Month: August 2008

Not a Rule, But a Commitment to Expository Order

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I split the preparation process into two.  Stages 1-4 focus on the text.  Stages 5-8 are concerned with forming the message.  Before beginning to think about the message, it is a good idea to consider the listeners (audience analysis).  Until this point the focus is on the text.  From this point on the focus is on both the text and listeners.

Obviously it cannot be a rule that no thought should be given to the listeners in the first half of the preparation process.  Our minds will naturally and often wander onto those for whom we care pastorally.  We will see points of application.  We will have illustrative thoughts coming to mind.  We will remember that their questions of the text must be answered if they are to receive a full message.  At times in the process we will mentally jump ahead and make a note for later in the process (an illustration, a helpful nugget of the wordsmith’s craft, etc.)

However, we should have a strong commitment to keeping our focus on the text in the first part of our preparation.  Brief and even frequent thoughts related to our listeners may be acceptable.  Periodic leaps forward in our notes to record a thought for later in the process is fine.  But first and foremost our objective is to understand the passage.  What did the author mean?  What was his purpose?  What is the idea conveyed in the text itself?

We must make a firm commitment to first truly study the Bible, rather than hunting for a sermon in the sacred text.  The study process should lead to application in our own lives, which should naturally then lead on to an applied message for our listeners.  But our first task is not to find a message, but to let the Scripture be master of our lives, then of our message.  A commitment to expository preaching is a commitment to study the text first.  It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it is a commitment.

Real Life Is Raw

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As I write this post I am sitting in a café working away at my laptop.  I can tune out most of what is going on around me.  But not at the moment.  Two parents and a teenage daughter are having a dispute at the next table.  It’s simple really.  The father wants to protect his daughter and she is resisting.  He loves her.  She knows best.  Her friend sleeps with her boyfriend, so why can’t she?  Friends matter more than some old-fashioned morals.  The mother is sitting silently on the sidelines, but the Dad is obviously hurting.  So is the daughter.  He wouldn’t move her from one school to another, would he?  Emotions run high.  I’m starting to feel emotion just sitting here trying not to listen.

Real life is raw.  Real life stirs emotions.  People don’t worry for a moment.  They lie awake fretting.  People don’t solve problems in a vacuum.  The emotions rise and relationships fray.  People don’t live life in three-second statements.  They live it in the raw.  Life is complex.  Life is painful.  Life is real.

As I sit here I am reminded that simply referring to the fact that people have struggles with health, or in marriage, or raising teens, is not enough to guarantee connection.  Empathy requires an emotional engagement with the pain of peoples’ lives.  God sovereignly allows us to experience certain pain to increase our empathy.  But let’s not rely on that, let’s be sure to engage our emotions and try to feel the reality of the life people live.  Maybe then our empathy will be more complete, and our connection to real life in the pulpit more effective.

Word Process the Reading

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If you have a Bible reading that stands distinct, either within the sermon or before it, then consider using a word processor.  Why?  Because it is so hard to read well in public.  Simply pasting the text into a document and then breaking it into appropriate phrases can make a huge difference.  A few minutes of work, a little thought and some practice.  You can make sure there are no hanging prepositions, no unnatural intonation, no sentences that surprisingly demand an extra breath.

A reading well read can be powerful.  Poorly read and it is a liability.  (I know it is tempting to use the reading to give others “easy” opportunity to participate, but be careful, for their sake as well as the listeners!)

Don’t take the reading of a Bible text for granted.  Don’t let your Sunday service sound like a poor Christmas carol service, only with unfamiliar readings.  Give a few minutes of preparation so the text can be read well.  The text is powerful.  As Spurgeon once said in reference to defending the Bible, it’s like a lion, so just open the gate and let it out.  A good reading lets the text out, and it surely is a thing of power!

The Strength is in the Roots

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Back in the 1950’s H. Grady Davis shifted the metaphor for a sermon.  Instead of something constructed by the preacher, a building, it is something grown, akin to a tree.  Here is another quote used in McDill’s book, 12 Essential Skills (I appreciate these quotes at the start of each chapter).

A sermon should be like a tree. . . .
It should have deep roots:
As much unseen as above the surface
Roots spreading as widely as its branches spread
Roots deep underground
In the soil of life’s struggle
In the subsoil of the eternal Word.

The real strength of a sermon is not found in delivery, although that aspect matters much.  It is not found in the structure and content – try stealing a sermon and notice that it feels weaker than when you heard it from its source!  The strength of a sermon has to reside in the roots.  So check the roots of your sermons, of your ministry as a preacher.  Are they deep into the soil of life’s struggle?  Are they deeper still in the subsoil of the eternal Word?  Let’s be sure we are not preaching impressive, but rootless sermons . . . a breeze might just blow them over!

The Generational Dance

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Parker Palmer (in The Courage to Teach) writes about when we as teachers lose heart, and how we might recapture the heart to teach.  He begins by raising the issue of those mentors that first stirred the passion to teach in our lives.  Many make the mistake of trying to clone their mentors, thereby finding their own teaching career a disheartening experience of apparent failure.  Yet when the impact of past mentors is allowed to invigorate us to teach in our own style, then our identity and integrity can be intact, and our vocation can flourish.

Again, what is true for college profs is also true for us as preachers.  We too can lose heart.  We too can find motivation by revisiting the memory of those mentors that shaped our passion to preach in the first place.  We too can make the frustrating mistake of trying to copy the style of that mentor.  And we too can be invigorated to preach in our own style, with identity and integrity intact, our ministry flourishing.

