Preaching As

August 2, 2011August 2, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I was enjoying conversation with a good friend yesterday. Together we were reflecting on the role of preaching in the life of the local church. It is such a full-orbed role, isn’t it? After all, as preacher this Sunday, you have the opportunity to preach as . . .

Teacher – The flock needs to be fed, and the preacher has the privilege of offering the food of God’s Word. This is certainly an educational role, but it is much more than education. Hearts and well as minds need to be fed. Lives need nourishing on the Word of God. As the text is expounded, there is massive opportunity for God to be presented (although some manage to preach the text without presenting God!) Teach, or they starve.

Leader – The flock needs to be led, and the preacher has the privilege of offering direction and example from God’s Word. Too easily we separate leadership from preaching. Either different people fulfill the roles, or different types of communication are used to lead than to preach. Why? The preacher has a unique opportunity to offer leadership to the congregation.

Shepherd – The flock needs to be cared for, and the preacher has the privilege of caring as the Word is presented. It is easy to think of pastoral care as a function of visitation, but how much can also be done from the pulpit? As a listener you can tell the difference between being cared for and being talked at. The preacher should care and let it show.

Defender – The flock needs to be protected, and the preacher has the privilege of defending the flock with the offering of the Word. Some don’t like this notion. They want all preaching to be sugar sweet and positive. But the reality is that there are false teachers and false teachings that are a definite threat to the flock, the preacher can defend as they preach the Word.

Evangelist – The flock needs to be growing, and the preacher has the privilege of offering the gospel as they preach the Word. Again, don’t assume that another person, another time, another role or office should take care of this. The preacher has the opportunity to clarify the gospel and call on listeners for response.

Second-Person Theology

August 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

For today’s post, prompted by a German theologian you should be aware of, and with a subject so very relevant to preachers of all ages, please click here to go to the Cor Deo site.

Small and Strategic?

July 29, 2011July 28, 2011 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

The pressure in church world is almost always expansive. Bigger buildings, bigger programs, bigger numbers, etc. This is not all bad, of course. If you wouldn’t want another person added to the church then something has broken in your heart, and if that’s true for one more, why not fifty more? Still, not everything about bigger is better.

We need to make sure that in our preaching ministry we are not drawn into thinking purely in a “bigger is better” model. For instance, is it better to speak to fifty or five hundred? It depends what you are speaking about, and even more, who the respective groups are. Five hundred conference hoppers going from one event to the next are not worth ten times more than fifty strategic leaders who will influence thousands.

I served for a year on an ocean-going ship-based ministry, a life changing experience for me. That ministry began back in the 1960’s with a little group of people praying around a world map in a little converted pub in Bolton, England. Today millions around the world have visited the ships and received the gospel in some form.

As an Englishman I am very thankful for the “little” conversations that took place at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge. Cranmer, Latimer, Barnes, Bilney, Gardiner, Coverdale, Tyndale, et al . . . men discussing Lutheran thought, “Little Germany,” . . . a group that changed the history of England and the world.

The Apostle Paul had a massive ministry and a massive impact. But let’s not forget the amount of time he invested in a relatively small group of companions – Timothy, Titus, Silas, Luke, Epaphras, etc. God changed the world through Paul. Paul marked the world through these men and others.

The Lord himself seemed to value a deeper mark on fewer people. He was second-to-none in reaching the masses (although after John 6 some might question that). Yet how much did he do that was “small and strategic” with twelve, with three, with one? He has truly built his church on that foundation.

So here’s the question: as a preacher, what are you doing that is small and strategic? Not the big stuff. Not the big crowds. The small stuff. The strategic. It could be a phone call. It could be a small group praying together. It could be a leisurely dreaming session in a tavern. It could be inviting some into your ministry to value a deeper mark on fewer lives in order to make a greater mark in eternity.

What are you doing that is small and strategic?

