Here’s the thing.  If we had looked at just the particular verse, even a good few minutes of studying it wouldn’t have been enough.  We had to look at the surrounding context.  By the end of our time in that passage, my own view of it had changed significantly.  But we could have easily misunderstood the verse, even with our initial reading the context.

As we look at any passage in the Bible, we must be quick to look and slow to decide.

Quick to look at context – This is not the same as looking quickly at context. What is going on before and after the passage? What is the tone of the section? What is the flow of the section? In the case of the verse we were considering, it began an apparently new section in the epistle, but we had to go back and see what came before or we would have misunderstood it.

Quick to look at connectives – The flow of the text depends, in part, on the author’s use of “for” and “therefore” and “so” and “and”, etc.  Little words that make a big difference.  In this case I continued to ponder the passage after others were off into broader context, and looking at the connectives I started to ponder the structure.

Quick to look at syntax – What was the structure of that paragraph?  What is the dominant thought and what is subordinate/supportive?  Phrase by phrase, how does it work?

Slow to decide – Without the extra looking and being open to learning about the flow and structure of the immediate context, our target verse would have been essentially misunderstood.  Every one of us had an automatic sense about the verse, but careful observation proved that our sense was wrong.  I am so glad for that reminder of the importance of being quick to look, but slow to decide.  I’d hate to have preached it the way that seemed obvious from first reading, when in fact the whole tone of the text is almost a polar opposite!

Some that I preach.  Some that others preach.  The sermon is moving along well, perhaps moving at a decent pace through a text, engaging and interesting, then suddenly, the sermon seems to go into thick mud.  Suddenly the momentum is lost and the experience for preacher and listener alike changes significantly.

Why does this happen?  The message is following the standard guidelines for sermons.  The text is being explained, the relevance is being emphasized, illustrative material is helping listeners see the message clearly, etc.  But momentum drains away and progress becomes elusive and there is a struggle on for the next ten to fifteen minutes as the sermon simply seems to stand still.

I was observing this recently from the listener’s side.  It seemed that at a certain point in the journey through the message, the momentum stopped and we felt like we were spinning our wheels.  Restatement.  Repetition.  Illustration.  Repetition.  Illustration.  But no progress.

Have you experienced this phenomena?  What would you suggest to avoid it happening?  I’d suggest we look at the outline or manuscript and prayerfully evaluate it for progress and momentum, as well as for content and clarity.  While a third illustration under the same point may compound the clarity, it might also feel like an anchor keeping the sermon from arriving at its destination.

I’d also suggest prayerfully preaching through a sermon to experience it through your own ears.  Sometimes sermons look perfect on paper, but in reality simply don’t “come out well.”

One more suggestion – when it happens, take the time to evaluate why it happened and try to learn from you (or someone else’s) mistake.  The tendency is to flee the scene of what feels like a sermonic flop, but perhaps there is more to learn there than when a sermon’s momentum was faultless.

How do you make sure your message keeps moving?

I remember sitting at a big Christian convention where three speakers rotated through the morning session in soundbites. The blessing of hearing one was only frustrated by the ranting of another, it felt bitty and unprepared. But what if it were done well?

I’m not convinced. There are venues where it could work and it could work well. But I’d lean more toward it in a teaching situation than in a preaching situation.

As with some powerpoint/media intensive preachers, I get the sense that the preparation would be radically changed. Instead of time spent with God in prayer, the powerpointer sometimes seems to spend hours in mouse-clicking creativity. Actually, (in many cases they seem to end up not spending enough time with God, or in preparing the powerpoint fully, but that is another issue.)

So the collaborationist preaching pair might spend hours in scripting transitions and dialogue, hopefully without the tacky banter that seems so plastic on some TV shows, yet not have anywhere near the depth of time spent in God’s presence.

The change in preparation would mean a potential loss of profundity. There is something about a preacher spending time with God in the text praying for the people, and then coming to speak to the people. I would love to hear this done by a pair of preachers who have really pursued God, His Word, His heart for these people, etc.

I fear that profundity would disappear if the 2-person preaching were seen as a contemporary solution to a contemporary problem (like the acetate and the powerpoint were also seen as ways to fix poor preaching in recent years).

Somehow the core has to be kept in place, and done well. Then there may be benefits to supplemental approaches like this. I’m not opposed, I’m just not convinced.

As well as technological influence, there are others too.  How regularly do we hear and see another “study” indicating people have shockingly short attention spans so we should keep our messages to less than 35 seconds?  It’s amazing how these “studies” seem to selectively focus on the criteria that make the point of the person writing – not exactly solid science in many cases.

