Christianity

Expository Preaching Is a Matter of Life and Death!

/ Peter Mead / 9 Comments

I’ve picked up Albert Mohler’s book He is Not Silent again.  In chapter 3 he addresses the issue of defining expository preaching.  He urges us to drop the language of “I prefer expository preaching” in favor of defining true exposition, which is true preaching.  Mohler has major concerns with the contemporary emphasis on topical and narrative preaching, and urges the reader to understand true preaching as simply the reading and explanation of a biblical text. 

(I would agree with Mohler’s concern, but wish to add a couple of qualifiers.  I would suggest that true exposition must go beyond reading and explaining a text – a very mind-focused concern.  Thus preaching is not only to say what the text says, but to appropriately do what the text does, too.  Furthermore I would also suggest it is possible to learn much from the narrative preaching camp, as long as you think through what it means to be expository in your philosophy of preaching.  And it is wrong to tar all topical preaching with the same brush…there is a place for periodic expository-topical sermons.)

Mohler goes on to state that where there is a decline in expository preaching, there is first an abandonment of the conviction that the coming of the Word of the Lord is a matter of life and death.  Earthing his thoughts in Deuteronomy 4:32-40, Mohler offers three points for the development of both a theology of and a passion for, expository preaching.  First, the only true and living God is the God who speaks (present tense – He speaks today through His Word preached.)  Second, God’s true people are those who hear God speaking to them.  Third, God’s people depend for their very lives on hearing His Word.  Thus, preaching is always a matter of life and death!

Pastoral Periphery?

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Martyn Lloyd-Jones held preaching to be the highest calling.  Many pastors and church leaders consider it the central calling in their ever increasing list of tasks.  In reality preaching is only ever one part of a bigger package.  There may also be counsellor, crisis-management, events organizer, team coordinator, small group leader, tension diffuser, visionary leader, committee chair, leadership liaison, building project coordinator, public relations officer, and on it goes.

I’m not affirming or even condoning how much some church leaders have on their plate, but I do recognize it.  Monday morning may be a good time to reflect on the non-preaching aspects of the ministry coming up in the days and weeks ahead.  For those with a passion to preach there may be a tendency to neglect other aspects of our ministry and move from yesterday’s message(s) to next Sunday’s.  Perhaps our preaching could be strengthened by prayerful consideration of the other aspects of church life (not just the task lists, but especially the people involved).  Take some time to pray for others in the church and pray through what you know to be their concerns and priorities as they look at the ministry of the church.

As well as taking a break from preaching preparation, this will give greater sensitivity to the priorities God has given to others.  The benefits of the rest and the awareness, will also help your preaching too, so in a sense you’re still pursuing your “high calling!”

Definitions

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Definitions matter.  They matter theologically.  They matter personally.  They matter in preaching.  I’m not talking about the definition of preaching – although that is a fine word to wrestle with!  I’m talking about the basic building blocks of the faith.

As preachers we need to think about the definitions of words and often we need to give the definitions of words.  What is faith?  What is hope?  What is love?  What is sin?  What is grace?  What is salvation?

Never assume that a definition is obvious.  You may have had a standard definition in mind for years, but don’t assume it is accurate.  Since the defining of key terms is fundamental to understanding, we must poke and prod our definitions.

Is faith believing a creedal statement to be true?  Is hope anticipation of the unseen?  Is love an act of the will for the good of another?  Is sin lawbreaking?  Is grace “God’s riches at Christ’s expense”?  Is salvation being justified before God?

I hope we would like to add nuance or completely redefine these definitions.  I suggest many in our churches either have no definition or these typically limited definitions in their thinking.  If we as preachers don’t help people with the basic definition work of core theology – who will?

True Topical Takes Time

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Some churches apparently have “topical sermons” every week.  Apparently some preachers think they are easier to prepare and easier to listen to.  Yes and no. A topical message is easier to prepare if you are simply wanting to say your own thing and bounce off a couple of verses along the way.  A topical message is easier to listen to if people have a taste for anecdotal soundbites.  However, true topical preaching, what you might call expository-topical preaching, this takes time.

