Author: Peter Mead

Keswick Reflections

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

I had the privilege of attending the Keswick Convention for the first time this year.  I had a little role in the young adults stream – K2.  But I also got to enjoy the Bible readings and evening celebrations, as well as a couple of afternoon sessions.  I have to say, I have become a fan of Keswick (good preaching, decent music, no pre-registration, great town, perfect weather . . . ok, that last bit was a lie.)

It was a blessing to be around people hungry for the Word.  I laugh as I remember walking down Helvellyn Street toward the main tent and being overtaken by an older gentleman, probably in his seventies, practically running in order to get in for the Bible teaching.  Whatever your age, a hunger for the Word of God is a sign of sure spiritual health!

It was a blessing to receive some real feasts from the Word.  Actually, the Sunday morning message I heard in one of the churches was enough for the week.  But there were other feasts too.  The morning Bible readings were excellent – good content, high relevance, great energy, contagious enthuiasm.  The more relaxed afternoon sessions I attended were a blessing too.  For many, I’m sure, a week at Keswick must be a welcome feeding from God’s Word (especially for the many coming from churches where the diet is poor).

It was a preacher’s pleasure to watch and learn as others were preaching.  Not every message hit the same heights.  But there were things to learn about preaching in every message.  Things about content, structure, unity of message, use of illustration, aspects of delivery.  It was great to be able to observe and sit under seven other preachers in a week.  We preachers can learn a lot when we watch and listen, whether the experience is generally positive or negative.  And each time, irrespective of the preacher, the passage is pure gold, the pondering of which will effect the gradual transformation of our hearts and lives.

It was great to be in a huge crowd for singing too!  As a poor singer it is great once in a while to be in a crowd big enough to make me less concerned about ruining the experience of those in front of me during the sung worship times.  Ironic that when we get into the biggest crowd ever, we presume our voices will be perfected and able to hit the right notes every time!

Share

Why Do You Preach – Part 2

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

I enjoyed a passing point made by Derek Tidball recently at Keswick.  Here’s the text:

“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.”  (2Cor.4:1)

Derek pointed out that we live in a culture saturated by meritocratic thinking.  You have to have a certificate to be able to everything.  The same is often true in church world.  People expect you to be able to do this and do that like the best of names.  The pressure is on if you are involved in ministry, and the pressure is to live up to the standards of expectation imposed by the church.  All too easily we can fall into the trap of thinking that we are in ministry because of our merit – our education, our training, our skills, our abilities, etc.

But when we realize that we are in ministry through God’s mercy, that changes everything.  Suddenly ministry becomes about response.  It becomes about our wonder at His mercy toward us.  It becomes a real sense of privilege, rather than pure pressure and evangelical purgatory (as some church situations can feel for some in so-called “service”).

Response.  Wonder.  Privilege.  Hard to think of three better words to describe the experience of ministry.  As long as we look to our own merit, we are living out an anti-gospel ministry.  When our gaze is on Him and His mercy, suddenly it all looks very different.

Share

Why Did the Coughs Spread?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I shared about the contrast between the attention of the crowd one night and the significant distraction the next night – same venue, same weather, same chairs, different speaker.  Perhaps something here might be helpful to you.  Why were they distracted?

1. It felt like a commentary with added anecdotes. It was like a commentary explanation of a text, but with the added anecdotes of the speaker’s illustrations, and with a little something of his personality.

2. It felt like a written document was being preached. There is a massive difference between spoken speech and written language.  We must learn to write in “spoken” English if we are to be preachers that prepare with literary approaches (which is only one approach).

3. The message moved between the text and third-party illustrations and back again. I felt untouched.  It seems like it should be obvious that preaching should land in the lives of the listeners, which is not the same thing as sharing personal experiences, or saying things in contemporary language.  In fact, when personal experiences seem aloof or “I’m an important person” they really don’t help the connection at all.  Where, specifically, does your next message touch the lives of those present?

