Category Archives: Stage 8 – Message Detail

by Peter Mead | May 29, 2013 · 6:47 am

Bibles Open

When you preach, how long do Bibles stay open?

1. Open until right after the reading. Perhaps your listeners know from experience that once the reading is over, the message will fly every which way and the text that was read will become a distant memory. They may open their Bibles for the reading, but once that is done, the Bibles are shut. So what are you preaching?

2. Open until disconnect is evident. Perhaps they will be looking at the passage and listening for a while. But after a while it will become evident that your message has no real connection to the passage. At some point some will close their Bibles in an act of quiet pew-level frustration and sit listening in anticipation of the closing hymn. Or . . .

3. Open as alternative to listening. Perhaps some will stay open so that the listener can occupy themselves while your message continues. For whatever reason, they have struggled to stay engaged and have decided that rather than being frustrated, they will read some Bible and make best use of the time!

4. Open until fingers grow tired. Here’s another possibility. Perhaps after the fourteenth cross reference, they get tired of searching for 2nd Hesitations and decide they’d be better off just listening rather than trying to keep up in the grown up sword drill for the initiated Bible handlers (or the folks with the indented pages for cheating in sword drills!)

5. Open until end of message. Perhaps people keep their Bibles open right the way through, frequently checking that what you are saying fits with the text. It is both textually accurate and personally compelling. When the message ends, the Bibles are closed by grateful hearts and helped lives.

6. “Open” even on the way home. Perhaps people close their Bibles with a finger in the text, because subconsciously they can’t wait to get back into that passage and pray through it some more at home. This would be a good sign of effective preaching!

7. Open all week. Perhaps you preach in such a way that listeners are motivated and stirred to keep their Bibles open all week. They want to read on, read around, read more. They discovered that the Bible was accessible, enjoyable and relevant to their lives. They can’t imagine not wanting to pursue the God you introduced on Sunday. Good preaching!

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by Peter Mead | April 17, 2013 · 6:38 am

Two Ways to Feed 2

Yesterday I suggested that offering a meal is more loving than throwing a shower of vitamin pills at someone. I’m not sure I want to overwork the analogy, but there is infinite variety even in the category of meal. Here are some thoughts on pulpit cooking options. I’ll let you evaluate each one:

1. Fast Food Preaching. It is prepared quickly, in a very standardized process, with standard content, high on application, but almost bereft of nutrition. Some people get addicted to it. Some people grow sick of it.

2. Home Delivered Fast Food. It is the same as number 1, but you didn’t even have to go and get it. It was delivered by the internet delivery moped and saved you a whole load of time.

3. Home Delivered Fast Food Stolen. Once you get it delivered, you hide the box and pretend that you cooked it. There is a sensed lack of integrity, but you think everyone’s nice comments are genuine.

4. Thrown Together Left-Overs. Again, short on time, you pull together scraps from here and there. They don’t necessarily go together, but what you heard from him and what you read over there and what is on your mind once you pause to think about it . . . all served on one sermon plate.

5. Good Food Disconnected. This is better, you have done some cooking. But you haven’t grasped that while all food may be good food, not all good food goes together on the same plate.

6. One Favourite Recipe. You have learned to do a mean chili con carne, so that’s what you cook. Every time. Guests coming? Chili con carne. Sorted. Unless, of course, they come twice. Works better if you are a traveling chef, unless people swap venues and then things get complicated

7. Good Ingredients Cooked the Wrong Way. You take your chili con carne recipe and just replace the ingredients. Problem is that it doesn’t work with a lamb joint, cooking chocolate or a fruit selection. Forcing every Bible text into the same sermon shape may not be such a great solution!

8. Good Ingredients Cooked the Right Way. Please cook salmon differently to beef. Deal with each text and congregation and situation according to what and who they are.

9. The Fast Feast. Seven good but random courses back to back in half an hour, without either break in delivery or connection in content. Not ideal.

10. Non-gourmet home cooked healthy meal. It isn’t exciting. It won’t win a prize. But it may win hearts as you give of yourself to those you love. And over time, it will generate health like nothing else.

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Filed under Audience Analysis, Christianity, Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, Religion, Stage 1 - Passage Selection, Stage 5 - Message Purpose, Stage 8 - Message Detail

by Peter Mead | April 16, 2013 · 7:25 am

Two Ways to Feed

There are essentially two ways to feed someone. I may decide to chase further possible analogies tomorrow, but for now, just two ways:

1. The pill shower. Next to our stove we have a funny shaped little dish. It usually contains some real treasures. It is where my wife puts her supplements for the day. There will be vitamin C for the immune system and various B vitamins for energy levels, and perhaps some fish oils for joint and heart health. Every one of those pills has real value for health.

