the original.  I am in danger of preaching “thin” – without the wealth of supporting materials.

4. Loss of attention.  If the listeners get the sense that this is old material, rather than being a message from God for them, today, in particular, then the level of attention invariably drops.  They will be subconsciously tempted to evaluate your performance, rather than listening for God’s message to their hearts.  If it is recycled, it must be prayerfully re-prepared for them – don’t dump leftovers from the fridge, serve them with care!  I know the various stories of “I’ll repeat the message until you act on it!” – but the truth is that it is much easier to be bold in an anecdote.

5. Loss of integrity.  If the content you are recycling is not your own, then you lose integrity.  More on plagiarism tomorrow!

1. Time.  Time is a valuable commodity.  If I committed to never recycling a sermon, then I would have to take on a significantly lower amount of preaching in venues other than my local church.  It can be a privilege to serve another group with a recycled sermon that doesn’t require me to sacrifice my main ministry commitments or my family.

2. Greater conviction.  The first time a message is preached, it may only have a few days to saturate the heart and life of the preacher.  If that message is recycled prayerfully and honestly, then the reworking of the text and the re-preaching of the message can allow the truth of it to penetrate deeper into the preacher’s life.  This is not the case when a sermon becomes a mere performance through prayerless and heartless repetition. Sometimes I will listen to a message again, allowing it to minister to me, as part of my preparation to preach the same basic message.

3. Better message.  If point 2 suggests that recycling can lead to a better preacher, then this point suggests the possibility of a better message.  By prayerfully reviewing the first presentation, and by working further on both text and message, the recycled sermon can be a better one that its predecessor.

4. Offering our best.  Let’s say a preacher is invited to preach as a guest somewhere.  While it may be fair to critique itinerant preachers with their single polished gem of a sermon, there is also something to be said for a preacher offering their best.  So for example, a younger preacher may have far better training and study in one particular book – why impose the requirement of preaching from a completely new section every time?  I’d rather hear a preacher handling a text well than struggling through something that is new to them.  If a sermon has been prepared well and it was worth saying once, why wouldn’t it be worth saying again (if refreshed, see yesterday’s post).

5. Reinforcement.  I am sure we are too quick to move on in our preaching.  That is, people need reinforcement.  Typically this will come from thematic reinforcement from multiple messages, but perhaps there is a place for going back over familiar ground.  People don’t tend to transform instantly, so why not recycle in the same venue (again, only if refreshed!)

Undoubtedly, a recycled sermon takes less preparation time than a sermon from scratch on a passage previously never preached.  But my suggestion, if you are preparing to re-preach an old sermon, would be to follow a process along these lines:

1. Prayerfully consider the text itself before looking at the old notes or outline.  Even if you only have time for a brief engagement with the text, there needs to be a freshness about your approach to it, even if the end result remains the same in terms of message outline and details (since the passage does communicate something specific, and that, at one level, does not change).  Be sure to feel the impact of the text on your heart as you pray through it.

2. Prayerfully consider the specifics of this occasion before looking at the old notes or outline.  It is good to get a clear image of who the message will be preached to on this occasion.  What are their circumstances, what are their needs?

3. Prayerfully walk through the whole passage preparation process as you reconsider the previously preached sermon (or ideally, your old exegetical notes).  Why are you selecting this text?  What are the pertinent elements of exegesis that should drive your understanding of this text?  What do you now think was the author’s purpose in writing this text?  Is that main idea still the best summary you can make of this text?  You may find that your interim growth and biblical studies have changed your level of understanding so that you start tweaking your old passage or study notes.  If you only look at the end product (outline, notes, etc.) then you are preaching without the richness of the exegesis that didn’t make it into the notes, but was fresh on your heart.

4. Prayerfully walk through the message preparation process as you reconsider the old sermon.  What is your message purpose this time, this congregation, this occasion?  Can you improve the message idea to fit this particular preaching event, or to better reflect the text’s idea?  Is your old outline the most effective idea delivery strategy?  Do the details of introduction, conclusion and “illustrative materials” fit?  You may well find that the message also changes in some ways.

