Author: Peter Mead

What’s Fresh?

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If you are a regular preacher, then the chances are that you have a rhythm in your preparation.  This is good in many ways.  However, it also runs the risk of getting into some well-worn ruts.  If you are an irregular preacher, then perhaps your preparation process lasts over several weeks.  This is also good in many ways.  However, it also runs the risk of getting into ruts (you forget what you decided you should improve next time).

Both schedules also run the risk of lacking freshness in content.  Regular preachers feel the pressure of the weekly cycle, irregular preachers sometimes end up preaching on a passage that they have personally “moved on” from by the time the Sunday comes.

As you look ahead to your next message, whether it is this Sunday or this summer, what is fresh about it?  What will be fresh when it is delivered?  Is it time to freshen up your delivery in some way, or do you have a standard sermon form you always fall into, or is it time to pour effort into specific wording, or perhaps your support materials (or lack thereof)?  And is the text, the truth, the walk with God fresh?

What Is Love? Part Trois

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No reason for the French numbering of this series, just a sprinkling of creativity!  So far we’ve considered the GS, the SE, and the FC people in a congregation.  There’s one category left, according to the pastor cited in Boyd-MacMillan’s book, Explosive Preaching:

AH = Apathetic Horde. This is usually the majority of the congregation.  They know God, but they are struggling to get close to Him.  They are struggling to swim against the tide.  What is love from us?  Well, it is tempting to harangue them, to guilt-trip them, to pile on the pressure.  According to the book, it is also tempting to offer ourselves as their guide who thereby takes away their freedom and responsibility.  The advice on how to love them? “Stay winsome, and resist the impulse to be coercive.”

Okay, in my opinion the majority category deserves the best advice.  I feel this is a bit weak, although accurate as far as it goes.  The book goes on to talk about developing compassion and overcoming compassion fatigue.  How do we love the apathetic horde in the church?  Surely the aim of resisting coercion is critical, but so is the concept of winsomeness.  We need to be winsome, gracious, attractively compelling in our spirituality.  We need to preach to the heart and not just to the mind and will.  We need to preach so that people are given many opportunities to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  We need to be faithful to the heart-message of the Bible, and not twist every text into a guilt-pressure-cooker to vent your own angst in your half-hour where people at least pretend to listen.

Loving the AH is so important, but not easy.  It costs us to love.  When we love we risk getting hurt, being rejected, seeing failure, etc.  But love we must.  We are compelled by the love of One who gave everything for us, “when we were still sinners.”  That love has spread to us and now yearns to spread through us to others . . . others who may not respond in the right way, or respond at all, for that matter.  Ministry is not about performing certain duties.  It is about serving God by loving people, it is about life-on-life investment – whether we are preaching, counselling, listening, or whatever.

(GS) + SE + FC + AH = the church where we serve … what is love to each?

What Is Love? Part Deux

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Ok, so thankfully not everyone in a church is a government spy or a sworn enemy (although it may feel like that in some churches!)  There are two other categories, according to an Eastern European Pastor quoted in Explosive Preaching, p141:

FC = Fan Club. It can be just as dangerous to accept the ego-stroking adulation of this small but vocal group.  What is love to FC members?  Love is “having the courage to challenge them on what they may not want to hear, and to jeopardize your fan-club status.”  According to the Eastern European Pastor cited in the book, the gospel will offend everyone in the church at some point, but many pastors are too concerned with maintaining the worship coming their way.  Strong stuff.  In reality this may mean querying a “darling distinctive” of your denomination, all the while seeking to maintain fidelity to the gospel message (and not just the popular bits).

I was going to give the other category too, but this is worth pondering.  Who is in your “FC?”  Have you compromised your fidelity to the message at all in order to keep them in the FC?  What situation may be brewing right now that will give you the choice of self-seeking, or gospel-serving in light of these people?  Pray for yourself in this, pray for a pastor/leader you know as well.

What Is Love?

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In Explosive Preaching, the author refers to a system he learned from an Eastern European pastor.  It is a simple categorization system used with a list of church members that helps him know how to love different people in his congregation.  Here it is in simple form, for more, see p140ff:

GS = Government Spy. Not a category most of us have to deal with, but if you do, ask yourself carefully, “what is love for a GS?”

SE = Sworn Enemy. A self-confessed leader of the “oust the pastor brigade.”  What is love for this category?  According to the pastor, “You have to love them enough to remember the reasons why they have such an excess of negativity, and reach out to them with winsomeness, not vindictiveness.”  Oh, and he added that if they win, your goal is to bring more glory to God in your going than in our staying.

