Homiletics

Macro Framing

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As a preacher it is important to know the big shape of the book you are preaching.  It is also important to communicate it.  Too many Christians see the books of the Bible as a random assortment of random  chunks.  Our preaching should not exacerbate that lack of macro awareness.  While preaching a passage it is helpful for our listeners to hear how this piece fits in the whole message of the book.

We won’t agree on every attempt to “macro frame” a Bible book, but we should agree that people need to recognize the unity and flow of the books.

The first three chapters of Ephesians describe the calling of believers as church – a body united in Christ Jesus.  Then from 4:1 on the book is concerned with the conduct of believers as church – a body living out its unity in Christ Jesus.  Calling: Conduct.  Overly simplistic?  Maybe, but better than only having random details or a couple of favorite verses.

What about Mark’s gospel?  Two big questions.  Who is Jesus and what does it mean to follow him?  In 1:1 the reader is told who He is (Christ, the Son of God), but the characters in the narrative take a long time to get there.  The hinge of the book is in the middle of chapter 8, where Peter makes his “you are the Christ,” confession, only to then put his foot in it by rebuking Jesus for introducing crucifixion talk.  But the reality is that a Christ who is simply miracle-working man of power is an incomplete Christ.  You can’t have the Christ without the cross.  So in the next chapters Jesus keeps explaining and predicting the cross.  He came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  The followers of Jesus are to take up their cross and follow Him.  Do they get it?  When will someone understand?  Perhaps once the Christ dies on the cross, and the climactic statement of the centurion standing close by, “this man was the Son of God.” (1:1; 8:27-34; 15:39).  Mark’s gospel has a profound flow to it, but how will people know this if we don’t let it slip out in our preaching?

Romans seems to move through four chunks of thought – Our problem (we lack God’s righteousness – 1:18-3:20); God’s provision (he gives us His righteousness – 3:21-8:39); God’s promise (we can trust His promise of righteousness – 9:1-11:36); Our practice (we live out God’s righteousness – 12:1-15:33).  Now I know that this righteousness emphasis doesn’t also point out the other core issues of God’s faithfulness and unity between God’s people that spans the book.  Perhaps we can present differing macro frames of reference for the same book to help people see the big picture?

We’ll leave it there for now, but as preachers, let’s not miss opportunities to help people see where a passage fits in the flow of a book.  Let’s do some macro framing!

Lessons From Mini-Biography – A.W.Tozer

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Periodically I’m picking up 50 People Every Christian Should Know by Warren Wiersbe.  It’s refreshing to get a mini-biography in six or seven pages.  I just read Alva McClain the other day – a man who served faithfully despite ill-health.  Today I’m enjoying the A.W. Tozer entry.  I love this bit:

Tozer walked with God and knew him intimately.  To listen to Tozer preach was as safe as opening the door of a blast furnace!

Tozer wrote with the intent that the reader would yearn to go and learn for themselves, putting down Tozer and picking up Bible.  I long for that as a primary response to my preaching.

Tozer is described as a Christian mystic – a term generally spurned, and usually misunderstood, these days.  However, definitions are everything.  What if being a mystic means what Wiersbe says it meant for Tozer?  Being aware of the spiritual world, seeking to please God, cultivating close relationship with God, and relating that experience to daily life.  What if that were the definition.  Is that true of us?  What if mysticism goes deeper, or is defined differently?  Whatever we do with the term mysticism, we must face this question: is our Christian experience a set of definitions, a list of orthodox doctrines, or a living relationship with God?

Doctrine, devotion, intimacy with God and spiritual service.  Not bad nudges from six brief pages of mini-biography!

Review – Preach By Ear, by Dave McClellan

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

DVD-cover-shot

Dave McClellan is a graduate of Grace College and Denver Seminary, as well as having a PhD in Rhetoric & Communication from Duquesne University. He is the pastor of The Chapel at Tinkers Creek.

What if there were a different way to prepare and to preach? What if we have learned preaching in a primarily literacy-based worldview? What if preaching were really an oral form of communication – not just in delivery, but in every respect? What if there were a genuinely oral homiletic? Preach By Ear leans heavily on Walter Ong’s work in respect to orality and literacy. Since the massive changes wrought by the printing press, we have gained so much. But Dave McClellan suggests we may have lost much as well.

He argues compellingly that preaching is intended to be genuinely from the preacher, rather than an external, arms length, process. Yet the effect of literacy is to separate thought from the person. Hence so much of today’s preaching is prepared via book study that is held at arms length, then delivered leaning on notes that keep the sermon separate from the preacher and completed before the event of delivery. McClellan suggests that while preaching has moved back and forth on the orality-literacy scale through the centuries, the 20th century saw the most extreme move to the literacy end of the scale ever.Homiletics was separated from rhetoric and the approach we are familiar with is not as balanced and effective as we may think it is.