John Stott, Biblical Preacher

July 28, 2011July 28, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

John R W Stott died yesterday afternoon after listening to Handel’s Messiah and hearing 2^nd Timothy. The fight well fought. The race well run. The faith well kept. Converted in 1938, ordained in 1945, promoted to glory at 90 years of age. This man was a biblical preacher par excellence. I never had the privilege of meeting him, but I’d like to share some reflections on his ministry in his honour today. One of the books I am reading at the moment is one of his lesser-known works, but well worth getting hold of – Christ the Controversialist. So for seven brief reflections:

1. A Biblical Preacher. Stott didn’t try to be the original thinker, instead he modeled being the Bible miner. His ministry was always marked by faithfulness to the sacred text, clarity in its presentation, and relevance to the situation in which he was preaching. Stott gave us the metaphor of the Bridge-Builder in his wonderful book on preaching, Between Two Worlds. Christianity Today’s editor in 1981, Kenneth Kantzer, once wrote, “When I hear him expound a text, invariably I exclaim to myself, ‘That’s exactly what it means! Why didn’t I see it before?”

2. An Evangelistic Global Preacher. Stott spent his entire career at All Souls, Langham Place, yet his influence was genuinely global. His passion for evangelism has ofted been noted, and his statesmanlike role at the 1974 Lausanne Convention was massively significant. His global ministry goes on today through Langham Partnership International, a ministry supporting leaders, publishing and preaching in the developing world. Local and global ministry are not mutually exclusive.

3. A Multiplicative Ministry. I’m not sure what word to use here, but when the story of the evangelical church in post-war Britain is told, it will always have Stott at its centre. At a time when evangelicalism seemed to have “dropped the ball,” the rebuilding seemed to occur around the humble but determined influence of Stott in the Church of England, and Lloyd-Jones in the free church. It is possible to be an intellectually rigorous evangelical. Stott proved it, and in his humble determined way, he multiplied himself.

4. A Cumulative Ministry. While taking opportunities to serve the global church, Stott demonstrated the value of cumulative ministry in his home church. He famously turned down the opportunities to climb the power pyramid and become a bishop, but instead showed what cumulative preaching can do over the decades in a single church. If only more preachers would stop pyramid climbing and playing ecclesial politics, and instead give themselves to faithfully preaching the Word!

5. A Writing Ministry. Not every preacher can write, but those that can provide a real service to others. I remember reading The Cross of Christ at a formative time in my life. I’ve turned to Stott’s commentaries numerous times. Many will attest to the help received from Stott’s clear yet profound mining of Scripture. The faithfulness, clarity and relevance of his preaching showed through in his writing. In an era of fluffy books lacking biblical substance that fail to make the cut when we need more shelf space, Stott has continually produced solid works, large and small, to serve the church.

6. A Retiring Ministry. How many great movements and churches have suffered at the hands of the power figures unable to let go? Stott seems to have had the faith, the courage and the humility to hand over the reins in the church, and in the global ministry, with a passion to see things improve. Some people have to move away to leave room for the next generation to move on. Stott has been able to remain as a sage supporting subsequent leaders, Uncle John to all who knew him personally. If only more older leaders would have the courage to not cling onto control, but know when the baton should be passed.

7. A Ministry with Integrity. Stott, apparently, was a shy man who would be happy in his own company writing for weeks on end, or enjoying his ornithology. Yet he gave himself to others, he prayed, he cared. He lived his life with a deep devotion to Christ to the end of the journey. Truly one of the most influential leaders of our time, Stott is a wonderful example of a plain ordinary Christian, mightily used by a wonderful Christ.

I Have Always Struggled to Concentrate

July 27, 2011July 25, 2011 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Maybe you are like me? I have always struggled to concentrate. I remember sitting in church as a youth and often wondering how much longer the sermon would last. The clock never ticks so slowly as it can on a Sunday.

You can count bricks in the wall, make shapes with ceiling tiles, daydream, read the introductory preface to a hymn book, the translation philosophy of the Bible committee, etc.