So here’s one that surely must be coming . . . two-person preaching.  If I think back to the TV I saw in the 1980’s, I tend to think of individuals – film reviews?  Barry Norman sat in a black chair and looking at the camera.  Satire?  Clive James on his own with the occasional guest.  Now everything is done in pairs.  Presenters have their sidekicks for painfully choreographed repartee in some cases, or side-splinting banter in others.  Radio shows rely on the bouncing back and forth between DJs, and if one DJ is dominant, the other acts as a foil.  So should we expect to see more 2-person preaching?

There are positives that come to mind here.  Some of the best educational experience I had involved two professors co-teaching contemporaneously.  In Cor Deo we have deliberately adopted a two-mentor teaching model, and I delight in the advantages of that approach.  It offers the benefit of added perspective in discussion environments.  It offers the possibility of variation in voice and presentation.  It offers a tangible relational approach that fits for an inherently relational faith.

But when it comes to preaching, there are also negatives.  And I’ll share my thoughts on this tomorrow.  I’d love to hear other perspectives on this . . .

“When we just prayerfully look at the Bible text, then the Spirit can direct us and teach us.” (Implication: if you look at “the words of humans,” such as in commentaries, then you will not hear God’s Spirit.)

I stumbled across the same notion in a conversation this week.  “You went to Bible school, but I’ve been taught by the Holy Spirit.”  But?  Just because one claims to only be taught by the Spirit, this does not mean one has received more training from the Spirit.

Whether we are talking about use of commentaries or the privilege of “formal” study, let’s not make this false step of restricting where God’s Spirit can work.  This is similar to the nonsensical idea that the Spirit works when we don’t prepare a message, but is absent if we do prepare.

We absolutely need God’s Spirit at work in us as we prepare to preach, both in respect to understanding the Bible text, and in terms of sensitively applying it to those who will listen.  As one person put it this week, “Hearing how God has spoken to the community over the ages about the text will only give the Spirit more chance to speak, not less.”

Not only does the Spirit want to work in our biblical study, and in our ministry, but in light of yesterday’s book review, he most certainly wants to work in our hearts too.  What does he want to do there?  Let me finish with a quote from Reeves’ new book (p73):

My new life began when the Spirit first opened my eyes and won my heart to Christ. Then, for the first time, I began to enjoy and love Christ as the Father has always done. And through Christ, for the first time, I began to enjoy and love the Father as the Son has always done. That was how it started, and that is how the new life goes on: by revealing the beauty, love, glory and kindness of Christ to me, the Spirit kindles in me an ever deeper and more sincere love for God. And as he stirs me to think ever more on Christ, he makes me more and more God-like: less self-obsessed and more Christ-obsessed.

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Next week: Two-Person Preaching?

Mike Reeves’ new book, The Good God, from Paternoster, is exactly what the doctor ordered for the church today.  And not one of those miserable doctors that prescribes some yucky fluid in a plastic bottle.  I mean one of those doctors that suggests a break in the sun and a feast of good food to help you feel better from all that ails you.  The church today needs to bask in the sun and feast on the truth offered so gloriously and accessibly in this little book.

Mike introduces the reader to the God who is loving, giving, overflowing, relational.  With his light and accessible manner, Mike shares a profound taster of just how good God is.  Clearly Mike loves God and it shows throughout.  Some books on the Trinity can come across as a technical manual of heresies to avoid.  Others as an exercise in premeditated obfuscation.  This little book sizzles with energy, addresses the issues with clear insight rather than excessive technicality, and stirs the reader’s heart to worship, to delight, and sometimes even to laugh in sheer joy.

Mike’s biblical references scattered throughout don’t come across as a defensive attempt to prove a point, nor as a theological citation method that distracts the reader.  Rather they subconsciously stir the reader to want to get back into the Bible and see this good God afresh.  As you’d expect from a Reeves book, there are also enjoyable windows into church history as key voices from folks famous, and not so, pop up to share a thought along the way.

The book is shaped, well, um, trinitarianly.  An introductory chapter invites the reader into the pre-creation love relationship that is the Trinity.  Then the book looks at creation, redemption and the Christian life (as in, Father, Son, Spirit, although brick walls can’t be built between the roles of each in each chapter).  The book closes with a chapter that asks who among the gods is like you, O LORD?  I won’t give away the end of the book by sharing Mike’s answer, but I know if you start, you’ll want to read to the end anyway!

I will say this though, the advance of anti-theist “new atheism” gets a clear response in the final chapter.  Oh, and for one final twist, just when you feel like there’s nothing left to add, he also addresses three of the big issues that Christians sometimes throw out in opposition to an emphasis on God’s loving relationality. Superb.

