My Shepherd Today

June 1, 2015May 24, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Our church is in the midst of a season of transition. The team of leaders who committed to starting the church are leading the church through a process of recognizing its long-term leadership as we move forward into the future. Inevitably potential change creates opportunity for uncertainty.

Who should the pastoral leadership be? One fact holds us steady. The chief shepherd of the church is Christ. And he wants to be our shepherd today.

Yet how easily we can view the work of Christ only in past and future terms. In his days on earth we saw the Good Shepherd who would lay down his life for the sheep (John 10). In the future we know that the chief shepherd will appear (1Peter 5). But is Jesus our shepherd today?

The shepherd’s work is to lead the sheep to food, to care for them and protect them from harm. This forms the start of a strong list for church leadership job descriptions – we are to lead, to feed, to care and to protect. Perhaps we should add in “to equip” and we have a good grasp of the roles of church leadership in the New Testament, most of which are shepherding roles.

Jesus is our great shepherd today. He is in charge of building his church. He is the one most concerned to care for the sheep, including you and I. It is a thrilling thought that Jesus desires to feed me, lead me, care for me, protect me, and even equip me, right now!

I was speaking with a friend about a tough time of loss he experienced last year. He looked back on that time and his realization that only Jesus could really shepherd his soul through an intense season of grief and loss.

Perhaps we too easily look elsewhere and don’t spend time leaning into his loving care of our souls. Perhaps some of us are too busy leading others to stop and be quiet long enough to hear his tender care of our hearts.

The Lord is my shepherd, today.

There are other biblical images we could consider in the same way. My wife is expecting a baby and that means in a few months we will have another season of interrupted nights as the little one needs the care that only a mother can give.

In Ephesians 5, addressing the subject of marriage, Paul uses a pair of descriptive words. After telling husbands to love their wives with a self-sacrificial love, and with a washing in the Word kind of love, then he adds the need for a “as you care for your own bodies” kind of love.

At this point he uses two words – nourishing and cherishing.

Cherishing is a term Paul only uses twice. It speaks of a tender, warming kind of care. It’s a bit like the way we put on a sweater when our bodies feel cold. We cherish our bodies. He also uses it in 1Thessalonians 2:7 of how a mother takes care of her little child. There is a gentleness, an inclination to hold carefully and to protect. (And in the Old Testament, the term is used twice to translate references to mother birds warming their eggs!)

Paul also tells husbands to nourish their wives as they naturally do their own bodies. Again, the term is used twice. It speaks of providing for and helping the growth of the other. Husbands need to remember not only to put food on the table, but also to provide spiritual nutrition for their marriage. Paul uses the term in Ephesians 6:4, in reference to bringing up children.

He also uses the shorter form of the term in the same phrase in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. It is the nursing mother who takes care of her child. This is a vivid picture, the giving of yourself that only a mother can do for an infant.

So Paul urges husbands to nourish and cherish their wives, just as they naturally do their own bodies. And in his other use of the pair of ideas, as mothers nurse and care for their infants. All very poignant images for the darkness we experience in the middle of the night.

But there is one more critical link to notice here. What is he really speaking of in Ephesians 5? Even after making the connection throughout the passage, we are still surprised at the end to discover he is actually speaking of Christ and the church. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church – what a thought!

I wonder if we more easily think back to the self-sacrificial love of Christ, which stands historically behind the launch of the church. We look back to Calvary and rightly so. But here Paul ties Christ’s loving of the church not to a past event, but rather to a present ongoing reality. Maybe we don’t ponder that enough. The present care of Christ for his own is such a glorious truth.

Not only did he give himself in self-sacrifice at the cross, but now he continues to tenderly give of himself to the church he loves so dearly, seeking to warm us and help us to grow.

Jesus is our bridegroom, nourishing and cherishing his bride, today.

It is no mistake that the Bible uses such relational imagery for the reality of our relationship with God. We have a devoted bridegroom, a loving Father, a faithful friend, a good shepherd. And we have them all right now.