(Incidentally, people may have a taste for lite-topical preaching, but often this is only because they’ve not heard decent expository preachng.  It’s never a fair contest to pit engaging topical messages by good communicators against dry and tedious lectures falsely placed under the label of “expository preaching.”)

By topical preaching, I mean preaching that is not initially birthed out of a passage or passages, but rather birthed out of the concept or title.  A good expository-topical approach will then select appropriate passages and do the exegetical work in those passages so that the part of the message coming from that passage actually comes from that passage.  Hence expository-topical.  Rather than using or abusing a bit of a text to say what I want to say, the onus is on me to let that text really speak for itself.

It may be easy to jump through my five favorite verses and link them together with anecdotes, but genuine expository-topical preaching requires me to wrestle with each passage chosen, in context, so that the text itself is boss over that part of the message.  True topical takes time.

I’m not of the opinion that every message should be from a single passage (I do think that is a healthy staple diet approach).  This week I finish a mini-series on the ‘christian virtues’ of faith, hope and love.  A broad title like “Love” takes time.  Time to select which of the hundreds of passages to use.  Time to understand them and develop a coherent message.  Time to cut out and drop material that could so easily fill a series on the subject.  If the subject were not so thrilling, I’d be tempted to say that I’m looking forward to preparing a non-topical message again next week!

Non-Sermon Specific Feedback

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

It is healthy and helpful to get feedback on your preaching.  Sometimes you might pursue this by asking several people to fill out an evaluation of a sermon preached.  Perhaps you ask for specific feedback on handling of the text, or aspects of delivery that you are working on, etc.  Another approach is to form a group for feedback and have someone lead the group as they discuss the message and the preaching together.  Other times it is very effective to watch yourself on video (and see the things people don’t want to mention to you).  But here’s another approach to add to the feedback quiver.

It may be helpful to ask a handful of people for their reflections on your preaching in general.  Perhaps do this after not preaching for a week or two (if you never get a Sunday off, pray about whether that is healthy for you or the church).  Ask people to give their general impression of your preaching.  You could ask specific questions in respect to handling the text, communicating clearly, relevance of the messages, etc. Or you could simply ask for a one or two sentence description of your preaching ministry, along with your top two or three strengths and two or three areas to focus on for improvement.  It might be interesting to see what people say – especially if there is overlap between the comments made.

Sometimes we get feedback on a specific sermon and “preach out of our skin” on that Sunday.  Now and then it might prove helpful to get a more general impression from some listeners.

Excitement Is Both Taught and Caught

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There are many exciting parts of the Bible.  Last night I was leading a seminar and we thought briefly about the story of Acts.  That’s exciting.  The problem we have, though, is decades of familiarity combined with a stoic tendency in traditional church settings.  Many of us have heard the stories since childhood, and sadly, many times we’ve heard the stories recounted and dissected without any enthusiasm.  Now the goal of preaching is not to whip up excitement as if that were an end in itself.  However, to faithfully preach exciting elements of the Bible requires us to think about how the tone and import of the passage can be communicated (as well as the truth therein).

Excitement needs to be “taught” – it is not enough to simply ooze enthusiasm and keep telling people “this is really exciting!”  It doesn’t work.  They need to understand it for themselves.  They will appreciate enthusiasm from the front, it might make a refreshing change, however, without understanding it they cannot genuinely enter into it.

Excitement needs to be “felt” – simply understanding the facts about the text is not enough.  Our goal as preachers is not just to say what the text says, but to appropriately do what the text does.  This means with a narrative, for instance, listeners need to not just know the story, but they need to be helped to see, hear, smell, taste, touch . . . feel the story.

Excitement needs to be “caught” – while enthusiasm alone can be quite annoying, it is necessary.  As people are helped to both feel and understand the emotion present in a text, we as preachers need to enter into that emotion in an appropriate but contagious way.  If the passage is filled with joyful excitement, but we seem depressed and bored, something is wrong.  If the passage is filled with awe and wonder, yet we are communicating as if it is “oh so normal” – we have a problem.

It’s all about congruence really.  The accuracy of our words, the effectiveness of our description, the evidence of our emotion – these all need to work together if the excitement, or wonder, or compassion, or righteous indignation, or joy of the text is to be effectively communicated.