You can think about yesterday, or tomorrow, or a distant memory, or an unlikely dream. You can do a lot of things during the thirty plus minutes of a sermon.

It is not that I am unable to concentrate. I’ve done okay academically and have focused through films and books and games and conversations and meals. But somehow sermons are a bit of struggle at times.

I doubt that I am unique. Maybe I am just a toddler in a grown-up body, but I suspect I am not alone. Maybe you are like me? I have always struggled to concentrate. Preacher, please help me out, and those like me. Be clear, make progress, get to your point, vary the presentation, be relevant, be biblical, be engaging, be a communicator.

Visual Check-Up

July 26, 2011July 25, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

What you communicate is not merely about what you say. It is also about how you say it, both the tone and attitude of your voice, and the body language framing the whole communication event. Body language matters. It matters massively. If you don’t know that, try to contradict your words with your posture/gesture/expression and see what is heard by your experiment partner!

So for a quick five-point check-up. For best results, watch a video of yourself preaching. For next best results, ask a trusted friend or three to evaluate your body language. For benefit, think through the following prayerfully:

1. When you preach are you stilted or frozen? This happens to almost everybody when they are nervous, and some never seem to get over it. Strangely though, some are unaware of how petrified they become at the pulpit. As I tend to put it, being natural generally does not come naturally.

2. When you preach are you free and natural? This is obviously the opposite of the first question, but important to ponder some more. Are you more animated in sharing a personal anecdote or sporting memory with a group of friends than you are when you preach?

3. Is your visual presentation consistent? Some preachers tend to animate themselves in spurts. The first few minutes is all action, then by the end they seem to have contracted core hypothermia.

3b. Is your visual presentation consistent? Same question, different meaning. Do you consistently match content to visual presentation? Gesture to words (three fingers for the third in a list is always going to work better than four), expression to emotion, movement to geography, etc.?

4. Let’s be honest, are you aggravatingly repetitive? It could be a perma-grin, or a repeated gesture, or a rhythmic movement, or whatever. Any aspect of visual presentation will be aggravating once people notice it and can predict it.

5. Ok, one more honest one, are you grating in some way so listeners struggle to listen? Perhaps you come across as aggressive, or effeminate, or arrogant, or intimidating, or bombastic, or distracted, or hesitant, or whatever. Hard to pinpoint these things, but definitely worth finding out, somehow.

Summer Preaching

July 25, 2011July 25, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In preaching terms, summer is not a season of three months, it is a season of a few weeks. It is a season when significant proportions of the congregation are missing on any given Sunday. It is a season when significant proportions of those present are mentally missing, reminiscing or anticipating. Somehow summer seems to drain focus from a congregation.

The natural response of the preacher is to resent this intrusion into the focus of the folks in the pew. Yet perhaps a church needs the summer pace change as much as families and individuals do. In some cultures a church may shut for a couple of Sundays (since everyone has fled to the coast anyway), but maybe a change is as good as a rest.

Certainly the preacher shouldn’t cajole the people into a state of focus or determined forward momentum. Save the visionary leadership for the start of the next school year. For now, use the sermons for other purposes. Some suggestions:

1. Preach more stand-alone messages, rather than series that require regular attendance. Few, if any, will manage to hear a full summer series.

2. Use the opportunity to balance the preaching schedule. Perhaps you’ve been pounding out the gospels for a while, or epistles have become the staple diet. Consider some time in the Psalms, or Proverbs, or the Prophets.

3. Don’t feel bad about being engaging and interesting. Actually, consider being that way year round. However, if you are normally a high intensity communicator, consider lowering that intensity for the next weeks.

4. If you are the weekly preacher, share your pulpit. It may be a bit late for this year, but why not invite others to preach during these weeks? It could be a pulpit swap with another church in the area. Perhaps even better, it could be a chance to mentor some of the potential preachers in your church.

What do you do differently from the pulpit during the summer weeks?