Perhaps we need to pause for a moment in our leadership and our care for others, and thank Christ for his present care for us. Let us ask God to tune our hearts to discern what he may be doing very quietly in our lives each and every day.

Jesus is our shepherd, and our bridegroom, today – exactly when we need him.

12 Pointers for Effective Epistle Exposition (pt.3)

May 27, 2015May 25, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

And to finish off this series of pointers on preaching epistles, here are the final four:

9. Root imperatives in their own soil. It is tempting to simply harvest imperatives and preach a to-do list. Don’t. Instead let each imperative be felt in its own context, including the earlier sections of the epistle where our gaze was pointed to Christ. Don’t let application sections become self-focused when they actually are intended to present guidance for what flows from the doctrinal sections.

10. Be clear. You can never be too clear in the way you structure the message and present the content. Look for ways to help your listeners follow you, and also follow the author in his thought.

11. Preach the text. The church has a full history of preaching messages from texts, but instead preach the message of the text. There is a world of difference. God inspired the Bible as it stands, He doesn’t promise to inspire every thought that is provoked in our minds as we read the text.

12. Engage in conversation. Don’t just sit alone with your preaching notes. Get into conversation. First, with God. Second, with others – commentaries and co-preachers, as well as listeners, etc. Conversation about your sermon will almost always improve your sermon!

12 Pointers for Effective Epistle Exposition (pt.2)

May 26, 2015May 25, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Continuing the brief list of a dozen pointers from yesterday…here are four more:

5. Master the whole. Don’t just preach chunk by chunk through the epistle without getting to grips with the flow of the whole. You cannot accurately preach a portion of an epistle without a good grasp of how the whole is working together.

6. Get the author’s logic. Don’t read a section and look for three preachable parallel points. Instead wrestle with what the author is trying to do in this particular section. Sermon outlines can always adjust to fit the text, and they should do so. Don’t adjust the text to fit your outline.

7. Preach to today. Don’t just present a set of commentary labels and then try to apply “back then” truths to today. Instead, preach the text to today, and go “back then” to substantiate what you are saying. Wrestle with how that audience is similar to, and different from, your audience today.

8. Let truth be felt. Epistles can lull us into a false sense of abstraction. Don’t give theological theory, preach the gospel applied to real life (both then and now). Preach tangibly, use implicit imagery, be vivid, help images to form on the heart-screens of your listeners.

The final four tomorrow.

12 Pointers for Effective Epistle Exposition

May 25, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Epistles are often seen as the easiest texts to preach. After all, they tend to be logical, structured and, since they are written to churches, easy to apply. Here are some reminders that may be helpful for effectively preaching epistles:

1. Grasp the narrative. Hang on, I thought we were talking about epistles? Indeed. By exploring the historical setting, especially by paying close attention to the details in the epistle itself, plus any Acts context, we can start to get a sense of the narrative that lies behind the letter. The letter itself is one side of a conversation at one moment in time. “Narratives” can be preached with tension, with feeling, with imagery, etc.

2. Learn the background. Not just the specific occasion of the epistle, but whatever background understanding would help you. For instance, how much do you really know about slavery in the Roman Empire? What about proto-gnostic religions? And the geography? Take the chance to learn more, don’t just try to replenish what you once knew.

3. Familiarise like crazy. Don’t read a letter then preach it. Read it. Read it. Read it again. Each time through, the flow of thought will become clearer and clearer.

4. Focus on the frame. The “letter-frames” often get short shrift from expositors. They shouldn’t. Look at the beginning and end of the epistle: what is included, how conventions are followed or broken, each and every clue to the situation of author and readers.

Tomorrow I’ll share the next four…

4 Common Ways to Mis-Distill a Passage

May 20, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The process of moving from passage to message involves distilling the passage text down to the passage idea. The goal is a single sentence summary of the passage – a more concentrated representation of the whole. I find the image of distilling the text helpful because it suggests that the details, the character, the tone and the balance of the passage should all influence the final statement of the passage idea.

But we humans love to short-cut.

When we short-cut this process we can seriously mis-distill what is there, with the end result that the passage idea does not carry the true content, nor the character, of the passage we claim to be preaching.

