Is it possible, and is it right, to evaluate the state of somebody else’s salvation? How does this influence our preaching? Tricky question, but a vital one. For this post, please click here.
Audience Analysis
Bony Outlines
How bony should you make your sermon outline? Some people are passionately committed to having the sermon outline show through for maximum clarity. Every point is obviously a point. It is offered as such (my third point is…) The points need to be equal in weight, alliterated in wording and balanced perfectly.
This kind of rhetorical approach to preaching is understandable. It’s what we have been told is the right way to preach. It is perhaps what we have often heard done either successfully or not. Maybe we were taught it in seminary. Apparently people like to take notes of the points. Apparently parallel points are more memorable (and apparently remembering your outline is the goal of some listeners).
Can I question the point of all this for a moment? What if the points of the sermon are actually for the preacher’s benefit, rather than for the listeners? What if their take-away should be the main idea of the passage and how it has marked them, rather than a synopsis of your outline that they probably will never look at again?
If the only goal in preaching were clarity, then bony preaching would be the way to go. Let the skeleton show through in everything. But what about faithfulness to the text? Perhaps the text doesn’t offer three balanced points, and to make it offer that would be to abuse the text? What about relevance? What about engaging the listener? What about transformation that doesn’t come merely from information transfer? Perhaps bony preaching is not the only way to go?
I do not advocate rejection of traditional outlining methodologies. I am not saying we should go free form and nebulous in our preaching. But I would suggest that my outline is my servant, not my product. I outline the flow of the sermon to reflect the text and the message, but that is for my sake. Somehow I have to find the balance between bony preaching (clear, but potentially weak in other areas), and fleshy sermons (engaging, interesting, and/or biblically faithful, but potentially less “clear” by traditional measures).
Don’t Assume Familiarity
It happens all too regularly. The preacher zeroes in on a specific text and preaches it, assuming that the listeners are familiar with the broader context and flow of the book in which it is found.
Even if you are mid-series, don’t assume familiarity. It takes more than one or two brief overviews to help people feel comfortable in the broader context of a passage. It is easy to think that since this is week three of six, they will be tracking on the flow of the book. They may not.
Even if you already gave a a mini-overview in this message, don’t assume familiarity. You might have just given a thirty second sweep over the top of the book in your introduction. But now that you are into your message, you can’t assume they will be automatically spotting the connections you are hinting at in reference to how this text follows on from the preceding. Be overt.
Recognize that many in our churches feel much more daunted by the Bible than we might expect. It is easy to assume a level of familiarity that simple isn’t there. Also, many in our churches dip into the Bible for proof texts and to answer questions in Bible study groups, but don’t read books in flow and so don’t have familiarity with books as a whole.
We would do well to consider it one of our privileges to help folks become more familiar with books as a whole. It takes time, but it is worth the effort. The spiritually mature tend not to be the pocketful of proof text people, but rather the grasping the message of books as a whole kind of folks. So what to do?
1. Repeatedly offer helpful clear flowing summaries of books and larger sections when preaching from within them. It takes work to summarize effectively in order to do this (the kind of work the preacher is supposed to be doing, however!)
2. Consider overview sermons at the beginning and/or end of book series. Why is this so seldom done? Surely having worked with the bits, people would be delighted to see the whole fit together.
3. Consider stand-alone whole book sermons. With the overt goal of motivating people to get into the book for themselves, these can be highly profitable messages.
4. If your messages always skip around the canon like a four-year old after cake, or if your series are always topical in nature . . . consider the benefits of teaching through a book now and then.
Preacher, What is Your Role – Part 2
Yesterday we listed five pseudo-preaching roles that people fall into. Let’s finish the list and in doing so remember that to preach the Bible is to speak God’s Word into the lives of contemporary hearers. So we already considered advice dispenser, public entertainer, time filler, worship balancer, and life coach. Furthermore, preacher, you are not supposed to be:
6. Guilt Giver – It is a generations-old tradition. Selectively quote, misread your passage, partially preach the text. Pound the pulpit, point the finger, induce guilt at every opportunity. After all, waiting for God to touch hearts and change lives can feel like a slow process. So why not hurry it up by coercing people through guilt? Don’t shortcut. Preach the Word.