Praying for Fellowship

July 23, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This link should have gone on the site on Monday, but here it is now . . .

I Needed That

July 22, 2011July 15, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Following on from yesterday’s post about vicarious conviction, there is a related matter to stir up a bit. It is the appetite in the church for “I needed that” sermons. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when a sermon should sensitively but clearly touch the raw nerve of sin with deep conviction. Sometimes the Bible speaks in such a way that we feel lovingly stung by the disciplining word of God our Father. But I am not writing about that. I am writing about sermons that some church goers seem to appreciate because of the scourging they feel somehow cleansed by.

1. The flesh is drawn to religion.

We see it all over the world. Humans are religious. In the absence of divine revelation they will define religion according to predictable patterns: working to satisfy a distant deity by fulfillment of self-imposed regulations. Strangely though, even in the presence of grace-filled divine revelation, churchgoers are so prone to define their religion in similar terms: working to satisfy a distant deity by fulfilling self-imposed regulations. That’s the tendency of the flesh, isn’t it? The pre-programmed flesh continues to tend toward independence from God, even in the midst of supposedly worshipping Him.

2. The church always veers toward maturation by works.

What Paul was fighting in Galatians, and elsewhere, is still prevalent today. Who is it that bewitches us to think that having begun by faith we will then mature by means of keeping the law, working hard, beating ourselves, etc? Too many in supposedly Bible-believing churches are acting as functional members of another tradition where enduring a beating in a sermon is akin to purging the soul by means of climbing stone steps on our knees, or whatever.

3. The whipping preacher will always receive affirmation.

Here is the piece that always stuns me. If you hang around near a preacher that has just spent the sermon time whipping the congregation, some will come up and affirm the sermon! Is this a spiritual machismo that stands up after a beating and laughs it off with a “is that all you’ve got?” I suspect it is often the same kind of false understanding of salvation described above. Effectively it might be “thanks for the whipping today, I needed that, and now I feel as purged spiritually as I do physically after a hard session in the gym!”

Are you preaching the pseudo-gospel of guilt and pressure? Are you urging people via moralistic tirades to be better Christians? Do you get comments like “We needed that!” and “I like that kind of preaching!”

In the grossly inaccurate Da Vinci Code there is an albino Opus Dei monk hitman. If you saw the film you’ll remember his self-flagellation in his room. Whip in hand, back sliced open. Don’t preach for that effect. Dan Brown’s story may be compelling, but that scene is not an effect your listeners truly need you to give them when you preach!

Vicarious Conviction

July 21, 2011July 15, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

There are people in the church who seem to be addicted to a form of vicarious conviction. Actually, I should say, two forms of vicarious conviction.

The first kind is where the preacher exhibits aggressive commitment to biblical truth. You probably know people, as I do, who are very vehement and aggressive and indignant and passionate . . . in private. That is, they will express themselves in the strongest terms about the quality of the food, but only until the waiter arrives, then they speak like a hesitant mouse. Or they are bordering on vitriolic in their complaints about somebody’s behavior, until that person arrives and they go very quiet and “disaffected nice.” I wonder if this is the kind of person that gets so stirred up by watching somebody express biblical truth in the most belligerent tones possible and affirms that kind of preaching (irrespective of whether the preaching was actually biblically or situationally appropriate or not). They love to see someone else expressing publically the kind of conviction they can only muster in private conversation.

The second kind is where the preacher pins the congregation up against the wall and beats them. Strangely some people seem oddly untouched by this, as if all the conviction is really directed at everyone else. The self-justifying person is untouched by the tirade, but they are so gratified to know that everyone else is getting what they need to hear. It is sort of a vicarious conviction where the self-justifying listener is thrilled to think that others are hearing something so challenging. They love to think others are being rebuked, blind to their own shortcomings, and tone deaf to the grace that is inherent in a gospel coming from the God of the Bible (or lacking in the tirade from the front).