As well as leaning Walter Ong, McClellan also looks to Quintillian for rhetorical input. The DVD’s contain a 7-part series of presentations, with each part ranging from 15-25 minutes in length (the final part – “homework” – is a bit longer).  On the one hand the full series is necessarily brief and lacking in the extra background and footnotes that a book might offer (as well as more worked examples to help the viewer see how Preaching By Ear can be genuinely expositional in practice). On the other hand, the series didn’t need to be any longer (it is up to the viewer to apply the lessons learned in a way that handles the text well).  It achieves its purpose of introducing an alternative approach to preaching and sermon preparation well. It may make you want to pursue aspects of the subject further, or simply start getting experience with this different approach.

This double DVD set is very well produced and enjoyable to watch. While it is not exactly “Hollywood” in production quality, it goes well above and beyond a video of a seminar.  The quality of production is clear in the clips available on the website – see below.  Anyay, in the 7-part series on the DVDs, Dave McClellan lays a foundation for an orality-based approach to preaching and then offers some instruction. The first three parts present the concept of orality and literacy, a theology of orality and a brief (but interesting) history of preaching. The next three parts are concerned with preparing the preacher, preparing the message and delivery. The final part offers a series of practical suggestions to help the viewer become better prepared for genuinely oral preaching.

I would encourage you to get hold of this DVD set and ponder its content. Perhaps you’re already kind of thinking this way. Perhaps you’re at the opposite end of the scale. Wherever you are at in your preaching, I think it would be worth adding Preach By Ear to the mix.

By the way, during July the DVD’s are on sale for 50% of the normal price. To see preview clips and order the DVD set, please go to PreachByEar.Com

We Don’t Need To De-Affect The Text

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

On June 30th I wrote a post on preaching as a matter of life and death.  For that post click here.  In the good discussion that followed I made this comment – God has communicated in His Word (and calls us to preach that Word), in such a way as to move the heart/affections, as well as informing the mind, urging the will and so on. Beyond Bluestockings asked the helpful question – If the moving of hearts and affections is the work of man (the preacher) then the results will surely be temporary?

Such an important question deserves more than a quick answer . . . so hopefully this is helpful:

Thanks for the comment and my apologies for the delay in approving it.  You are right that the moving of hearts and affections is the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we make that our task we can easily fall into manipulation and the achieving of temporary results.  What I am saying is that God’s Word is not simply an information transfer from God’s mind to ours.  Rather, God’s Word is that and so much more.  It was designed and written to move the affections, to captivate the heart, to instill values, to draw people to God, etc.  Since the Bible is not mere information transfer, but carefully written communication that functions on various levels (i.e. through word choices, sentence structure, genre decisions, etc.), our task is to faithfully preach the Bible text as it stands.  That means not flattening it into mere information.  (My parenthetical statement in the previous comment “and calls us to preach that Word” should probably be moved to the end of the sentence for clarity!)

For instance, a Psalm may be highly emotive, full of moving imagery, authorial passion, etc.  If we simply dissect that information and talk about it, then I think we are failing to faithfully represent the text.  Rather we should present the Psalm in such a way that listeners feel the full force of the communication that is there – the images, the emotion, the passion, the truth, etc.  Certainly there is explanation, but also more than that, there is something of experiencing the text as well.  Thus we are to say what it says and appropriately do what it does.  This does not take on the burden of transforming listeners, for that should always remain the work of the Spirit of God.  However, since God is not an “information only” being (as some seem to suggest by denying any genuine affections in God), then there is no reason why we should “de-affect” the text and make it information only.  Did God inspire the information in the Bible, or did His inspiration go much further?  That is, did God inspire every word, every genre choice, every tone, etc.?

I believe our task in preaching is to be genuinely and deeply faithful to the preaching text, “re-presenting” it to the best of our ability (study ability, message formation ability, delivery ability), while always resting fully on God to achieve any life change in the listeners.

The Hardest Genre? Part 2

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Yesterday we looked at just some of the challenges that come with preaching epistles, gospels and historical narrative. Now for the other four genre. Which do you find the hardest?

Poetry – Psalms and songs are readily leaned on in times of personal trial, but preaching them well is not so easy. The imagery is sometimes alien to us. The forms and structures are unfamiliar. The genre taps into the affections and emotions in a way that can be difficult to communicate. The temptation to dissect and turn the passage into an epistle is very real. As is true with every passage, but especially here, the passage does not give a complete theology of . . . whatever it’s about.

Wisdom – The Hebraic parallelism and other forms of wisdom literature are especially foreign to our ears. The wisdom literature often sits in the context of a covenant system that applied uniquely to Israel in relationship to God, so application can be treacherous territory if we’re not careful. The brevity of statement provides a different challenge than an extended narrative.