This book is a must read and a must share.  As you read it you will think of others you wish would read it – from atheists to strident single-author-reading Christians. But most of all, I think you will be thankful that you read it. I am genuinely excited about how God will use this book in the years ahead!

To pre-order your copy in the UK, click here or the book image above.  Note – the book will be released in the USA later in 2012 by IVP under the title, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith.

Conversation partners can be so valuable, but its worth picking them wisely. Conversation partners can be so helpful, but conversation requires both sides to speak. Thus it is important that we engage the text first in order to have an opinion to bring to the conversation. Then, when we get there, we can interact with the others at the table. Some of them we’ll find stimulating and helpful, others we might find inconsistent or agenda driven. We may tune some out. We may listen at length to others. But the key is conversation.

Don’t come to a commentary as a dumb animal ready to carry away whatever is offered. Converse. Let’s say I’ve been working in Romans and I am ready for some conversation. Who do I invite to the table?  What do I bring to the table? The more I bring, the better the conversation will be. “Doug, I see it this way, what about you?” “Tom, what’s your take on that?” “And James(Jimmy)? Oh, I see where you’re coming from! But what about these verses?” “Leon, anything to add?”

Now a conversation with Douglas Moo, Thomas Schreiner, James Dunn and Leon Morris – that would be worth having! Let’s bring in Cranfield, Murray and Calvin for good measure. This is the table to sit at in the biblical studies conference dining hall!

A few quick thoughts on buying commentaries (gathering the conversation partners):

1. If you can, try before you buy (library, google books, friend, etc.) If not, at least get good recommendations (such as on bestcommentaries.com).

2. Let your ministry provoke your purchases. I take a sermon series as a good excuse to buy a commentary or two if my library is lacking in that area. 2nd Chronicles now, Acts next.

3. Build a quality library slowly, rather than a junk collection fast. The personal library is a vital tool of the preacher. Even if it is only five books, if they are five good books, then it is worth having! Don’t rush, don’t get into debt, and don’t buy books with more hype on the cover than content in the pages.

4. Building an electronic library may save you money, but it may not. Last week we looked at software options – here’s the link.

Part 1 is here

Part 2 is here

(I can’t get the media player to work on Safari, but it will on Firefox.  I know others have had issues.  I had to install Quicktime plugin on Firefox on a PC.  Anyway, hopefully you can get it to work, here’s the page for the show.)

If you read the introductory preface to a commentary (which would be unusual behaviour, I suspect!) you will see that the commentary or series is targeted toward a specific audience.  Perhaps it is aimed at non-Greek trained lay people, or at seminarians, pastors and Bible teachers with some Greek, or whatever.  In reality, these categories are so broad that I would prefer to view them not as targeted communication, but as descriptions of a range within which the writer offers his or her explanation.

Preaching is different.  When you preach your goal is not just explanation to a broad audience, but targeted transformation in a specific audience.  You can be much more specific in knowing who your listeners are and what they need to hear – not only by way of explanation, but also with an emphasis on application.

Here are three more related comments on preaching and commentaries:

1. Watch out for atomisation.  The vast majority of commentaries are highly atomistic.  While a good commentator will be aware of the discourse level unity of the passage, it is hard to find commentaries that are overtly aware of the macro level flow within a book.  It seems to me that often the commentator is so engrossed in the phrase-by-phrase explanation, that a stretch and coffee break before proceeding with the writing can lead to a sense of atomisation in the end product.  The preacher is not offering a book where the listener can go back and review the section introduction, or re-read complex sentences.  The preacher is offering an aural exposure to both explanation and application of a text.  Different.

2. Only quote a commentary if the quote is exceptionally valuable.  You don’t need to prove you read commentaries (or checked in with Calvin, or whoever).  You don’t need to feel inadequate to be the preacher (though we all are) – they invited you to preach, not Doug Moo or Tom Schreiner.  Study and prepare to the point that you can effectively explain and apply the text.  Only quote a sentence or two from a commentary if it really is uniquely pithy, arresting, compelling and gripping, not to mention helpful!

3. Don’t feel obligated to cite your sources.  If you do quote, no need to cite sources every time.  Preaching is not an academic essay.  Sometimes the reference to an unknown name can be unhelpful, sometimes (depending on the name), downright distracting or humourous!  If who it was makes a difference, cite them (i.e.Churchill), but if not, just say “one writer put it like this…” (anyone who cares can always ask you afterwards).

Tomorrow we’ll think about gathering good conversation partners around us.