Where Is The Burden of Authority?

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

When we are preparing a message there are many ingredients.  Biblical explanation, various forms of illustrative support materials, a variety of means of communicating application, etc.  A question worth asking ourselves is “where is the burden of the authority in this message?”  By this I mean, what part of the message carries the authority of the message?  There are, again, various message components that can carry the authority.  These are all possible, but are not equal:

Authority Through Illustration – While most preachers will claim that the authority lies in the Biblical text, some will put the burden on an illustration that “drives home” the message.  This can be particularly effective if the illustration is especially touching, moving or exciting.  It can stir people who may yawn at the same old biblical content, but sit on the edge of their seats for the sensational story or anecdote.  But think carefully, while a powerful illustration may be helpful, are you putting too much weight on it?  What if the report you read of the revival in such and such a place turns out to be fraudulent or exaggerated?  What if the story so overwhelms the message that listeners lose the Bible bit in the flashing brilliance of the illustration?  In the end, what authority is there in that moving story?  What if a false teacher down the road had a more moving or more exciting story, would people be right to follow them instead of your Jesus?

There’s a weightier version of the same:

Authority Through Personal Experience – There is certainly great need for genuine testimony, both as an evangelistic methodology, and as sermonic support material.  However, we need to be very careful not to shift the burden of authority from the Word of God to the experience of me.  It can be a hard balance to find.  After all, you’ve experienced the power of this teaching in a contemporary situation.  People can be encouraged to know that this truth still works today.  Just look at what happened during my ministry in such and such a place.  Careful.  Be very careful.  The added weight of the personal experience can make such an illustration carry too much responsibility in the message.  It is certainly not wrong to use personal experience in preaching, I encourage it.  But I encourage it with a caution – don’t shift the authority from God’s Word to your own word.

Let’s prayerfully strive to never take away from the Word of God the authority for the message, either deliberately, or by accident.

Reflect, Record, Relax, Renew

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Monday morning.  For preachers it’s the day after Sunday (I suppose that’s true for others too?)  Whether you are privileged to be in a paid ministry position, or privileged to have “normal” employment, Monday is an important time for a preacher.  My suggestion:

Reflect – Take a few minutes at some point to prayerfully reflect on yesterday’s preaching.  Whether you were the preacher, or a listener, or both (ie. two services), it is good to reflect on yesterday’s preaching.  My mind goes back to the three questions I’ve heard and used so many times in training sessions – (1) What did the preacher do well?  (2) What was the preacher’s main idea?  And finally (3), what one thing would you suggest the preacher could do to improve that message?

Record – How many helpful insights have been lost over the years like small toy cars under furniture?  It’s easy to relish them, then fail to hang on to them and they are gone.  I need to make a note of how well Josh did that first-person as Jude writing, um, Jude, sitting at the desk to write with the words appearing on the screen via simple but effective powerpoint, then standing to explain his thinking before sitting to write some more.  I need to make a note of how I failed to overtly link my message to the particular situation of that local church, but only spoke in broader terms of “the church” when “this church” would have hit home more directly.  I need to record those thoughts somewhere . . .

Relax – Unless you’re very diligent about Monday being a day off, this may not seem possible.  But in one sense, it is.  For those of us not in other employment, Monday can be a day to genuinely relax, or at least to deal with other matters – administrative, email, desk clearing kind of work.  For those who go from the frantic nature of Sunday to the hectic nature of Monday in the office (or on the site, etc.), it is still worth taking a mental break from the pressure of sermon preparation.  Don’t immediately get the adrenaline flowing by wrestling with the big idea of your next message.  Mentally, emotionally, even physically, we need to release that pressure and relax, even if only for a day.

Renew – Before diving back into sermon preparation, make it a goal to consciously renew spiritually.  Look to the Lord, dwell in His love, abide in Him, wait on Him, walk in step with the Spirit, etc.  Make it so the next sermon prep is not about getting things going spiritually again (that’s a sign of real spiritual peril), but rather make the next sermon prep an overflow of a close spiritual walk that births a fire in your spirit.

Mondays matter.  Have a good one.