The reality of such “well-intentioned dragons” is very real for many reading this post.  So I’ll leave it there for now.  If you have SE’s in your church, take some time to ponder your love for them and pray for the grace you need to reflect God’s character in such difficulties.  If you have no SE’s in your church, or you’re not a leader (i.e. target), then take a moment to pray for a pastor you know (he probably has some SE’s)!

Proxemic Considerations

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Just a little thing, but prompted by a recent experience in a church.  It was a small church, perhaps 30 people packed in to what is essentially just a room.  At the front there is the preaching platform, raised probably six to eight inches off the floor.  Then there’s me – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Well, not quite, but I felt more than a bit Gulliver when I stood on the platform in that small room.

I felt more than a little silly on the platform.  But it’s what they are used to, I am just a visitor, what difference does it make how I feel?  Actually, that’s not the main issue, although it is a factor.  How does it make the listeners feel to have someone towering over them to preach in a tiny room?  I asked permission to stand on the floor, made a gentle joke at my own expense (to avoid any perceived rudeness toward their church furniture), and proceeded to preach from the floor.

Inasmuch as you can ever evaluate a single element within the complexity of a communication situation – it worked.  There was a relaxed, interactive and open atmosphere.  The sermon was received very well and it seemed to be one of those times when the Word of God is moving freely into the hearts of the listeners.

All that to say, consider the proxemics of preaching now and then (and probably always when in a new environment).  Is the preacher standing above the listeners, below them, or on the same level – each has an effect.  Is the preacher distant or close – each has an effect.  Are there objects between the speaker and the listeners, such as church furniture?  It has an effect.  There is a helpful introduction to this subject in Duane Litfin’s textbook on communication, if you have it sitting on your shelf.

We probably don’t need to worry ourselves too much with the technical terminology of proxemics, kinesthetic factors or even the sociofugal-sociopetal axis!  But we should be more than a little concerned with whether we are communicating in the way we intend.

Pre-Review: Explosive Preaching, by Ron Boyd-MacMillan

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Subtitle: Letters on Detonating the Gospel in the 21st Century.

explosivepreaching

Published in 2006 by Paternoster.

I was urged to get this book in a brief lunch-time encounter last month.  Based on the enjoyable nature of our conversation, I trusted the advice of this new friend and bought the book.  I’m glad I did.  This book is comprehensive in scope and highly helpful in content.  The author works for Open Doors International and serves, among other things, as a tutor to preachers and speech-makers.

It contains 31 “letters,” I suppose in the style of Screwtape Letters, although essentially the letter style is not really sustained within each letter to any meaningful extent – it simply allows the author to pour forth his thoughts.  Since I am only half-way through the book at this point, I can only give a pre-review.  I’ll review the whole book once I get to the end.  This is the book I have been referring to over the past few weeks.

So far I have read this book with an almost constant smile on my lips, even though I acknowledge that much of the content is very serious, sobering and challenging.  The book is still an entertaining read.  I suppose it is also tempting to be as condescending toward the book as the author is toward other homiletics writers (perhaps myself included – would I fit in his category of puerile homiletics writers that keep on stating the obvious or making the whole task seem unnecessarily complex?)  But rather than feel condescending toward a book with an edge, despite our denominational, ecclesiastical and even slight theological differences, I would rather engage with the book and learn from it.

The first two sections of the book deal with the problems in preaching and the elements of preaching. So far I’ve found much that has been challenging and helpful.  I am looking forward to the subsequent sections on the history of preaching and the life of the preacher.  I suspect this book might creep into my top books page, but I’ll read the whole of it before I make such a major decision!

Five Major Failings – Part 2

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Carrying on from yesterday’s two failings, here are the rest:

“3. Vague Phrasing – Preachers seem hardwired to eschew all vivid verbs and concrete nouns, with the result that they sound vague and uninteresting.”

A lack of energy in delivery, a lack of facial engagement, a lack of passion, a lack of effective sensory description and so on are all factors adding to the vague and uninteresting nature of much preaching.

“4. Sub-Christian Resolutions – There is not enough gospel-insight.”

This is a good observation.  If our application and resolution of the message is that we should try harder, do better, be “good-er” or whatever, then we are falling short of Christian preaching.  In my opinion we need not always force a jump to Calvary and Christ, there are times when a theocentric message need not move to the first Easter, but every message should be theocentric.  A try harder message is really anthropocentric (it’s all about us, our needs and our response).