4. It was hard to tell if the speaker was passionate about the passage and message or not. Something believed but not really owned will probably be offered in an “at arms length” manner which will leave the listeners holding it “at arms length.”

5. I wondered what would happen if we all left, would the speaker just carry on anyway? It kind of felt like it tonight.  Which leads to a nice closing question.  What if the speaker sensed that we’d all left mentally?  What if you sense that?  Then what?

Share

When the Coughs Drop

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

As a speaker you should be able to sense the level of focus of your listeners.  Before you say they always listen well, I would encourage you to follow this advice.  Try being in the crowd and listening, observing, sensing what is going on around you among the listeners.  If you have the privilege of attending a conference or large Christian event, you should have the privilege of experiencing the crowd from within the crowd with different speakers.

Large crowd events are helpful because the large numbers both multiply and muffle.  That is, in a small group there may be an individual who never listens – proportionately they are more of a small group than they’d be in a big group.  Equally, it is quite the effect to sense distraction spread through a large crowd.  What happens?

Fidget levels increase. It’s amazing how still listeners can be when the preacher captures the crowd.  But when he hasn’t, fidgeting is rife.  Chairs move, people change position, people check their watches, the clock, the window, the people in peripheral vision, etc.

Infectious coughing spreads. I sat in a large crowd tonight (I wrote this a few weeks before it was put on the site), and I listened as the coughing spread across the crowd.  Like dogs barking in a neighborhood, like children crying in a nursery, like coughs among a crowd ready to be done already.  Last night I sat in the same crowd.  You could hear a pin drop.  Did a mass distribution of cough drops make the coughs drop last night?  No, different speaker.

At the first appropriate moment, people flee to the exits. It can be painful to feel trapped in a meeting too long.  How long is too long?  After all, these folks knew when the service would last until.  It was too long when the preacher didn’t connect for too long.

Experience the distraction of the crowd, experience the impressive focus possible.  Then go back to your own preaching.  Try to be accurately aware of the level of attention you hold, and then try to improve it.  Tomorrow I’ll share some reflections on why the distraction levels were so high among the listeners in the meeting I sat in tonight.

Share

Simply Good Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Someone has said that you know it was a good sermon when you find yourself asking how the preacher knew all about you.  That’s a nice sentiment that points to the importance of applicational relevance in preaching.

Now allow me to give you my statement.  This is not a complete statement, or a forever statement.  It’s a today statement.  I heard a great sermon this morning.  (This post was written a couple of weeks back at Keswick, in case you’re wondering!)  So I heard a great sermon.  Here’s my statement, “you know it was a good sermon when twelve hours later you find yourself still pondering the powerful but simple take home truth, reminiscing over the clear images used to drive home the main points, reflecting on how engaged you felt by the message and the messenger, how excited you were, and still are, to look at the text, to pray through all that hit home, to take stock of your life in light of the text, to respond and be transformed by the message.”

That’s my sentiment tonight that points to the importance of so knowing your text that you can take listeners by the hand and enter into it fully, of so thinking through your presentation that you have clear and concise main thoughts, an overwhelming master idea, an engaging manner of delivery, a contagious energy in presentation, a reliance on the Lord to move in peoples’ lives, and a targeted relevance to the listeners before you.

Simple really, pull those things together and you’ll probably preach a decent message!

Share

Have I Mentioned This Before?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I suspect somewhere in more than a thousand posts on here, I have mentioned once or twice about the importance of unity in a message.  Order is often present, if only by virtue of the progression of the text.  Progress is sort of present, inasmuch as the number of verses are running out, as is the available time.  But all too often, in preaching in some circles, the sense of unity is negligible or just plain vague.

Too many messages are essentially a series of points united by a common textual source and a title.  This is not the inherent unity that is there in the text.  Often messages are essentially a vague-subject completed.  Three things about our title.  Four aspects of such and such.  This is not really reflecting the unity that is present in a unit of thought.  Sometimes I wonder if we might be forcing texts into sermonic structures, rather than structuring sermons in such a way as to effectively communicate the texts.