Here are 4 ways to mis-distill in preaching prep:

1. Seek out the best verse. Occasionally a passage conveys its main idea in a single verse (and everything else in the passage is related to that verse). Typically this is not so. Don’t pick a punchy verse and primarily preach just that. Your goal is to summarise the whole text, so that the whole text is influencing the single sentence summary.

2. Seek out a meaty truth. Always a lively temptation, we must resist this. If your goal is to be a biblical preacher, then don’t abuse the Bible by using it to preach your weighty doctrines of choice. Preach the Bible text itself. The passage you are studying may beep on your theological radar and cause you to ponder its broader implications (hopefully challenging and changing your theology, rather than the influence going the other way). It takes prayerful care to make sure a minor point in a section does not take over because it happens to be a major theological issue for you.

3. Seek out imperatives. Speaking of your theology . . . if your theology says that people are essentially self-moved and need to be both informed and exhorted to action, then you will probably get over-excited when you spot imperatives of any sort. “Aha! Action points! I sense a sermon!” Take a deep breath and look carefully. The process that takes you from passage to passage idea is one of distilling the weight of the whole into a single sentence. It is not an imperatival mood filter that strains out all content to leave a me-focused to-do list. What is the passage doing in its context? What is going on in the passage? What is the nature and function of the imperative details in the passage? Seek to preach the passage, not to be a purveyor of preachy points.

4. Seek out triggers for your pet points. This could be theological pet points or imperatival pet points. It could also be cross-referencing pet points (“Cool, I can preach Romans 3 under the guise of this passage too!”), or historical background pet points (“Great, this reference to the circumcision party will allow me to explain first century Israeli politics, my favourite subject!”), or church/cultural commentary pet points (“Jesus tells him to go to the priest, which is good because I want to critique our contemporary church culture on slack church attendance!”) Find a better venue for sharing your pet points, but don’t sabotage any biblical preaching opportunity to do so.

When you are wrestling with a passage, be sure to distill the whole passage down into the passage idea. Any other approach and you won’t be preaching the whole passage.

Explain Well – 4 More Thoughts

May 15, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I shared four thoughts on how to explain a biblical text well. Here are four more.

5. Explain visually, not just conceptually. When an idea becomes clear to a listener, they don’t say, “Ah, I grasp your conceptual logic!” No, people say, “Ah, I see what your saying.” What do they see? A clear picture of the idea being explained. We need to engage listeners at the level of imagination. There is a screen in the hearts of listeners and by fault it begins foggy and confused. Clear the smoke and form images as you explain the text, or as you describe the application. If you can see it, they will. If you are grasping for concepts, they see smoke.

6. Let the structure do its work. As you help people see the structure in a passage, it will begin to explain itself. Orient listeners to the “chunks” before diving into the details. Give a newcomer to town the landmarks before explaining details of smaller side streets. Highlight connectives or repetition in content so the shape starts to form on the page – “Notice how many verses begin ‘By faith…’ in this section. As you scan down the page you can see, ‘By faith…’ in verse 3, ‘By faith…’ in verse 4, etc. Eighteen times the writer does that. But then in verse 13 that pattern is broken. This four verse thought in the middle is being marked out as the central pivot of the passage. Let’s zero in on that pivot…”

7. Take people there, or bring the truth here. Decide whether you are going to transport listeners to back then and describe things so vividly that they can smell the air, or whether you are going to bring the biblical truth to today with a contemporary simile, “this is like…” Weak explanation tends to flow from indecision about listener location. Take them there, or bring the Bible to today. Actually, do both, but do both deliberately and definitely.

8. Judiciously use explanation from others. Don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of people who are better at explaining that text than you or me. We should be ready to take advantage of that. But they aren’t standing where you are. They might be Martin Luther, but your listeners may be ready to dismiss him because of some perception they have of him, or they may be hard-pressed to distinguish him from his namesake in the twentieth century. They might be a great contemporary scholar and commentator, but your listeners may be distracted by their funny sounding name (they don’t know anything else about him/her), or by your superior learning (they don’t have books like that). When you use someone else’s explanation, start with “one preacher put it like this…” and then add further details judiciously for your particular listeners.

