Effective Bible Teaching 2 – History

May 23, 2012May 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I nudged us to remember the importance of geography in our Bible teaching. As John Smith put it, history without geography wandereth as a vagrant without certain habitation. But it goes the other way too, geography without history seemeth a carcus without motion.

Our God is a God who not only created everything, including time, but He also has stepped down into this world, and into time. So, history:

Epochs and Eras – It is hard to fathom what the antediluvian world was like, it certainly wasn’t the same as after the flood. Travel for Abram was certainly different than the travel experience of Paul. Out of the swirling nations of the ancient world God called one man and began a story that has woven its way down through numerous epochs and era. The Patriarchs and the pyramids. The golden age of David and Solomon, finally a time of peace before the relentless march of empire upon empire. The age of human philosophy and wisdom yielding nothing but a blank page in our Bibles. The Greek culture and language outlasting the empire and sophisticating the Roman war machine. Roads built for enforced peace then used to transport a message of true hope and peace. And throughout it all, hints and promises and prophecies of a kingdom coming one day that will fill the whole earth.

The Great and the Small – The Bible is a masterpiece of the great and the small. The mightiest men on earth. Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, both relying on foreign nobodies to explain their terrifying dreams. Alexander the Great…unmentioned. The great Caesars of Rome playing a very minor support role in the great drama of the coming of the greatest of all, born in the most common of places, dying the most ignominious death, and turning the world upside-down. Yet it is not just the Great-Seen-As-Small, although He is the focus of it all. There are so many small people playing their part in the narrative of God’s great plan – from the small brother with big dreams, to the youngest of eight with his harp, to the teens taken to Babylon, to a shepherd of Tekoa, a young man fleeing naked and another falling sleepily to his temporary death.

Power and Politics – The story advances through time with perpetual shifts in power. Each power figure thinking they are the ultimate and discovering they are not. The hard-hearted king with his great nation seemingly under attack by its own gods, yet all at the hand of the One true God. The arrogant-mouthed conqueror sent home in disgrace and killed by his sons. The proud-hearted emperor turned into a beast of the field until he acknowledged who is really in charge. The partying-victor brought to fearful humiliation by a finger writing on the wall. The conflicted parties of a council with restricted powers stirred to rage by a carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth, who confounded the governor with real power in the region, while ignoring the entertainment-oriented “king” given his audience with a true King. History seems to be a tale of waxing and waning powers, but actually it is the story of the only true power, thankfully with a truly trustworthy heart.

History and Geography, partners in powerful biblical teaching.

Authority and Clarity

April 24, 2012April 23, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Two sibling doctrines. One gets all the attention. The other goes unmentioned. Actually, one is the darling of preachers. The other might well think we are out to get it.

Authority and clarity.

These two doctrines matter. Authority speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how His Word got to us. It speaks of why we must hear it and apply it.

Clarity speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how well His Word got to us. It speaks of how we can grasp it and apply it.

Some speakers overtly present the process by which the Bible got into our hands: how God was involved in revelation, inspiration, transmission, canonization and even in translation. Other speakers don’t get into specifics, but they keep on affirming that this is the Word of God.

Few speakers overtly present the clarity of Scripture: how God has communicated so well that His great book is able to be understood through diligent observation and interpretation, with prayerful reliance on His Spirit for illumination. Many speakers don’t get into clarity at all, if anything, they keep on giving the impression that God’s Word is out of reach to the average person.

That is the issue. While authority gets regular affirmation in the church, clarity is not only oft-ignored, but also oft-undermined. How so?

How easy it is to give the impression that people need the preacher in order to make sense of the Scriptures. How easy to undermine the listeners’ confidence that they have the necessary competence for reading and understanding the Bible.

I’m sorry to suggest this, but we need to ponder this issue: too many of us undermine the confidence of our listeners to take up and read. Tolle lege, if you will. Uh, I just demonstrated one way to do it…there’s nothing like an ancient language quotation to make normal people feel inadequate. But I didn’t mean that. Exactly. That’s how it happens.