7. Revelation Provider – The Bible, to some, seems to feel so passe, so old-school, so done. Much more exciting to seek to always offer new revelation. In some circles this is about fresh “thus saith the Lord” declarations, in others this is done surreptitiously through the “I prayed about this and God gave me…” If He truly did, great, give it to us. Yet the preacher has a lifetime of wonderful objective truth to expound. Preach the Word.
8. Exegetical Innovator – Along similar lines, when you are looking at the Bible your job is not to see something new. You don’t have to find obscure little references in Chronicles, nor do you have to see something nobody has ever seen before in Psalm 23 or Romans. This tends to lead into subjective typology and fanciful interpretations. Be faithful. The freshness is still there. Preach the Word.
9. Societal Commentator – Oh it is inevitable that we do speak about and into the contemporary state of society. But that is not our main job. Instead of waxing forth on societal ills, speak to the people listening. They need to hear from God’s Word. If your main aspiration is to be a commentator, write for the local paper. If you are going to preach, preach the Word.
10. Rhetorical Artist – Maybe you’ve noticed how many contemporary preachers have become so “natural” in delivery style. Surely something is being lost. Don’t descend into maintaining earlier generational styles of hyper-alliteration, tongue-rolling flourishes, affected vocal delivery and wooden gestures deemed appropriate only for preaching. Preach the Word.
What would you add to this list?
Preacher, What Is Your Role?
Donald Sunukjian’s short definition of preaching is “Listen to what is God saying . . . to us?” Simple, maybe overly so, but helpful nonetheless. Preaching is something about God speaking through His Word to us now. But somehow it is easy to slip into some roles that really aren’t preaching. Preacher, you are not supposed to be:
1. Advice Dispenser – You may think people have a high view of your wisdom, or your office, but don’t descend into constantly offering your advice. People may pay big money to go hear Self-Help Gurus, but they are almost certainly not coming to your church primarily because of your advice. Preach the Word.
2. Public Entertainer – Of course you shouldn’t be drab and dull, the Bible is exciting and energising and it is good news. This is precisely the point. Don’t feel you need to “make it interesting” and get caught up in the excitement of making people happy and descend into the role of public entertainer. Preach the Word.
3. Time Filler – Sometimes church can feel like a routine that must needs be fulfilled week after week. And sometimes it does seem that you could waffle and say nothing much between end of sung worship and closing hymn (and still get affirming handshakes afterwards). Don’t descend into filling time. Unique opportunity. Preach the Word.
4. Worship Balancer – You may never have thought of this, and I don’t want to give ideas, but some seem to see it as their job to bring balance. After all the love and tenderness of the singing (especially some strains of modern worship), don’t descend into a balancing act of bringing the punch, the guilt, the stress, the duty. Whiplash. Preach the Word.
5. Life Coach – Speaking of self-help gurus, we have a massive arsenal of feel good stories to use in the anthology of self-help called the Bible. Oh wait, don’t do that. Shifting to a human-centred handling of the Bible guts it of its power and point. Don’t descend into some sort of life coaching role. Better spouse. Better parent. Better bill-payer. Stop. Preach the Word.
We’ll finish the list tomorrow, but feel free to add your own…
One Simple Truth
I have to admit, I like a lot of what Andy Stanley has to say about preaching. One thing he does well is to say all that needs to be said, but without over packing the sermon. He sometimes speaks of preaching “one simple truth.” This issue tends to stir a reaction one way or the other:
On the one hand there are those that simply can’t find their way through a download of exegetical information. It is all too foreign. Too distant. Too technical. Too alien. Too irrelevant. So a dense sermon will leave little to no mark on them, other than boring them away from God and His Word.
On the other hand there are those that simply can’t cope with a sermon so simple that they gain nothing new from the experience of listening. It is all too simple. Too be there, done that. Too basic. So a lightweight sermon will leave little to no mark on them, other than boring them away from God and His Word (and probably exacerbating their pride, which helps nobody!)
