Paul Tripp on Law and Grace

June 29, 2013June 29, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I am really enjoying Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp. Here’s a paragraph that jumped out at me last night as I read a few pages:

When I hear a sermon that is essentially law-driven, that is, asking the law to do what only the grace of Jesus Christ can accomplish, I am immediately concerned about the preacher. I immediately wonder about his view of himself, because if he had any self-consciousness about his own weakness and sin, he would find little hope and comfort for himself and his hearers in that kind of sermon. You see this dynamic in the Pharisees. Because they thought of themselves as righteous, perfect law givers, they had no problem laying unbearable law burdens on others. Their misuse of the law had its roots not only in bad theology but also in ugly human pride. They saw law keeping as possible, because they thought they were keeping it. And they thought that others should get up and keep it as well as they did. They were the religious leaders of their day, but they were arrogant, insensitive, uncompassionate, and judgmental. They were not part of what God was doing at the moment; no, they were in the way of it.

If you want more, get the book. This paragraph is on page 153.

The Fourth Ingredient

June 28, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

What goes into good preaching? Many point to a mix of three ingredients that are needed:

Biblically Faithful – The message needs to be the message of the text faithfully interpreted and communicated.

Organizationally & Vocally Clear – The listeners need to be able to hear and follow the train of thought.

Contemporarily Relevant – The listeners need to sense that the message is relevant to their life and circumstance.

If preaching could tick these three boxes on a consistent basis, then the church would be healthier by far. But all three can be present and the message can still be painfully dull. Biblical, but dull. Clear, but dull. Relevant, but dull.

So when I evaluate preaching, I always include a fourth necessary ingredient: Interpersonally Engaging. Good preaching needs to be biblical, clear, relevant and engaging.

What goes into engaging?

Engaging content – the content of a message needs to go further than just being biblical and relevant. It engages by being intriguing, or attractive, or gripping, or vivid. The narratives of the biblical text or sermonic illustration need to form images on the screens in listeners’ hearts. The poetry of the text needs to shape images and stirs emotion in the listeners’ hearts. The content needs to captivate listeners so that they can’t help but want to listen.

Engaging delivery – the delivery of a message needs to go further than just being clear. I’ve heard clear preaching that sent me quickly to sleep. Engaging delivery engages through energy – energy appropriate to the situation and personality of the preacher, but energy nonetheless. Energy is not just about hype and volume. It is about facial expression, gesture, movement, vocal variety, eye contact. The delivery, whether big and demonstrative or measured and deliberate, needs to engage the listener in some way.

Motivation to Engage – the key, though, is neither content nor delivery. The key seems to be at the level of the preacher’s motivation. If the preacher is prayerfully prepared to the point that they share God’s heart for the listeners and the situation, then they will want to connect. If they want to connect, then both the content and delivery will tend towards what it should be in order to engage the hearts of those listening. The real issue here is not technique, but motivation for relationship. If the preacher is connected to God and wants to connect with the listener, there is a good chance that they will. And if they do, then there is much greater chance of the preaching being life changing.

Losing our Youth by Dangerous Superficiality

June 19, 2013 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Last night I was chatting with my eldest about her maths homework. As I looked at her workbook I recognized that eventually she will be doing things I can no longer do. For a child there is a progression from basic numeracy, through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, long division, etc. I expect most parents can cope with these (except long division!) But once the child is working through algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus, there is typically the crossing of a threshold in respect to what the parent can readily understand.

So what should the parent do at that point? Hopefully you will start to see the relevance to this site here . . .

1. Become suspicious of the questions and insist that the child go back to basic numeracy.

2. Warn the child of the dangers of sophisticated mathematics and reassert that basic numeracy is all anyone ever needs.

Imagine the child decides they like the subject and wants to chase mathematics to degree level? Uh oh.

Hang on, this makes no sense. No parent that I know would function this way. They would at least cheer the child on, and possibly put some effort in to understanding the subject again or for the first time.