Here’s the bottom line for today. The clarity of Scripture and our preaching. It is not about whether our sermons are clear or not (let’s hope they are). The issue is whether our listeners perceive themselves to be competent to pick up their Bibles and read.

That is a big part of our task. That is why I think Clarity deserves a break.

Don’t Burn Up Your Creativity Too Soon

April 20, 2012April 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching is both art and science. It involves a certain amount of creative artistry. But most of us have a limited tank of energy when it comes to creative flair. Don’t waste it.

Don’t waste your creative energies when you are studying the passage. This is the time for your adventurous explorer energy to come out as you travel in foreign, ancient and sometimes dangerous lands. This is where you need the determination of an archeologist, digging into the historical documentation of the text. This is where you live out your suppressed inner-detective, following clues, asking probing questions, persisting until you get to the truth.

Passage study is not the time for creativity, it is the time for persistence, for diligence, for probing, inquiring, questioning, for travel through time, for cultural encounters of the ancient kind, for passionate prayer that God will do a work in you as you work in His Word.

Creativity in the passage study phase of your preparation may lead you astray. Even though some in your congregation may marvel at your creative new interpretations of Bible texts, what they actually need is the true interpretation of the text. If you are the first to come up with something in a passage, maybe its time for alarm bells to ring, rather than a time for celebration.

Save your creative energies for the message formation phase of the process. This is where many a preacher has collapsed, fatigued from their creative expending of energy in the interpretation phase, desperate to pull a message together from the study notes in time for Sunday morning. What tends to follow is a re-hash of the same old sermon form, shape, structure and strategy. It feels tired, and what’s worse, the content isn’t great either because of energies expended on “new” interpretation!

As you collapse into your favourite armchair after the adventure of studying, digging, travelling, interrogating and praying your way through the text, you will be both tired and thrilled at the journey you’ve been on. Tired because it is hard work to exegete well, but thrilled because of the God who has travelled with you, revealed Himself to you, and worked already in you.

And a change is as good as a rest, so as you sit back in your armchair before the fire let your prayers and thoughts meander through the possibilities available as you plot your message strategy. Pray for the people, consider the possibilities, get creative. You’ve got a message worth preaching from the text, now’s the time to pour out your energy into making it a sermon worth hearing. Be a shame to waste that energy too soon!

Profound Explanation

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday we pondered some aspects of profundity in preparation for preaching. Today let’s probe a little more on the issue of profundity in explaining a biblical text. Almost every preacher does some sort of explanation of a text, but what makes for a high enrichment without unnecessary obfuscation, uh, unnecessarily complicating it or overwhelming listeners?

5. Help listeners feel the original situation, don’t just bring imperatives over to today. To be a bit more specific, help listeners feel the original relational situation. If they can enter into the felt intent of the author, then the force of the text will be more effectively communicated. The writer didn’t typically write to simply convey information – discourse intended to move, narrative intended to engage, poetry intended to stir. As much as people claim to like straight application or direct commands, the truth is that application will always be more effective when the authority of the text is felt in its context.

6. Be theologically enriched, but don’t impose your theology. Walter Kaiser speaks of an informing theology that is flowing into a passage – it might be the backdrop of the Fall, the plan of the promise, the history of the nation, etc. Don’t treat a passage as if it were a standalone story in a sterile vacuum, but don’t trample all over it with your theological system either. Be sensitive to the hints in the text, to the passage in its context, and in its place in the greater story.

7. Select the pertinent elements of explanation, don’t be exhaustive. It is tempting to want to show all the study that has gone into the message, to cite all the commentaries, to note all the interesting anomalies in the syntax or the cross-references in your Thompson Chain Reference. Think through how much explanation is really necessary and genuinely helpful. Be targeted and purposeful. Omit anything that isn’t genuinely helpful. Better to give just enough explanation and leave space for application and relevance throughout the message, rather than over-packing the explanation and making it too dense, too broad or too irrelevant.