Share

How is Your Preaching Toolbox?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments
So I started into Spurgeon’s Lectures and got about, well, more or less, about a page in before I was “arrested” by his helpful thinking.  Here’s a taster
…
We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; therefore I must train my vocal powers. I can only think with my own brains, and feel with my own heart, and therefore I must educate my intellectual and emotional faculties. I can only weep and agonise for souls in my own renewed nature, therefore must I watchfully maintain the tenderness which was in Christ Jesus. It will be in vain for me to stock my library, or organise societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling; my own spirit, soul, and body, are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle axe and weapons of war.

Your library, your laptop, your office, your desk, your starbucks tab are all secondary.  The real tools of the trade for a preacher are their heart and their head, their own inner life and spiritual walk.

Share

Beyond Identification

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about how narratives do engage us through identification and disassociation.  We can’t avoid that reality – it drives the popularity of movies, of bedtime stories, of Sunday School stories, of family fireside reminiscences, etc.  But biblical narrative always offers something more.  Our challenge as preachers is to be sure to always go there.

What if the passage is easy to understand and ready to be preached.  You’ve built a message based on the natural connection with a central character, or a minor character, or the original recipients.  Your time is filled, the message will preach, that bird will fly.  You aren’t done.  You’re not ready.

Biblical narratives either overtly or implicitly urge us to engage with the central characer in the canon – with God himself.  Was it really David’s courage, or was it something about his faith in God and his instruction?  Was it really about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, or was there something going on in terms of her loyalty to a God who had so far not seemed very “effective”?  Was it really about Joseph’s moral convictions, or was there something deeper going on in respect to his living by faith in a God who was with him when every circumstance screamed that he’d been long forgotten by such a God?

How does the narrative point us to the ongoing tension of faith or flight as creatures live in God’s world?  How does the narrative enable us to engage with the progressive revelation of the trinitarian self-revelation of Scripture?

Share

The Identification Situation

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

One of the secrets of the success of narrative writing and storytelling (whether that is historical narrative, fiction, fantasy, film or whatever) is the power of identification.  When you read, hear or see a story, you naturally find yourself either identifying with or disassociating from characters in the story.  If you are left cold, it is usually a sign that the story isn’t being told well, or you are in some sort of disconnected state.

So, if this is a central function of narratives, then it is a factor to consider in preaching biblical narratives.  Some might try to make a hard and fast rule here, but again I would urge wisdom and consideration of the options.

Identifying with the Central Character. This is the most obvious and typically the most natural.  As we see the faith or failure of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, etc., we naturally find ourselves identifying or disassociating.  Actually, I read a reference to a small study recently that suggested preachers are more likely to associate with the hero of the story than non-preachers are.  Interesting.  There is a danger here.  We can easily turn a God-centred biblical narrative into a moralistic tale of “so let’s try hard to be like Benaiah.”  The other danger is that we are theologically informed of the danger and then fail to engage with narratives in the way they naturally function.

Identify with Non-Central Characters. This is where the non-preachers apparently will naturally identify – with the disciples, the fearful soldiers of Saul’s army, the guilty brothers of Joseph, etc.  This changes things from a preaching perspective.  Suddenly the temptation to moralise is diminished somewhat, though not entirely.  The preaching of the narrative is suddenly fresh instead of predictable, for one thing.

Identify with the original recipients. From an applicational perspective, this is probably the best place to start.  Moses wasn’t telling Israel to all try to be like him, but rather to see afresh the heritage of God at work amongst them.  Samuel wanted Israel to celebrate David and the God of his faith, rather than try to generate a new generation of Davids.  While not narrative texts, Paul’s letters all had applicational intent, specifically related to the recipients of each letter (whom we can identify with by the ongoing characteristics of church life and struggle).

Identification is a primary feature of narratives.  Engage with this truth wisely.

Share