Explain Well – 4 Thoughts

May 14, 2015 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching is a complex ministry, but one of the core ingredients is effective explanation of the biblical text. If this is removed, then it is difficult to see how what remains can be biblical preaching.

Yet it can be tempting to remove explanation. Why not simply read a bit of Bible and then say what you want to say, making the odd vague connection? This passes for preaching in many places. What’s more, surely that can be more interesting than dull explanation? Of course it can, but the answer to the problem of a poor version of something good and important is not to replace it, but to do it well. How?

1. Recalibrate your appreciation of God’s ability as a communicator. Unless you are gripped by the fact that God is a great communicator, everything else I say here will fail to register. Know that if your listeners could really see the richness and relevance of what God is saying in any passage, they would be gripped and transformed. But if you don’t see it, they are going to struggle. Many Christians trust God to have created everything, to have worked out a redemption plan and to have final justice and a glorious eternity all worked out, but at the same time to be a poor communicator. This is mystifying.

2. Give appropriate amounts of engaging context. Too much context will turn the sermon into a historical lecture. Too little will strip the text of meaning. The biblical text is not a random set of assertions that have mystical power by virtue of inspiration. God gave us inspired text that was always set in a historical and situational context. Rather than being dull background stuff, this is often a key way to forge connections between the text and your listeners. Get to know the background context and determine where the points of engagement are for your listeners today.

3. Set the scene textually. Many of the biblical books were written to be digested whole, but we tend to cut and slice. That doesn’t mean we have to preach a whole book in every sermon (although that is an option to consider sometimes). It does mean that we can’t just drop people into an alien text without any orientation. Be sure to orient your listeners to what is going on in the big picture of the book before expecting them to be gripped by the specific text of your sermon.

4. Don’t explain every word with equal effort. Recognise that in any passage there will be a gravity centre. Take people there and help them see why that is the case. Explaining seven introductory clauses to get there will numb your listeners and they will lose track of the point of the passage.

Tomorrow I will add some more thoughts to this list.

Holy and Blameless Before Him

May 6, 2015May 5, 2015 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

We have just refreshed the look of the Cor Deo website. Please click here and head over for a look around.

I just posted a new piece on sanctification called, “Holy and Blameless Before Him”

“There are lots of debates about how sanctification works. Presumably because the common views don’t work. What are the common views? In simplistic terms there are essentially two: one is that sanctification is by my personal effort, the other is some variation on the notion that it either doesn’t matter or that God will do it.

Typically we think that the solution to two extreme views will be a blending of the two. So in this case, is sanctification best understood as a cooperative effort where God does his bit, and I do my bit? I don’t think that will help us. Our flesh will corrupt that model. Instead, let’s ponder the big biblical framework for sanctification. . . ”

Please click here to go to the post.

Application Is Not Always Engagement

May 2, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Everyone lauds preaching that connects with the congregation. Many imply that the key to connecting is giving applications. But is it possible to be totally applicational in a message, and yet completely unengaging?

I believe it is possible. If there is no personal warmth between preacher and listener, and if there is no vertical warmth between the preacher and God, then a highly applicational message could easily become an instructional rant based on a text. Listeners will not feel connected with the preacher or the preaching. They may just feel got at.

The problem is that if we think being relevant and applicational is all it takes to connect, then we can overlook the fact that communication is best offered in the context of interpersonal warmth. Our listeners need us to have that reality in both dimensions!

A good friend of mine has a stock of great sayings, one of which goes, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is so true in preaching. A chilling of the temperature in our personal walk with God will show in our communication with others. Even the most winsome of texts can become an opportunity to hammer on the duty theme again, for example.

Instead of just plugging in applications, let’s pray about what it really takes to connect with listeners. This will include our manner and delivery, sermon content and presentation of the Bible, as well as pastoral connection outside of the pulpit. People need preaching that engages them more than just preaching that gives application.