So what to do? I don’t advocate simplistic preaching, nor dense preaching. I think we need to prayerfully pursue an engaging and accessible re-presentation of the biblical text, seeking to apply the text to the hearts and lives of those listening. With this as our goal, we should be able to satisfy most who want something of substance. At the same time, a loving consideration of listeners will allow us to avoid going over the heads of the listeners. It is our job to make the difficult accessible.
There may be a handful that can’t ever be pleased. Anything more than “do this, do that” and it is too complex. Anything less than rabbinical midrash and never-before-seen pesher and it is too basic. But for the most part, engaged and touched listeners will not be thinking “too basic” or “too complex.”
It is the disengaged and untouched that tend to swell the ranks of dissenters and create the tension.
The Relevance of the Reading
Sometimes, in some services, you may choose to have a reading that is not the text you will be primarily preaching. For example:
1. To lay a foundation from an earlier and informing text – Perhaps your New Testament passage leans heavily on an Old Testament passage, so you read it for the sake of familiarity once you are explaining the connection during the sermon.
2. To avoid giving away the “tension” when preaching a narrative – Perhaps your sermon reflects the tension and resolution of a good narrative, so you want to avoid a recent reminder of how things work out in the end. So you read something vaguely supportive of a theme in the sermon.
3. To support an earlier “phase” of the service – Perhaps you, or the worship team, have designed the service to flow through a greater sequence, of which the sermon is only a part. Consequently the reading of the Bible earlier in the service is intended to fit with the songs around it, rather than as the sermon text.
4. To be appropriate to the day in the church calendar – Perhaps it is Trinity Sunday, or Pentecost, or Reformation Day, or whatever. So you read a relevant passage, but then proceed to preach a message that may be only indirectly connected, or may be completely unrelated.
5. Because you were assigned the text, but basically intend to morph the message into a passage you are ready to preach – So you read the assigned text, but then do a couple of swift moves in your introduction to move into the sermon of your choice.
There may be other reasons too. I tend to see the first three as being more legitimate rationale for this practice than the last couple, but that is not the point of this post. What is?
If there is any possibility of doubt or confusion for the listener . . . explain! Seems simple enough, but it is amazing how often we lead services and expect people to grasp the master plan of our clever service design through some sort of mind-reading or osmosis. It may not matter if people get the full riches of your artistry. On the other hand, if they are confused by it, then it is probably counter productive.
If You Must Take Notes
I have written before about studies I’ve read that show the best way to take notes as a listener is to listen wholeheartedly and then pause immediately after the message to write down highlights for a few minutes. This is so much better than trying to take notes and therefore always listening with half an ear to what is being said as you also use mental energy on processing the information onto paper.
The thing about taking notes is that it usually translates into a desire to primarily capture content. People passionately pursue a record of the points, perhaps listing cross-references and occasionally (if you’re blessed with a good preacher), writing down the main idea of the message. This secretarial quest supposedly then supplies a useful written record for later review and reprocessing of the message in the quietness of private quiet time.
What if the goal of preaching is not primarily information transfer? What if preaching is about much more than education? What if preaching is about encountering God in His Word and responding to Him, being transformed by Him, and seeing His Word applied in your life?
If you must take notes, how about trying this “holistic applicational” approach to note taking?
Divide your blank sheet into three equal columns. At the top of each column write A, B, C, or if you’re a doodler, draw a heart, a head and two hands.
In the A column make notes on how the message you are hearing is marking your affections, your heart. How is it stirring you to respond to God? How does it make you feel? How are your values and emotions and passions and desires being affected? If there’s nothing to write in this column, see if you can put something in the next column.
In the B column make notes on how the message you are hearing is shaping your beliefs, your thinking. How is it informing your worldview? What are you learning about God, about life, and the Bible, etc.? How is your thinking being changed? If there’s nothing to write in this column, see if you can at least put something in the next column.