Intersecting “Life Experiences” – 3

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Just a few practical thoughts on the issue of finding and using “illustrations” in preaching:

Bring Description to Life, Not Just Application –Listeners will tell you that you have great illustrations in your preaching, even if you technically have none.  If you are effective in your description of the narrative, the life situation of the author, the image conveyed in the poetry, etc., then listeners will often feel as though you used what they might call an “illustration.”  For more on this, click here.

Don’t Always Aim for the Ultimate Knockout Illustration – Sometimes we get intimidated by a message we hear, or by the pressure we put on ourselves, and we set the “illustrative bar” too high.  You know what I mean, the one that is deeply personal, moving, compelling, tension-filled, intersecting with every point of the message, etc.  Now and then you may have a humdinger of an illustration when you preach.  It’s nice when you get them, but often it will be the passing comments or observations that demonstrate you are a real person rather than a poor history lecturer.   Often the “choosing the wrong line in the supermarket” illustration is more effective than the “my death-defying fall from a cliff in a car” illustration (which will almost certainly overwhelm the text and the main idea of the message – warning!)  People live normal lives in a normal world with normal issues, so don’t feel like every illustration needs to be supra-normal or extraordinary.  Normal is usually ideal!

Describe Application Encouragingly – Don’t waste energy hunting down an obscure, witty, intriguing interchange from Elizabethan parliamentary discourse.  Much better to focus your energy on describing what it will look like to apply what you are preaching.  How might someone react in the days ahead in light of this passage?  What will faith look like when worst fears are confirmed, or when unexpected crises hits?  What does living in the light of that truth about God mean for normal life?  Describe listeners applying the truth, the instruction, the change of attitude, the deeper intimacy with God, etc., describe them applying it and encourage them with that “illustration.”

One last one, unless you’d like to add other ideas:

Create a Filing System, and Use It – Basic, but most of us don’t do this and should.  Make good notes of potential illustrative material, observations, quotes, comments, incidents, clippings, etc.  Then file them.  Perhaps in a searchable Word document with key words next to each entry.  Then use the file.  Something from life experience this week will probably not fit with the message for this Sunday . . . but in three weeks time, it may be perfect.  Now where was that quote again?

Intersecting “Life Experiences” – 2

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Continuing on from yesterday’s post.  How can we who struggle with generating “illustrative” materials do better in this regard (to keep preaching from being historical lecture)?

Prepare Messages with Personal Sensitivity – As you prepare a message, look at your own life.  Where do you see the sin, the struggles, the doubts, the hopes, the joys, etc. in your own life, in your own heart? In the past there was an emphasis on trying to keep yourself out of the sermon.  I suppose the prayer we sometimes hear, “May the people not see me, but Jesus.”  Very well intentioned, but people are seeing you, and hopefully more.  Preaching is, by the Brooks’ definition: truth through personality.  All that to say, without being a superstar or a buffoon, let listeners see you as a real, genuine, authentic and appropriately vulnerable communicator.  This means being sensitive to how the text works in your life, before preaching it for the sake of other lives.

Prepare Messages with Congregation Sensitivity – The better you know the people you are preaching to, the easier it is to intersect biblical truth with present experience.  This doesn’t mean preaching a message at someone in particular, nor divulging confidences, or causing embarressment in illustration specificity.  However, your listeners are not the same as mine.  Tim Keller’s crowd is not the same as Andy Stanley’s.  Preaching usually calls us to pastoral care of our listeners, which means knowing what their life is like.  Being a student of people needs to combine with being a student of the text in order to preach effectively.  This does not require us to make every Biblical text into a mundane how-to list, but rather to help humans love, know and respond to a God who chooses to engage with us.  (If you are new to the site, I’d encourage you to click on Audience Analysis in the categories menu to the right and see previous posts related to really knowing to whom we preach.)

Rather than looking through endless lists of “potential illustrations” in books or online, we have very fertile ground in our own lives and in the lives of our listeners.  We should being looking there with real sensitivity in order to find the points of intersection that will help give our messages a contemporary and relevant feel.

More practical thoughts tomorrow, but feel free to add your thoughts . . .