Let’s say I come home from work and join my family at the dinner table. We pray and then my wife unveils the meal for the day – a randomly shuffled assortment of vitamin pills from the funny little dish!

Healthy? Technically it is.

Satisfying? Nope.

Sustainable for long-term health and growth? Hardly.

But is this not the way some of us preach the Bible to people in the church? An assortment of truth nuggets randomly assorted and presented in some manner as a “healthy diet”?

There is an alternative:

2. The meal. A meal tends to consist of a restricted number of elements carefully prepared and served in an appropriate order and combination. A meal can be healthy, or unhealthy. It can be gourmet or a highly processed “ready meal.” Oh the potential points of connection are multiplying!

Preaching a meal means preaching a passage or a small combination of passages, rather than assorted truth nuggets from all over the place. It means thinking about who you are preaching to and what they might need, rather than a standardized packaging of recommended daily allowance supplements. It means building long-term health and growth and even taking issues of satisfaction into account (although not exclusively, of course, or they may get a case of itchy-ear-itis).

Meals tend to be different each time, whereas a diet of supplements would always feel the same.

Let’s preach meals, seems like a proven and healthy approach to feeding folks. I’ll let you ponder the multiplying analogies. . . do you preach fast food, pre-packaged or home-cooked, etc.?

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Filed under Audience Analysis, Christianity, Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, Religion, Stage 5 - Message Purpose, Stage 8 - Message Detail

by Peter Mead | March 28, 2013 · 11:08 am

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit) 3

Crucifixion images tend to be sanitized. The reality was so much more shocking than we tend to realise. The frequency of reference, combined with serene artistic representations, has led many believers to have a altogether unrealistic mental image of the crucifixion.

If you are preaching in the next couple of days, before the celebration of Sunday, how should you handle the passion of our Lord? It is tempting for some to try to be as graphic as they can. The motivation may be good, but the net result can be lacking. Turning peoples’ stomachs is not the goal of Easter preaching. By all means be as biblical and historically accurate as you can be, but always keeping in mind that your listeners are a mixed bunch.

Some of them may fill their minds with horrific images from movie and video games. But there will be others present who find the slightest hint of blood brings about faintness and nausea. The goal is to preach Christ and Him crucified, not to preach so that all people recall is the horror of crucifixion itself. So beware of excessive medical detail, or overwhelming graphic description, or repulsive projected images.

It is important to remember that people will be drawn by the work of the Spirit, not by the effectiveness of our storytelling and vivid description.

We need to find the right balance this Easter. Tell it well and help people to know the historicity and reality of Calvary. But be careful to rely fully on the Spirit to stir the heart, as opposed to simply stirring the stomach by excessive and unhelpful shock and awe tactics.

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Filed under Audience Analysis, Genre, Homiletics, New Testament, Preaching, Religion, Stage 5 - Message Purpose, Stage 8 - Message Detail

by Peter Mead | March 27, 2013 · 6:18 am

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit) 2

Four gospels do not automatically mean four accounts of everything. In fact, most of the ministry of Jesus is told in less than four gospels (except for the feeding of the 5000). But once you get into passion week, then you have four gospels giving their all to get the story across. This is both a goldmine and a potential distraction for preachers.

After all, we can piece together so many details of that first Easter. At the same time, we can easily lose the theological emphasis of whichever gospel we are wanting to preach.

It is good to check all the gospels for accuracy. You don’t want to preach from John and make an error according to Matthew or Mark. The passion narratives do harmonize, but it is not always immediately easy to see how. So be sure to check and be fresh on the historical harmonization, but . . .

Preach the passage, not the historical harmonization. I am preaching from John this year. I want to make sure that the listeners hear what John intended to communicate. The gospels are not a transcribed video script, they are carefully crafted presentations of the history artistically woven to achieve something specific in the hearer. Our task as preachers is not just to tell the history, but to trust that the Gospel writer knew what he was doing (since the capital “A” Author was fully at work in each of the Gospels), and to preach accordingly.

It is a privilege to have the Bible in our language and to be able to preach one of the accounts. Even if you rotate through the Gospels each Easter, it will be four years until you come back to this year’s Gospel. Be sure folks get to hear it this time around!

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by Peter Mead | February 28, 2013 · 6:20 am

Transitions 2

Transitions are disproportionately significant. They don’t convey the content of the message, but their critical role can significantly support, or significantly undermine the message as a whole.

Last time I looked at the introductory transitions (A on the image). What about a transition between two movements in a message? This is the purest form of transition.