In the C column make notes on how the message you are hearing is guiding your conduct. How is it applicable in your daily life? What practical, tangible, measurable steps can you take in response to this message? How will your life look different from the outside? If there’s nothing to write in this column either, pray for your preacher to recognize that preaching is more than covering familiar ancient territory in an un-engaging manner!
Ideally, a good sermon will offer all three columns something helpful. Too many sermons would be purely right column, or contradictory between columns (i.e.practical steps offered in column C, perhaps some information for column B, but a big fat “it’s making me feel bored, or guilty, or pressured” in column A!)
Oh, but where can we fit in the informational stuff, the outline, the cross-references? Hopefully your sheet would be either so full that you have no space for it, or so empty because you are genuinely engaged and forget the paper, but in reality I’m sure you’ll squeeze it in somewhere!
The Non-Definitive Sermon
I think we all have a tendency to want to give the definitive sermon when we preach. But maybe we shouldn’t. And probably we can’t.
On Saturday I was asked to speak on prayer and fasting. I decided not to try to be definitive or exhaustive. Instead I chose a foundational and central truth and then preached that with the aim of marking the listeners with that truth. In this case I chose to survey briefly the writers of the New Testament to hear a consistent witness to the “loving Father” aspect of prayer that I had chosen to emphasise. I covered fasting in about a paragraph at the end.
Definitive? Not at all. Helpful? Hopefully.
By choosing to preach this message as I did, I was choosing not to say so much. I didn’t mention repentance or thanksgiving, or worship, three key aspects of a healthy prayer life. I didn’t get into aspects of spiritual warfare, or do close analysis of biblical prayers. I didn’t fully engage with the challenges of unanswered prayer. I gave fasting only a cursory mention (although seemingly satisfying to people if feedback is anything to go by). It wasn’t definitive, it wasn’t meant to be.
Instead I tried to drive home the main idea of the message and hope that people will build on that in the future. I would like to take that foundation and build a series, but it was a one-off opportunity on this occasion.
So why didn’t I try to cover all these vital elements of prayer? Because a message that tries to do everything often achieves nothing. It is like the difference between a bed of nails and a single nail. The bed of nails may be impressive, but it leaves a superficial impression. The single nail will penetrate. In preaching terms, the single main idea arrow will cut to the heart more consistently than the exhaustive sermon’s magazine of smaller artillery.
Let’s not overestimate what can be accomplished in a single sermon, so that we do not underachieve by overpreaching. Preach specifically to penetrate substantially.
Father’s Day Preaching: Good Man, or Good God?
Just a quick post as Father’s Day is approaching (at least in the US and UK). If you are preaching this weekend, what are you preaching?
Are you preaching about how to be a good man? Or are you preaching a Christian message? Uh? Ok, deliberately inflammatory way of phrasing it, but still, let’s ponder it. How often do we take a God-centred Bible text (for it all is), and turn it into a man-centred moral tale? I suppose Father’s Day is a really ripe opportunity to preach moralism, or to preach legalism, or to preach sanctified humanism.
Be like Abraham. Don’t be like Abraham. Be like Jairus. Don’t be like David. Be like Joseph. Be good. Try harder. Be better. Demonstrate discipline. Have integrity. Don’t fail. Do try. Don’t fall short. Do be perfect.
But with all the plethora of possible Father’s Day narratives, let’s not miss that God is involved in every one of them. The Bible is not an anthology of tales with morals to put Aesop in the shadows. The Bible is the revelation of God’s heart and human response to that. By all means preach of a human father, good or bad. Affirm, encourage, train and exhort the Dads in the congregation. But do so in the context of a life of faith. No child should have to cope with a father who is good in his own strength.
Oh, and there’s the greater dimension behind it all. God knows what a Father should be, because He has always been just that. Not just for our sake. Not a temporary mask for the sake of puny humanity. Not a functional label hiding an entirely unknowable reality. God knows what it is to be Father and what it is to be Son, for He is eternally both. Why not let your church taste of the gripping reality of God as Trinity this Sunday? Surely nothing can lift the hearts of fathers like a glimpse of the true Father.
Biblical Preaching 