So what do we do in church? Let’s change the subject from mathematics to Christianity. There is a progression. Typically the progression is simple . . . (1) before age 11 tell lots of disconnected stories with a moral sting in the tail, (2) during teenage years speak about issues and hope the youth connect the issues to the disconnected stories, (3) watch them drift away in the sophisticated and heady world of university (if not before).

If a child is progressing to calculus in mathematics, won’t they also be asking very heavy questions in respect to life and faith and eternity? Too often parents, youth leaders and even preachers, are scared by the good questions. Too easily church people retreat into such nonsense as, “you shouldn’t ask questions like that, you will offend God!” or “be careful with your questioning, it could lead you astray!” And these unhelpful comments are sometimes topped off with thoughts like, “the Bible says it, that settles it, we don’t question it, blindly believe it!” Throwing the same few proof texts at good questions will not achieve anything good.

Let’s prayerfully question the children’s and youth ministry in our churches. Let’s prayerfully ponder the preaching in our churches. Are we losing our younger folk by never engaging them properly? Simplistic faith formulae may have worked for you, but they probably won’t for the next generation coming through. If all they see is simplistic “blind faith” and never meet Christians willing to think, to study, to learn, to question, to ponder, to wrestle and to take God seriously, why shouldn’t they be drawn away when they meet a thinking, studying, learning, questioning, pondering, wrestling sophisticated atheist?

Unity

June 18, 2013June 18, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I wonder if we may be selling our churches short. That is, by buying into the idea that Christian unity is built around assent to a statement of fundamental truths and then pouring energy into not falling out over non-essentials. Perhaps there is something more, someone better, that we are missing out on through this kind of thinking. Click here to go to my post on the Cor Deo site.

Listener Levels: 7 Ways to Add Steak to the Diet

June 13, 2013 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

What if your biblical explanation is typically at a level lower than many of your listeners? What are some suggestions for adding steak to the diet of listeners that are needing it?

1. Pray – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.

2. Get feedback – It would be better to know what people think than assume they are needing weightier content. For instance, just because there are seminary professors in your congregation doesn’t mean they want to be “stretched” by your preaching. Good, solid, biblical and faithful preaching that is clear and applicable may be the highlight of their week!

3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at biblical exposition. What is it about their preaching that makes it effective? (You may find they are simpler than you at first imagined . . . our tendency is to think more info, higher vocab and greater complexity is the key to steaky preaching – not so.)

4. Make connections carefully – It doesn’t take any skill to string biblical proof-texts together. There is no licensing for tour guides in the “concordance safari” industry. It does take great biblical awareness to be able to make the links that are appropriate to a message. For instance, learn to look back in the canon and see what is feeding in to the passage (Kaiser’s “Informing Theology”). Learn to value other writing by the same author slightly higher than other writings. This is not as simple as a set of rules, it is an art form.

5. Devour your Bible as if God is worth knowing – To be able to help people make sense of biblical texts, there is no substitute for personal biblical saturation. I’d rather be fed by someone who really knows their Bible than someone who has crammed higher level commentary content in the last days of preparation. (This is not to deny the value of good commentary conversations.)

6. Well-cooked steak is seldom complex – I remember hearing radio ads for a steakhouse in Portland. I was in seminary so could never afford to go there, but it did sound good. What did I expect of a $75 steak? Not lots of extra ingredients and spice overload combined with complex cooking processes. I expected better quality content prepared simply. Same with preaching. When we think about preaching more steaky messages, we tend to crank up the jargon and lose sight of our message purpose. Don’t. Take the time to have better content, but don’t complicate, in fact, simplify sermon structure, etc.