5. If at all possible, prayerfully preach it through out loud.  Listeners can spot a stale notes-dependent presentation.  Just because it looks ok on paper, does not mean it can be preached with freshness from your heart and mouth.  Run through it and prayerfully “own it” again.

This may seem like a lot of work, but actually I could do this process in less than a couple of hours (plus the run through of step 5).  This is a lot less time than a full sermon from scratch, and as we’ll see tomorrow, time saving is not the only benefit.

Ever Old – Every sermon we preach is made of recycled materials.  All of us are standing on the shoulders of the giants who’ve gone before us (and sadly some are standing on the shoulders of non-giants too).  If I stop to think about it, as I prepare a message, I am in the debt of so many people, and I never have new source material.

Ever Old Influences: As I think about yesterday’s two messages, there are too many influences to name.  My mind scans over the preachers I have heard over the years, the professors at seminary who taught me how to handle the Bible, who taught through those particular books in survey or exegesis courses, who taught me the languages, who taught me homiletics and theology and pastoral ministry, etc.  I think of the conversation partners I turned to in the form of commentaries, and the footnotes attest to some of those that influenced them.  I could go on, but you see my point.  I’ve preached hundreds of messages, probably into the thousands, and it would be a bit self-aggrandizing to suggest that I have generated more than a few truly original thoughts.

Ever Old Material: While I pulled out a few illustrative elements for yesterday (and didn’t look them up in an anthology of distant impersonal illustrations), the bulk of the material was the Word of God.We must be ever wary of the temptation to think our thoughts, be they original or probably not, are somehow better source material than the ever living Word of God!  Yesterday in the course of my preaching I returned to texts that I’ve preached in this church in the past year, and without apology.  We need to hear God’s Word.

Always New – Every sermon we preach is new.  The text of Scripture doesn’t change, but everything else does.  The preacher can never stand still.  Either the preacher has grown, or the preacher has stagnated and changed negatively, but life never stands still.  Two congregations can never be the same in constituents or their circumstances, even if it is the same church.  The situation is always fresh.  Different preacher, different listeners, different occasion, different set of needs.  I suppose, in theory, I could preach the same text in the same church once a month for the next several years and never preach an identical sermon.

Tomorrow we’ll probe a bit beyond this foundational level as we seek to be good stewards of a preaching ministry.

This leaves me in the nice position of being finished with the series, yet not finished.  My plan is to allow an aspect of Biblical theology to put the finishing touches on the series.  Let me explain.

One of the big themes in the last chapters of Chronicles is that of the devotion of the kings to the Lord.  Some were, some weren’t.  And the biggest manifestation in pre-exile Israel lay in the issue of overt idolatry.  As the book ends, hope dawns with Cyrus’ decree that the temple should be rebuilt.  Perhaps God’s promise to David will be fulfilled after all?

So in the progression of revelation, we move to a post-exilic Israel where overt idolatry was never a feature again.  Historically we see this determination for purity in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but canonically, the next step from Chronicles is Matthew.  It’s a new world in Israel in Jesus’ day.  No physical idols.  But no idols?

Jesus addresses the issue of the less tangible idolatry of his day in the Sermon on the Mount.  And the beauty of this is that Matthew 6 speaks so directly to our, typically non-physical idol, cultural setting.  In post-exilic Israel, as in the modern Western world, money has become the “ba’al” for many.  Yet the issue of our devotion to God remains paramount.  Who is bigger in our eyes?  The false god, indeed the replacement god of financial security, or the true God who really cares?

So maybe I will get to preach Matthew 6 tomorrow to finish the Chronicles series.  Maybe I’ll get to push further into the New Testament and consider other areas of covert idolatry facing believers today.  Or maybe I won’t!

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Next Week?  Eco-Preaching: Recycling Sermons