8. Seek to plumb the text, don’t just harvest imperatives. I see this a lot with preachers in the epistles. Rather than offering the uniquely inspired content of a passage, they make it feel much like any other and simply present what we must do. But that is like judging a person by their shoes and wristwatch – why not get to know them as a whole person? Get to know the passage, its flow, its logic, its relational framing, its purpose, its mood, its tone, its strategy. Then preach the imperatives as part of the whole.

Tomorrow we’ll move onto aspects of profound application.

Saturday Short Thought: Bible Story Both/And

February 25, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So looking back on three weeks of posts about preaching Bible story…there’s so much more to be said! Let me offer one more thought before I turn my attention elsewhere.

There is a tension between historical accuracy and literary artistry.

Some preachers are so concerned with historical accuracy that they are blind to the literary artistry. Every narrative offers nothing more than a chance to probe the historical accuracy issues, an apologetic opportunity to reinforce our confidence in the biblical text.

Some preachers are so concerned with literary artistry that they seem unwilling to accept the possibility of historical accuracy. Every narrative is so well written that it must therefore be playing fast and loose with the facts. The listeners are impressed with the skill of the writer, but left with the distaste of deliberately fictitious presentation.

We don’t need to fall into one camp or the other. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

I believe we should be alert to all the evidence of historical accuracy, both within the text, and in biblical archeology, etc. Let’s build the confidence of our listeners in the veracity of the biblical accounts. Let’s not act as judge and jury over whether Jesus actually said this or did that.

At the same time as holding to the accuracy of the Word, we need to honour both the human author and the inspiring Spirit of God in recognizing the masterful communication that is the Bible. It is brilliantly written. We don’t have to lose one to affirm the other.

Let’s preach in such a way as to build confidence in both the accuracy and the artistry of the text. It is true and it is effective, for the God who inspired it is a God of truth, and a God of great communication!

Narrative as Super-Genre?

February 24, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

While we tend to think in terms of seven biblical genres, I find it helpful to recognize three types of literature – narrative, poetry and discourse. These types occur proportionately in that order. Narrative is the most common, discourse the least.

In simplistic terms narrative consists of people in plots, poetry consists of parallelism and imagery, and discourse consists of direct speech or correspondence.

For the past weeks I’ve been bouncing around the field of preaching narratives, which I hope has been helpful. But here’s a thought with which I’ll finish this extended series. Maybe narrative should be considered a super-genre.

That is to say, the core features of narrative are not completely absent from the other types of literature. Let’s say the core features include the development and resolution of tension in the situation of characters. There are people with a problem in a plot.

What do we have with poetry? Often we have a person reacting to life in the form of poetic writing. If they are reacting to the threat of enemies, then we might find a psalm of lament. If they have been delivered and are looking back on the experience, then we might have a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Poem’s often function as a snapshot into the response of an individual to the narrative of life lived in a fallen world, in response to our good God. Most poems are not narratival or complete in terms of plot line. But often poems are glimpses into the narratival nature of life’s experience.

What do we have with discourse? Often we have a person addressing others who are facing the realities of life. In the midst of a problem we might find the text offers guidance or encouragement. In the aftermath of a problem we might find gratitude and thanksgiving. Since no individual or church is ever beyond problems in this life, typically we will find the discourse to be engaging the realities of these tensions in some form. Discourse rarely reflects a complete plot (except in review), but it does give a snapshot into an ongoing narrative. Discourse offers a glimpse into the narratival nature of life for a person, nation or church.

We could go through the genres and see the narratival features of prophecy, apocalyptic, wisdom writings, etc. Space does not permit, this post needs a conclusion:

So what? Well, as preachers, this is important to recognize. This means that we can bring some of the skills needed for effective preaching of story over to the other two types of biblical literature. We don’t preach poetry or discourse as pure narrative. But we miss an opportunity if we preach either as if there is nothing narratival about it.