7 Ways to Guard Hearts at a Christian Conference

May 1, 2015May 19, 2016 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Attending a Christian conference can be an incredible blessing. The opportunities to learn, to network, to take a break from normal life, to enjoy abundant food and even to sing together with a large crowd of believers, this can all be wonderful. But there are dangers too, and since I haven’t seen anybody writing about this, here is a set of points to ponder as you head for the next big event:

1. Don’t leave God out of your conversation. This may seem bizarre when every session, every song, and almost every conversation is probably going to relate to God and ministry. But I stand by the point – don’t leave God himself out of the conversation. It is easy to neglect time with Him in order to stay busy talking about His things. It is easy to stay up late, get up groggy and rush off to breakfast, conversations and plenary sessions. What about time with God? What about letting Him have a voice in your day by reading the Bible? What about pausing to pray since He is important to you? If your spouse were with you, your frantic intensity and neglect of conversation would do nothing for marital closeness. So what about Christ?

2. Lean on God to navigate the stresses of networking. If the conference is a gathering of people involved in ministries like yours, then it is tempting to buzz around like a manic worker bee trying to connect with every significant person in attendance. In the few days you have, you may not get to everyone you think you should. Instead of handling that by your own stress, talk to God about it and walk through the days with a reliance on Him. He can orchestrate the connections that He thinks you need. I have experienced both the manic version of conference networking, and the trusting God version of it. The latter version is healthier, more faith-building and more effective.

3. Don’t feed the hype of a glory festival. Probably the worst part of some Christian events is that they feed the hype of mutual glory hunting. Jesus warned the religious leaders of his day very strongly about the danger of receiving glory from one another (see John 5:38ff) and yet we still fall into that trap so easily. Christian events where leaders are gathered are often rife with the stench of human glory. Determine not to feed it. Don’t leave a conversation mid-sentence because your favourite author just entered the room. Don’t ask for autographs (what is the point?)

4. Value every brother and sister in Christ. Following on from the previous point, it is tempting to have your radar beeping for the famous or high profile people that may be at the conference. But if you are trusting God to orchestrate your informal connections, then remember that He may be more excited about you loving an “insignificant” brother or sister than your need to shake hands with someone who is in demand. The “least of these” applies at the conference, and it applies when Big Name is standing right next to you too.

5. Care for the “profile people” as people. It is easy to elevate well-known speakers and authors as if they are super-Christians. They are brothers and sisters in Christ. If you have opportunity to interact, do so lovingly and with sensitivity to them as people. Express gratitude for their ministry, but get beyond that too. Show interest in them as people, not just as fonts of knowledge about your pet subjects. If they have just spoken, recognize that they may be feeling discouraged or drained. I stood by as one “fan” missed every cue from a “profile person” who was obviously drained and heading for his room. After a while I was tempted to step in and rescue the speaker from the onslaught of questions and lack of sensitivity.

6. Don’t forget your family role too. If you are married, but attending the conference alone, then be sure not to abdicate your responsibilities at home. My wife does an amazing job at home when I am away for a few days, but it is a thankless task. That is, unless I thank her. Phone calls, texts, and notes, all show that you appreciate them. Sometimes your spouse will just need to talk. Sometimes you may need to comfort or discipline a child over the phone. It may not feel as exciting as the opportunities in front of you, but it may be the most important ministry you do all week.

7. Be a builder, not a destroyer. If you put leaders together, inevitably you are creating opportunity for constructive evaluation of everything about the conference. What did you think of his third point? Do you like the music? What was going on with the stewards for the main meeting? Ministry leaders can’t help evaluating ministry when we are participating in an event, but we can help the tone of our evaluation. The insecure will criticize and tear down. The mature in Christ will be careful to build up others in every circumstance. There will be avenues for constructive criticism – use them to help things improve. But don’t use conversation to elevate yourself and tear down beloved brothers and sisters in Christ.

Attending a Christian conference is an incredible privilege. Next time you get that opportunity, why not prayerfully go through these points before you dive in to the crazy schedule?