Palmer finishes the section with a paragraph I will share with you here.  This puts the onus back on us, for it speaks of how we now mentor others.  At one level you might say we mentor all that hear our preaching, and perhaps it is best to take it at that level for now (but maybe we should be overtly seeking “apprentices” as we teach):

Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching’s great rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor.  It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.

It Can’t Half Touch

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When we preach, our desire is for God’s Word to truly mark the lives of those listening.  We want them to learn, certainly, but more than that, we want them to be changed.  We want them to apply the Scripture in their lives that they will not be hearers only, but doers also.  We want them to be moved not only in their daily lives, but first and foremost in their hearts and faith.  We don’t want them to get half a touch from God’s Word.  We want significant life altering and inner change to occur that will flow out in real and tangible ways.

If we don’t want only half a touch for them, we must not allow ourselves to settle for only half a touch ourselves.

We must not fall into the trap of merely looking at the text and building a message for our listeners, without engaging ourselves fully in the process.  Our preparation must be more than a mental planning exercise.  Our time in the Word must be saturated in prayer so that our hearts are changed, our faith is grown, our sin is convicted, our actions shifted, our knowledge increased and so on.  If you don’t want only half a touch for them, don’t settle for half a touch for you.

There is Power in a Transition

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It’s like a wave crashing onto the beach.  It can be big or small.  It can be obvious or hardly noticed.  But as a preacher you must notice your transitions.  What you can’t afford to do is forget the power in a transition.  Like a wave it can be beautiful, or destructive.  A transition can reinforce the content and flow of your message.  It can give people another entry point into your content.  It can convey a sense of unity and progress and order!  Or a transition mishandled can throw people right out of the message, it can lose them in a moment.  Taking your transitions for granted is like standing with your back to the ocean – you may get away with it, or you may be destroyed by it.

In your next message, evaluate your transitions.  Are they thought-through and deliberate?  What is the strategy for each one?  Is it to reinforce the main idea, or restate the question in an inductive sermon?  Is it to review ground covered?  Is it to signal progress?  Is it to continue a list (as when a subject is gradually being completed)?  Is it to change pace or give a concentration break?  Is it moving from one point to an equal, or to a subordinate?  Is the transition developed enough?  Is it slow enough so that people are not thrown out in the curve?  Is it too weak to stand between the power of the points?  Does it promise too much for what will follow?  Is it begging for deliberate pause to make it effective?

Transitions are powerful, whether you plan them or not.  They can make a message.  They can destroy a message.  Take some minutes to evaluate and plan your transitions in your next message.  It’s worth the effort.

Process and Forgive First

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At times we get angry.  Perhaps justly so.  But remember the advice you give to others.  I would tell others to prayerfully process their feelings and even forgive someone who had offended them before confronting them.  The same applies in preaching.  You read something or hear something.  It makes you hot with anger or even rage.  It is tempting to unload in the pulpit.  People do respond to a fiery preacher with his heart on his sleeve.  But be careful.

I just read something that really made me angry.  No details here, but it relates to the planned actions of someone vying for a leadership position.  I would be tempted to make reference to this in a forthcoming sermon.  But if I did so, without first processing it before God, I would be making comments with an edge.   I’d be lashing out without preparing my own heart.

It may be appropriate to speak the truth.  It may fit with the message and be highly relevant.  It may even be my role to represent a biblical perspective on contemporary culture.  But it is also my role to represent a biblical perspective in a godly manner.  I must spend time prayerfully processing, and even forgiving, before risking a misrepresentation of my righteous, but gracious God.

True Liberty in Preaching

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Along the same lines as the subject of yesterday’s post, how do we find true liberty in our preaching?  This is Phillips Brooks in his 1877 Lectures on Preaching:

In the desire to make a sermon seem free and spontaneous there is a prevalent dislike to giving it its necessary formal structure and organism. . . . True liberty in writing comes by law, and the more thoroughly the outlines of your work are laid out, the more freely your work will flow, like an unwasted stream between its well-built banks.

I’d prefer to use terms like order and structure rather than law, but the point is well made.  It’s a common thought that non-preparation will allow the freedom of a flowing message.  In reality the result is likely to be higher levels of incoherence, blabbering, circling, and stress.  The more work we put in to structuring and planning the sermon, the more freedom we have during delivery to adjust if necessary, and to flow freely.  Let’s seek to be unwasted streams of well-prepared communication of God’s Word.

Is Preparation Spiritual?

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Periodically I come across people who think it is wrong to study preaching, or to prepare in any specific way for a sermon.  Perhaps there are more, but they don’t make themselves known to me – quite possible.  I like this succinct paragraph from Wayne McDill’s 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching (p219):

Some preachers are lazy.  Others do not know what to do.  Some rationalize their poor preparation with pious talk about “inspiration” and “just letting the Spirit speak.”  The fact is that God has decided to use preachers.  Our laziness does not help the Holy Spirit; it hinders him.  There is nothing particularly spiritual about poor sermon preparation.

McDill goes on to challenge the reader to work at their sermon preparation in direct proportion to their estimate of the value of preaching.  I like that.  While it may be possible to over-professionalize preaching, leave the Spirit out of our study and lean wholly on our own understanding, there is also real danger in the opposite extreme.  Preparation is not automatically spiritual, neither is it automatically unspiritual.  So let’s be careful to pursue our preparation both diligently and spiritually – all to the glory of God.