Our listeners are also mid-story in the narrative of life. They also struggle with the incomplete experience of tensions as yet unresolved. Perhaps a narratival engagement with the emotion of poetry, or the wisdom of discourse, might prove invaluable.

Our listeners are living life in narrative. There’s a reason that story engages listeners. Let’s not miss opportunities to engage present story with biblical story, whether that be a full-blown narrative, or the snapshot offered in poetry or discourse.

This is why I consider narrative to be a “super-genre.”

Lessons from Bible Storying

February 23, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In Cor Deo we have been enjoying the benefits of an approach to engaging biblical story known as “storying.” Coming from the study of oral cultures and the field of orality, storying is a mine of ministerial potential currently somewhat restricted to missiologists in non-literate cultures.

Forgive my brevity in description, but storying involves bringing a group of people into the experience of a story through the process of telling the story and having them re-tell it so as to enter in to it. In our setting we have found the Cor Deo participants discovering the interpretational value of extended exposure through the re-telling process. We hear it, re-tell it, critique and correct together, then repeat the process.

What does this have to do with preaching? Well, for one thing, it re-affirms the challenge we have when we seek to communicate a story to listeners and we only tell it once. A cursory overview of a story is simply not enough. People may get the bare bones, but storying tells us that a group needs greater exposure to a story before they are engaging it fully. As preachers we may not be able to go through the group interaction of re-telling story, but we must tell story well enough, in sufficient detail, with enough time, so that listeners have a hope of the story forming in their hearts.

But maybe there’s more than a subtle reinforcement of my “please tell the story and tell it well” theme. Perhaps we need to consider how to help listeners inhabit the experience of a specific character? Perhaps one idea might be to re-tell a story within a sermon, inviting listeners to imagine the events from a different perspective. Perhaps there is potential in this idea of re-telling stories within a sermon. Perhaps there is scope for listeners being less passive in the re-telling process, even within a sermon.

You might enjoy chasing the various approaches to storying and orality-based ministries – not only as a prompt to prayer for the pioneer mission fields, not even just as a source of potential ministry ideas for outreach to certain subcultures on the fringe of your church, but also as a potential nuancing of approach and nudging toward creative effectiveness in your own preaching of narratives in the church.

Preaching Story: The Challenge of Acts

February 22, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching the narratives of Acts? I think so, but it’s a book I love to preach from. Let me offer a few points to ponder:

1. Acts is not all action. Every biblical narrative tends to lean heavily on dialogue as a key feature in the inspired telling of the story. Ancient texts were often punctuated with the pause presented by means of speeches. To see Acts in all its glory, it is vital to see how the speeches are not a pause in the action, often they are the action. So let’s not skip Stephen’s great speech with a little summary statement in order to get to the stoning, let’s be sure to help listeners experience the power of his impressively targeted speech!

2. Acts is not mere history. It isn’t uncommon to find folks who view the epistles as the source of our theology, but see Acts only as a record of what occurred in the early days. Please don’t suggest such a notion in the presence of a Luke-Acts scholar! Acts is absolutely theological, it is just that Luke was inspired to write his theology in the form of narrative with speeches, rather than discourse in letters. Actually, I suppose Acts has the “discourse” feature of being addressed to someone – sort of an epistle with extended narratival content!

3. Acts is not all history. Some elements of the early history of the church are unique. The challenge for the preacher is to discern and then demonstrate the value of preaching non-normative history. We don’t tend to be pressured by the problem of replacing a dead apostle. We don’t need another Pentecost, whatever the hymn says. I presume your church doesn’t typically experience an Ananias/Sapphira church discipline model. I suspect the apostles aren’t still looking for a specific evidence of Gentile inclusion in the church, etc. We have to prayerfully ponder how to preach the non-normative elements of Acts with relevance to our listeners.

4. Acts is all applicable. So how do we preach Acts relevantly? And how do we avoid using Acts labels for contemporary experiences that may or may not be the same thing? How do we stir an excitement for the thrilling reality that is the church, without creating deep disenchantment with the myriad of ways in which our experience differs from theirs?