Transitioning Effectively (B)

1. Slow down noticeably. The sermon is an unsafe vehicle. There are no seat belts or doors that guarantee your passengers will stay with you. When you take a turn, make sure they are right there or you’ll leave them in the aftermath of the previous movement. Slow down through the curves. Listeners can seem like they are with you at a certain pace of delivery, and they might be able to stay with you in a straight line, but when you go in a new direction they may be unable to keep track and they will be left in a heap with dust settling around them. Slow down. Change pace. Pause. Make the transition clear. Sometimes in our anxiety to press on and get through it all we can cut corners at this point (since it isn’t content at this point) and in doing so undermine the whole message. If you must speed up, do so within a movement, not between them.

2. Look both ways. That is to say, use the opportunity to provide both review and preview. Where have we been so far? Where are we going next? Just a couple of sentences can make the world of difference. It is the difference between an enjoyable ride in a nice car with a good driver, and an uncomfortable ride in an overpowered car with an overconfident teen at the wheel.

3. Mark physically. Slowing down the delivery and reflecting / previewing are helpful. But why not reinforce the shift in direction by a physical marker? You could physically switch from one side of the lectern to the other (assuming you don’t hide behind it all the time), you could gesture appropriately, change you orientation by a few degrees, etc. Subtle reinforcement in this way can communicate very effectively.

Notice that I haven’t suggested simply saying, “Now for my next point…” If you have to, fine, but consider that this may have a soporific effect if the listeners don’t have confidence in you. Good transitions should give a sense of momentum and progress. Bad or patronizing ones can either lose people, or reinforce the sense of boredom. Maybe a minute of your message will be taken up by this kind of transition . . . but this minute could be make or break!

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Filed under Christianity, Homiletics, How to . . . ?, Preaching, Religion, Stage 7 - Message Outline, Stage 8 - Message Detail

by Peter Mead | February 26, 2013 · 6:54 am

Transitions

The bulk of preparation effort usually goes into the main content of a message. We wrestle with the text, we allow it to shape our theology, we think through how that content marks our lives, we ponder all this in light of who will hear the message. This is all work on the points, or movements, in a message.

Then perhaps we ponder illustrative material to help make sense of those movements. We consider how to introduce the message. We might even give some thought to how we will conclude it.

But often there is too little thought given to the transitions between movements in a message. These are represented by A, B, C on the diagram. Too little attention given to these little moments will result in too great a negative effect on the whole message. Great messages bomb because of poor transitions.

Here are some nudges to help us better transition during our preaching:

Introducing Effectively (A)

1. Emphasize clearly. The listeners need to know that you are moving from whatever introductory material you have given into the first movement of the message. You can do a star jump, pause for two minutes and turn to look at a powerpoint slide. Or you can be less awkward. Vocal variation can serve to underline your shift effectively: perhaps a pause, a change of pace, a variation in pitch. You can say, “So for my first point…” but that is probably hinting at dullness already. But something along those lines could be helpful: “So let’s see how the passage launches . . .” could work, as long as people catch what you just said (so think through how to add emphasis).

2. Preview appropriately. What is appropriate depends on the type of movement that will follow. If you are presenting a declaration and then supporting it, as in a typical deductive message, then you might be able to simply offer a preview of the point by stating it and telling what will follow (i.e.explanation, application, etc.). By previewing and then re-stating the point as you progress, listeners will spot the entry into a section of the message. If the point is the development in a narrative, then you may not want to give it all away at the transition. You need to decide how to make sure people are with you as you enter in. Perhaps a question that will be answered – some variation on “so what happened next?” might work.

3. Introduce confidently. Whatever you are about to say, convey confidence in how you introduce it. Don’t apologise. Don’t downplay in some supposed act of humility. ”Oh, I guess I should probably say a few words about . . . ” Uh, no. ”Just a disconnected story first before we get into . . .” Again, no. ”I wasn’t sure where to start, so. . .” No.

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by Peter Mead | January 18, 2013 · 7:42 am

Biblical Girders 4

Where does each girder go? The Bible has a superstructure that holds it all together. So the thematic element of the promised seed in Genesis 3:15 will work its way through multiple books and become overt in places like Galatians 3 at the other end of the canon. But this poses a challenge. How much should we be preaching Galatians 3 when we are supposed to be preaching Genesis 3?

Many preachers would see no problem with springing from Genesis to Galatians since that is the fulfillment and the clarification of what is first stated in the Garden of Eden. I am certainly not going to criticize the impulse to preach Christ and it would be strange to leave listeners wondering who that seed might be (unless such suspense were part of a bigger teaching strategy).

On the other hand, I do wonder if we can collapse themes forward too easily and lose some of the strength of the steel at that point in the biblical story? If the Bible were a building, then Genesis would be the foundation. Steel starting there does go through the whole structure and holds the whole together. Themes of creation, of relationship, of fellowship lost, of divine grace and rescue, of divine promise, etc. all work their way from Genesis on through the Bible. That steel girder seen in Genesis 3:15 later on turns out to be the spire at the top of the whole structure, the pinnacle of it all. It makes sense to let folks know the significance of that, but at the same time it makes sense to help people see the importance of the foundation.