“5. Trivial Applications – The gospel is shrunk down to an individualistic technique that we can use on a Monday, all in the name of relevance, but the grand scope of the gospel as a message that speaks for all time, to nations and tribes as well as individuals, gets lost.  I actually heard someone starting a sermon: ‘The toothpaste squirted out all over my jacket, my alarm failed to go off, and in the shower I used rubbing alcohol as shampoo.  I was having a bad day.’  This was to introduce a biblical twosome who were having a similar bad day – the Emmaus pair.  Come on!”

We do need to differentiate between trivial Monday morning applications and genuine Monday morning applications.  Too much preaching resists the trivial and replaces it with the spiritual-sounding vague applications that all affirm, but none grasp for their own lives.  I agree, let’s cut out the trivial applications, but let’s do so in a way that retains genuine relevance.

Five Major Failings

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I thought I’d share this list of five major failings of many preachers, according to the book that I am currently enjoying:

“1. Multiplitus – Using too many points until the sermon becomes a starburst that dazzles rather than communicates.”

Well put.  When we try to preach more than one point, we quickly move from communication to fireworks.

“2. Elephantine Introductions – Huge ten or even fifteen minute introductions that contain the guiding imagery to control the rest of the sermon.  Trouble is that the imagery is either tiresome, prosaic, or just misleading.”

I’ve been accused of this at times, sometimes with justification.  I suppose that not having the entire reading up front can sometimes confuse people somehow searching for the end of the introduction.  Nonetheless, the last line is especially important – tiresome, prosaic, or just misleading.  We need to be careful with our introductions.  Essentially we need to “meet the people” and then “motivate them to listen” and without further ado, “move into the message/passage.”  (I don’t know why I used quotation marks there, the ‘meet, motivate and move’ alliterative language is my own – until someone publishes it first.)

Ok, tomorrow I’ll share the other three major failings according to this writer, along with my own comments.

What Font Do You Preach In?

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I just read an interesting article about a study in motivation at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.  The study involved presenting students with an exercise regime.  One group had it presented in plain Arial font, the other in a hard-to-read messy font.  Apparently the results, in terms of motivation, were remarkable.  The plain font folks were motivated, thinking the regime would be relatively easy to do, wouldn’t require much time and would be fluid and easy.  The harder font folks were the opposite – they thought the workout would be tough, time-consuming and they were not at all motivated to implement it in their own schedules.

Apparently the mode of presentation/communication had significantly influenced their perception of the content, and their motivation to apply the content.  You can read the article and find out the second test study (involving cooking), here.

Now I’m not suggesting that we learn how to preach from studies in font use, but it does raise an interesting question for us.  As communicators seeking to communicate and motivate, what “font” do we preach in?  Do we communicate with accessible language, in a clear and easy to listen manner?  Or do we adorn our sermons with inaccessible vocabulary, complex sentences, or do we deliver in a manner that requires real effort on the part of the listener?  If we do, apparently it will influence their perception of our content, it will hinder their motivation to apply what they hear.

Monday Musings on Manipulation

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Thought I’d follow up on Saturday’s post by sharing a quote I appreciated in the book I will name this week:

You must not fear to have affective goals for the sermon as well as cognitive goals.  There is nothing wrong with trying to move the listener.  It is not manipulative to seek to engage their entire being with the truth.  Manipulation is when the preacher overwhelms the emotions (or the mind for that matter), and creates a disorientation that actually takes the power of will away from the listener. (p.106)

I like that definition in some ways.  I like the recognition that manipulation occurs when disorientation is prompted by overwhelming.  I like the recognition that such overwhelming can be of the emotions and also of the mind.  When this occurs, something is taken away from the listener – somehow their decision making is controlled by an outside force, rather than by the appropriately shaped motives of their own heart.

Is the will ever truly free?  Perhaps not, but the heart must be free to supply the values that the mind and will rely on to make decisions.  Supplanting the heart with emotional hype, or with overwhelming intellectual astonishment, or even excessive pressure on the will itself (guilt-trip preaching) . . . are all a problem, all can be manipulation.

As a preacher convinced that my role is to speak to the heart, and not just the head, I must regularly wrestle with the issue of manipulation.  I must ponder the interaction of the soul’s faculties.  I must spurn any rhetorical technique designed to manipulate the listener.  I must consider what is biblically, ethically, theologically appropriate as one who has the privilege of speaking the Word of God into the lives of others.