Acts is a phenomenal piece of inspired writing, and one I love to preach from, but it isn’t always easy. Let’s be bold in deciding to preach Acts, and extremely sensitive in how we interpret and apply it for the maximum benefit of our listeners. They need us to preach it, and to preach it well.

Preaching Story: The Challenge of the Gospels

February 21, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Gospel narratives? I believe there are, both in terms of the parables, and in terms of the accounts from the life of Christ. Some points to ponder:

1. We are dealing with two “authors” when we preach from the Gospels. We have Jesus telling the story to a specific audience in about AD30. Then we have the inspired account from Luke or Matthew, etc., some decades later, potentially to a very different audience, and most likely in a different language! The focus of the inspired writer is on the authorial intent of Jesus, so rightly we focus there. But we must see that the writers were inspired to weave together these narratives so that in their arrangement there is meaning conveyed. We need to keep both authors in view.

2. Sometimes we are dealing with more than one account of the same parable or life event. If we don’t compare the accounts we may preach our specific text with inaccurate detail. For instance, caught up in the presentation of the feeding of the 5000 we might get carried away with their plight and describe the terrain as arid or dry (and then have some avid listener point out that the grass they sat on was green from Mark’s rendition). This detail in Mark is not incidental. It fits with the emphasis Mark is conveying, but is irrelevant to the other gospel writers. Be sure to check the others for accuracy.

3. The different accounts offer us more than accurate harmonization. Checking two accounts will allow us to be more accurate in our telling of the story. But more than that, careful comparison will enable us to spot the emphasis in our specific text. What did our specific Gospel writer want to convey? The details included and omitted will help us to determine this (as well as context, flow of narratives, etc.)

4. The different accounts may tempt us to preach the harmonization. Generally I don’t think this is a good idea. Our goal is not to make a composite sketch from apparently inadequate eye-witnesses in order to try and come close to the reality of the event itself (I do not believe they were inadequate at all). Our goal is to faithfully preach the inspired text of a specific writer. There is value in harmonizing, but the goal is to preach the text, for that is what is inspired.

Gospel stories, both life events and parables, can offer challenges to the preacher. But they are so wonderful, I hope I don’t even need to encourage you to preach them, and to preach them as well as you can.

Preaching Story: The Challenges of the Old Testament

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 11 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Old Testament narratives? I think there are a few points worth pondering here:

1. Typically we have less familiarity with the broader flow of the Old Testament and may be tempted to only preach the familiar handful of Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Goliath, Jonah, Daniel narratives. Take a look at some of the lesser known stories. I am willing to guarantee that if you study an obscure story you’ll want to preach it. More than that, if you really wrestle with it in its context, then you’ll probably preach it well!

2. Not only do we have less familiarity with the Old Testament world, but so do our listeners. This means being sure to take some time to orient them to cultural features of the world in which the story is set. For example, we have to help listeners understand what it was like to live in the world of the ancient near east, where the plurality of the gods of the nations made every battle into a playground tiff among the gods (and what it meant therefore to be defeated by a foreign power, and worse, exiled by them).

Typically I think a lot of the challenges here are in respect to two issues:

3. Recognizing the elements of continuity. Even in a radically different world, we can resonate with ancient biblical narratives because human nature doesn’t change, and neither does God’s character. The latter offers another set of issues since many are convinced by the Marcionite confusion that leads to Christians pulling away from the God of the Old Testament. We have to help people see the fullness of who our God is, which isn’t always easy.

4. Recognizing the elements of discontinuity. A lot has changed since back then. For instance, their hoped for deliverer has now been and gone, more than that, he went to the cross, rose again, sent his Spirit, is building his church, etc. So we have to figure out how to preach the text so that we see it in its fullness back then, as well as in its fullness for us today.

Old Testament narratives aren’t always easy, but they are so worth it. Let’s not reduce them to illustrations or children’s talks, but preach them as well as we can!