That is to say, instead of immediately looking up to the spire that caps off the whole building, when we are preaching in Genesis lets be sure to help people see how the foundation fits together, how the hope offered by God’s grace in the seed of the woman is such a striking promise in the context of a spurned relationship in that first senseless human rebellion. That passage is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training, etc. So let’s preach Genesis 3, not just bounce off it to go straight to the spire. At the same time let’s not get our noses in the foundations and let people miss the grandeur of the whole.

It isn’t either/or, it surely needs to be both/and. And with that both/and, I think it needs to be honouring to the earlier text in its own right, not just a token glance.

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Tagged as galatians 3, genesis 3, Religion, Theology

by Peter Mead | January 17, 2013 · 6:22 am

Biblical Girders 3

I have been writing about Biblical Girders: those superstructure passages that form the skeleton that holds the Bible together. As well as key passages, we could well add a list of key themes that weave through the canon like ribbons. I did this earlier last year with the 10 Biggest Big Ideas series (click here to go to the first of those posts).

So what do we do if we recognize that people in our churches are foggy on the biblical superstructure? How can we help folk without turning the church into a lecture hall and losing the devotional and spiritual emphasis in our preaching? Some ideas:

1. Periodically Be Overtly Educational – Perhaps a seminar or evening class or group session where you trace through the superstructure. You will find that there are people in every church that have a genuine appetite to know the Bible better and will want to attend this kind of training if it is done well. You will also find that a false dichotomy between education and devotional spirituality need not be imposed. Take every opportunity, even in a “lecture” to woo people by the gracious work of God in biblical history.

2. Be Alert to the Girders – If you are preaching Genesis 22, Abraham offering up Isaac, be alert to the place of that story in the flow of the narrative. Take the opportunity to help people see it not as a stand-alone incident, but as the culmination of a journey over many decades for Abraham. Include and highlight the importance of Genesis 15 as you preach Genesis 22. When you preach about David and Bathsheba, don’t just look ahead to the fallout in his family life, but also look back to 2Samuel 7 and the amazing covenant God had made with him – highlight the importance of that to your listeners.

3. Preach the Girders – Take a miniseries and help people see the big picture of the Bible. Too many Christians make too many “surprised and helped” comments when they hear a Bible overview. This implies that it is not being offered enough.

4. Preach through Books Without Being “Flat” – When we preach through a book, it is easy to flatten it out into so many segments of equal length and apparently equal value. Instead, look for ways to point toward and back to passages in the book that have a “superstructure status” for the book and the Bible as a whole. Preaching through Habakkuk, don’t let 2:4 get lost in the mix.

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by Peter Mead | December 15, 2012 · 6:08 am

Christmas Sundays

Apologies for the blog-silence . . . illness over, it is time to post again. The next couple of Sundays are prime “visitor” days in church world. It is easy to talk as if we just need to preach the gospel well and we’ll see a massive amount of life change. Realistically this is not the trend most years. Without denying the possibility of immediate and radical life change, here are a few brief thoughts:

1. Visitors have some expectations of the message that should be met. They are almost certainly coming to church because it is Christmas season. Make sure the message is relevant to the reasonable expectation that Christians celebrate Christmas.

2. Visitors have some expectations of the message that should be shattered. They may well expect the message to be antiquated, almost fairy-tale like and safe. What an opportunity for them to be surprised that the Bible is actually interesting, and profoundly relevant, and disarmingly engaging.

3. Visitors should feel lovingly pulled by something spiritual, not pestered by desperate church people and “retention strategies.” Of course it is wise to think through greeting procedures in the church venue, from the front, etc. It would be strange for visitors not to feel warmly welcome to return beyond Christmas. It might be sensible to have a follow-up plan in place (a bit late if this hasn’t been considered before now, so don’t do an emergency version now). But if people feel like everything is tailored to win their attendance (too many comments, excessive announcements to that end, perceived manipulation or pressure in the preaching, etc.), well, how would you feel if you were visiting?

The next two Sundays are weighty ones for preachers. Extra busy in church and for family (including our own). Perhaps a strain on creativity when you’ve been preaching Christmas in the same church for years and feel the pressure of a limited number of passages and “angles” left to take.

But let’s not lose sight of the great opportunity here. People don’t expect uniqueness. In fact, if you are genuinely excited by the coming of Christ, gripped by the engaging Word of God, and effective in communicating both its meaning and relevance to all our lives today . . . then many people will be genuinely, and positively, surprised!

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