Prophecy – Written by a certain kind of person, to a certain people, at a certain time . . . none of which is the same today. It can be really challenging to enter into the historical context of the prophet, and also to enter fully into the written context of the book (where the start and end of each burden/oracle is often hard to discern). While the prophets reveal the heart and plans of God very boldly, there is plenty in form and content that appears obscure to contemporary ears and sensibilities.

Apocalyptic – Biblical apocalyptic is a genre that is challenging to contemporary interpreters. Many seem so quick to dismiss the content by reference to the genre that all meaning is apparently stripped from the texts. Then there is the conflict in the commentaries and even disputes in the pews over issues of eschatology that can quickly zap any zeal to announce an apocalyptic preaching text. As with prophecy, the challenges are there in terms of interpreting in context, and in applying to contemporary listeners.

Personally I would list the hardest for me as: 1 – historical narrative (Old Testament), 2 – wisdom, and 3 – apocalyptic (because of the potential problems from the pew, more than the interpretation of it). What about you? Let’s make sure we’re not avoiding some genre and growing complacent with others.

The Hardest Genre?

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What is the hardest genre to preach well?  Every genre has its own challenges.  Here’s a list of biblical genre with some brief points on why each can be hard to preach well.  I’ll tell you what I find the toughest, but your top three toughies might be different.  Let’s not avoid the ones we find tough, nor grow complacent in the “easier” genres.

Epistle – Many would list this as the easiest genre to preach.  The original audience is closest to ours, the direct communication translates relatively easily into a sermon and application is often straightforward.  The challenge can be over-familiarity and how to preach with a sense of tension or intrigue.

Gospels – Most of the stories are very familiar, but sometimes small details can really pose problems in interpretation.  It is challenging to really see each unit of thought as it fits in the flow of the text.  It isn’t always easy to sift Jesus’ motives in the action and the author’s motives in how the action is presented.  If you are not good at telling a story, then the gospels can be really challenging.

Story (History/Narrative) – Some stories are very familiar, others are borderline bizarre.  As with the gospels it is not always obvious what the author is doing in stringing episodes together.  With Old Testament narratives you also have the challenge of communicating the story with a sense of relevance to today, as well as the burden of appropriate application.  Then there is the difficulty of unknown geography and lack of familiarity with biblical history among our listeners.

Tomorrow we’ll complete the list of the biblical genre.  I’ll list my hardest three, for what it’s worth, and you can comment with yours . . . feel free to add pointers to the challenges you face in any particular genre – this would be helpful for others to ponder too.

Pseudo-Expository Preaching – Part 2

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Yesterday we saw how it is possible to preach a pseudo-expository sermon by failing to live up to all four elements of an expository preaching definition.  We looked at preaching without relying on God’s Spirit (making it a human-powered exercise).  We looked at preaching from a text, but not really preaching the text (a common form of pseudo-expository preaching).  Now for the other two elements:

3 – The issue of effective communication. I suppose this is somewhat subjective, but I would argue that a preacher deliberately not improving in their ability to communicate (perhaps due to a misunderstanding of 1Cor.2:1-5), is undermining their own stewardship of the ministry opportunity.  Furthermore it is worth noting that our communication is not just about logos and pathos during the delivery, but the ethos of the entire life.

4 – The emphasized relevance of the passage. It is not the preacher’s job to “make the text relevant.”  It already is relevant.  But it is our job to underline, to emphasize how it is relevant to the particular listeners before us.  Pseudo-expository preaching that is pseudo because of inadequacy in this respect is easier to spot if you’re looking for it.  The text is explained, but application is ignored.  “Now may the Spirit of God apply to our hearts the truths we have seen in His Word . . . “ that’s a confession of pseudo-expository preaching!  The whole thing is the Spirit’s work, not just this bit.  The issue of relevance and application part of our task as preachers.  We have to be concerned about the text and about the listeners.

I suppose we could deploy a task force of pseudo-expository detectives.  Some pseudo-expository preaching is blatant and as easy to spot as a daylight ram-raid on a high street jewellers.  However, other pseudo-expository preaching would require a team of detectives with forensic back-up (I’m thinking of the “sneak thieves” in that great children’s book, Flat Stanley!)  But it is not our task to deploy task forces of pseudo-expository detectives.  Instead, let’s imagine such a task force visiting us.  What would they find?  Would they unearth some aspect of pseudo-exposition?  Could they, in grace, of course, put their finger on a lack of spirituality, or exegetical rigor, or communicative effort, or concern for listeners in need of biblical encounter with God?