7. The best “theology” is not on the cutting edge of speculation, it is pushing into the big and core questions – Don’t think that steaky biblical explanation comes from speculative originality, whether that be in sensational eschatology, or obscure theological novelty (save that for your PhD). The best steaky biblical explanation comes from showing how the biblical text drives us back to the core questions: who is God and what is He like? What does it mean to be human and made in His image? What is sin and how deep is the problem? What is grace and how does God solve the problem of sin in salvation and Christian growth? God, man, sin, grace and growth. Simple stuff, but if you can let the Bible probe these issues, your steak will be truly life changing.

Listener Levels: 7 Suggestions to Improve Accessibility

June 12, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

How can we improve at offering explanation that will help people at the lower range of understanding? Perhaps your preaching goes over peoples’ heads, but you want to explain the Bible in a way that is accessible to younger Christians or less biblically literate folk? Some suggestions:

1. Pray about it – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.

2. Get feedback – Try to find out from people what is lacking. It could be that your vocabulary is obfuscatory, or your content is too dense, or your delivery is unengaging, or your words are indistinct and hard to catch, etc.

3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at explaining and describing the biblical content and action. What are they doing well?

4. Vary the elevation of your helicopter – If everything is explained from 100ft, then your messages will be deadening. You need to be able to lift up to 5000ft for a brief overview of the Bible, and you need to be able to land the chopper when you are settling for a while in a verse. Too much content where you need to be flying higher will lose listeners in overwhelming detail.

5. Surrender prideful vocabulary – To put it simply: your mission is not to impress, but to communicate. Relegate your original language vocabulary, your technical grammatical vocabulary, your systematic theological terminology and any other impressive jargon to your study. Know it, understand it, and sometimes, if necessary, explain it, but generally speaking it is best to leave it behind when you go to preach.

6. Achieve more by preaching less and driving it in more – Speaking of leaving things in the study, try leaving more of your message there. Often we confuse people by trying to achieve too much education in a single sermon. Andy Stanley says that many sermons would make great series. Try to cover less and you will have time for clearer explanation.

7. Improve your outlining – A lot of messages are complex because the preacher hasn’t thought themselves through to a point of clarity. I typically point to the main idea at this point, since a clear main idea will create clarity throughout the message. So true. But also give some time to evaluating the outline. Is it as simple and clear as can be? Is each part of the message doing something specific? If at a certain point in your message you don’t even know that you are trying to explain, nor will your listeners!

What else would you add?

Listener Levels

June 11, 2013 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Preaching involves explanation. That is, when we preach, we need to offer some explanation of the passage’s meaning. But it needs to be more than that. We need to offer explanation of the passage’s meaning at a level appropriate to those who are listening.

Imagine a scale of zero to one hundred representing the level of complexity. A class of three-year olds might need an explanation in the zero to five range, and would not do well with a doctoral seminar in the 80’s and 90’s. This range difference may seem obvious. However, it seems that sometimes we forget the range within a normal church service.

In a normal church service, there will be a range that must be considered for effective preaching. If we don’t consider to whom we are preaching, then we will probably settle into a range. Some of us may be naturally 30-40 explainers, while others of us may be 60-70 explainers. Which is the right range? Whichever range is before us.

We need to assume that there may be unsaved listeners present. Then the range of explanation needed by the believers may be 10-40 or 30-70.

A little exercise for us. Why not take a couple of minutes and pray for wisdom in evaluating the following:

1. Which range will I naturally settle into if I don’t consider my listeners?

2. What is the approximate explanation range of my usual congregation?

3. Where do the first two answers differ? That is to say, do I need to put some prayer and work into offering more accessible explanation, or into offering some richer meat?

Paul’s Preaching Genius

June 6, 2013 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Paul finished his epistle to the Romans with a doxology highlighting his gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. He affirmed the “foolish” preaching of Christ crucified to the Corinthians in the first chapter, coming back to it in the opening verses of the second chapter . . . Christ, crucified . . . combined with personal weakness rather than eloquence and oratorical power. In Ephesians 3 he describes the grace of God given to him to preach to the Gentiles the riches of Christ. In Galatians chapter 3 he summarizes his ministry among them as a public placarding of Christ crucified.

So was Paul dull and predictable, or did he grasp something profoundly significant? I vote for the latter:

1. People are dead in sin, which means they are inwardly curved in on themselves. They can’t “uncurve” their souls, and we certainly can’t prise open this deadly incurvature. Only by the attractive force of a greater love can this self-love be captured and drawn out. Jesus came and told us plainly that when he is lifted up, he will draw people to himself. The drawing force of Christ and Christ crucified is therefore critical and central.

2. Preaching that promotes christian living, but doesn’t offer Christ, is not helpful at all. If we simply instruct people how to behave and act like christians, then they will co-opt and corrupt that instruction to serve their incurvedness. “If that is what it takes to get the benefits of church community or eternal heavenly blessings, then I will do what you say, in my independence from God.” This is the danger of not grasping the heart-centred nature of humanity and the gospel.

3. Paul knew that true relationship with Christ is about transformative response, not pressured responsibility. He was distressed that the Galatians had gone off after another gospel, which was no gospel at all. He had preached and presented Christ crucified and they had responded. But now they were being pressured by the law-preachers. Paul didn’t call this a marginal mistake or a slightly wrong emphasis. He called it deserting God! Amazing statement. How can taking the Law more seriously be akin to deserting God? Let me urge you to read through Galatians and take a fresh look at this critical issue. Paul offered a response-based gospel of the Promised One and the Spirit who brings us into intimate relationship with Abba and transforms our character as we walk with Him in relationship. This has New Covenant stickers all over it, but if we get our eyes off Jesus and back onto ourselves, then we turn from God’s provision back to the self-orientation of our old “life” . . . a bad move in every way. (And this is why Paul would keep coming back to preaching Christ and Him crucified, not christian values and us pressure-fied.)

Bibles Open

May 29, 2013May 20, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

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!

Good News and Good News

May 28, 2013May 20, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Biblical preachers have the best job on earth: we get to announce good news! So here’s a thought to ponder . . . do we preach good news and good news?

There is a danger that we will separate gospel proclamation from instruction for the Christian life. If we do, we will have problems. Consider the case of the two-sermon Sunday. Let me describe the downside of separating gospel proclamation from Christian life instruction:

Sermon 1: Gospel Proclamation. The preacher preaches the gospel. Good. Problem is, the vast majority of those present are already believers. He keeps telling us how much we need to be saved and how we cannot get there without God doing the saving. Fair enough, we agree. He preaches a message that would fit in a tent meeting, but seems entirely irrelevant to the congregation sitting before him. Everyone hopes that someone is present who is not yet a believer. It would be appropriate for them. The sermon ends and a significant number of people leave the church without being fed or helped in any direct way.

Sermon 2: Christian Life Instruction. The preacher preaches instruction for the Christian life. Good. Problem is, a significant number of those present in the morning sermon (Gospel) are not there in the evening. But for those who are, surely this is helpful? In some ways, yes. But the separation is problematic. Now we are told what our duties are and how we should handle the difficulties of life and what our thoughts and actions should be if trained by Scripture. The separation means that the preacher does not apply the gospel to the believer, but gives instructions to the insider.

There are problems with both of these sermons. Technically the preacher may be right in most of what he says. But the problem with the Gospel message in the morning is that he seems unaware of his audience. Most are already believers and the presentation treats them as “already in.” Consequently they can only hope someone is present who needs to hear the message. Yet the gospel should be relevant to believers too. In the gospel message the believers could and should be engaged by what is presented. In the Christian Life Instruction message, the gospel could and should be a defining feature. Do we think that having believed and entered in by faith, that we now will grow to maturity by our own diligent obedience? Check Paul’s thoughts on that approach in Galatians 3:1-3. No, the gospel is relevant to all and it is by faith from first to last.

Perhaps we need to grasp our privilege of proclaiming good news and proclaiming good news: gospel proclamation and gospel-shaped Christian life instruction!