Pseudo-Expository Preaching

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If you have a commitment to expository Biblical preaching as it is understood on this site, then some versions of preaching obviously stand out as poor.  The anecdotal platitudinal rambling with a verse attached won’t fool many of us.  The non-expository topical sermon where verses aren’t handled with care and the Bible isn’t in authority over the message, we can usually spot those too (note that it is possible to preach an expository-topical message, so not all topical is bad!)  But the category I label as pseudo-expository can be much harder to spot.

Pseudo-Expository Preaching defined – Pseudo-exp preaching is where the preacher appears to be preaching the text, but falls short of any of the four elements in an expository preaching definition.  The four elements are (1) the work of the Holy Spirit in preparation and delivery, (2) the true meaning of the passage understood, (3) then effectively communicated through the preacher, (4) emphasizing the relevance of the passage to the listeners present.

1 – The Holy Spirit. True preaching cannot be simply the application of a mechanistic preparation process, or simply the fruit of good learning.  True preaching has to be a work of God.  This is very difficult to genuinely discern in others.  Sometimes you can tell from a preacher’s attitude or lifestyle.  But these can be faked.  Yet if we turn the focus onto ourselves, it becomes a searching question – is your preaching done in your own power, or in prayerful and humble reliance on the empowering of the Spirit of God?

2 – The Bible text rightly understood. Some people will be fooled by preaching that bounces off words in a text to say whatever the preacher wants to say.  But true preaching reflects genuine study and understanding of the text. Genuine study and understanding will not be equally profound in every preacher.  If you feel inadequate in this area, don’t be intimidated and give up.  Keep growing in your study skills and your Bible knowledge.  In respect to the next message, try to stick in your passage and grasp it as effectively as you can.  The basics done well will be a blessing to all.  But if you short-cut by bouncing off words, or using the text to give your own message, then that’s pseudo-expository.

Tomorrow I’ll deal with the other two elements and note how they can be missed to create a pseudo-exp sermon.

Verbal Variations

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We’ve looked at the important issues in voice and non-verbals over recent days.  Both of these have to reinforce and support the work being done by your words when you preach.  But before we move on, just a couple of comments on the verbal aspect of delivery . . . the words you choose to use.  I’ll keep this post brief since the others have been so long!

Your goal is not to impress people with big words. Don’t try to make people think you are clever, or have studied really hard, or are super-spiritual, or super-humble, or funny, or whatever.  Your goal is not to create a specific impression of yourself.  It is tempting to impress, decide not to fall for this.

Your goal is to communicate. So choose words that people can understand.  Explain big Bible words that people need to understand, but explain simply and clearly.  Try to use words that are vivid, not bland.  Describe things well so that you don’t just give infomation or abstraction, but you paint a living picture on the screen in their minds and hearts.  Use words that bring in all the senses.  Be engaging rather than flat.  Be lively rather than ponderous.  Be creative rather than predictable.

Words matter, they matter very much!

Visual Variations – Part 2

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In thinking about the 3 V’s of delivery, we have looked at the voice (vocal) and are in the midst of the visual (non-verbals).  Yesterday we considered the supreme issue of eye-contact (watch a video of yourself if you don’t believe me when I say you probably don’t look at your congregation as much as you think you do!)  We also got into the whole field of gestures.  A couple more non-verbal issues to consider:

Visual delivery issue – facial expression. Basically this needs to vary (rather than get stuck in a perma-grin, or perma-frown).  And it needs to be consistent with what you’re saying.  Joy should show on your face.  So should sorrow or genuine concern or fear or hope or amazement, etc.  Don’t try to become a facial performer, just work to overcome the effect of nerves so the real you can show through (nerves, or unnatural situations -like speaking to a crowd – tend to stultify our expressional freedom).

Visual delivery issue – posture. The goal here is to have a natural, comfortable and confident stance.  If you are able to move, do so confidently and naturally.  Slumped posture, or nervous jolting steps, or hesitant movement, can all undermine your words.  If you are confident in the truth of what you say, you won’t slouch when you say it.

Visual delivery issue – dress. Not a major issue, unless you make it one.  It only makes sense to be well-groomed and appropriately dressed.  Unless it is part of an overarching plan to shift and re-shape the culture of your church, don’t make how you dress an issue.  If you are an infrequent or visiting speaker, never make how you dress an issue.  Dress appropriately for the setting.  Don’t over dress.  Don’t under-dress (in either way you could take that!)  Perhaps a notch or two above the average standard present is appropriate.

Visual delivery issue – proxemics.  This is a big field in its own right, but basically it relates to the issue of space and where the speaker is in relation to the listeners.  Here are a couple of brief posts to look at on this issue –Delivery More Than Words and Proxemic Considerations.

Visual delivery issues need to work together with vocal to support and reinforce the verbal.  If they don’t, they will certainly undermine the verbal.