7 Ways Preachers Read the Bible

January 13, 2015January 10, 2015 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Preachers tend to read the Bible like preachers. We can’t help it. But this is neither automatically good nor bad, it all depends what we mean.

Here are three wrong ways to read the Bible like a preacher:

1. Always look for a sermon when you read. Some texts are easily preachable, others more challenging for sermon construction. Don’t settle for an outline or struggle for an outline, read the text and look for what it is saying to you about God.

2. Always look for the sake of others, but not hearing the message for you first. Your listeners need you to be hearing and responding to God in your life, not just hunting on their behalf.

3. Always force the text into some sort of sermonic shape – i.e. looking for the “third point” when the passage may not be structured that way.

And here are four right ways to read the Bible like a preacher:

4. Always expect the Bible to communicate because God is a great communicator. Don’t quit trying to make sense of it just because it isn’t immediately obvious. Trust that God knew what He was doing and that studying the text will be worth any effort involved.

5. Always anticipate inherent unity in a passage, rather than chasing down every tangent that the details might bring to light.

6. Always look for order and progression in the text to see how the author develops his thoughts. Is he explaining, proving, applying, or moving onto a new, but connected thought?

7. Always be sensitive to the author’s intent and tone, as well as his content and structure. He was writing for a particular audience and wrote in a loving way for their sake. Don’t treat the Bible as mere data, but as heartfelt communication.

If you are a preacher, then hopefully you read your Bible. When you do, you will read it like a preacher, but be sure to make that a positive thing!

Good Exposition is not a Recipe Tour

January 12, 2015January 10, 2015 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Some people wrongly suggest that expository preaching is like explaining a recipe, rather than letting the listeners savour the flavour of a well-cooked meal. A good meal is the goal, not an explanation of the recipe. For some preachers this is an accurate description of their preaching, but don’t judge expository preaching by bad examples of it.

An expository preacher is primarily concerned with communicating the point of the passage, not seeking to explain the point of every detail. Expository preaching is about effectively and accurately communicating the text, not using the text to offer a lecture in sermonic method or applied theology.

A good expository preacher knows that a story has its own way of carrying and conveying its point, and that a poem works in a different way. Thus a good expositor preacher, preaching a story, will not dissect it into a lifeless and experience-free recipe, but will communicate the story as effectively and accurately as possible.

1. We start with the text as it is. Expository preaching is about the text being boss of the message, not the message squeezing the text into an outline or idea that doesn’t quite fit.

2. We ponder what needs to be added to help the text communicate effectively. Is any explanation necessary to allow it to communicate? Perhaps an underlining of the point, exposing it for clarity, yet timed appropriately to not undermine the impact of the text? Maybe it would help to make explicit the contemporary relevance of the story, or maybe how it fits into the bigger story of God’s Word and our world?

3. We try to avoid any undermining material. Unnecessary and endless explanation of details, numerous unnecessary or disconnected illustrations, ill-timed statements of the main thought, commentary style titles for each segment of the passage, or even a personal delivery manner that contradicts or leeches away the emotion, tension or energy of the text. Anything unhelpful should be purged from the message so that we are preaching the message of the text, not preaching a message using a text.

When you preach a story, or a poem, or whatever, be sure to be expository . . . but not the wrong kind that feels like the explanation of a recipe!

Neither Commentary Smoothie Nor Sermon Safari

January 10, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Preach somewhere between commentaries and sermons. Huh? Don’t we read commentaries and preach sermons? Perhaps.

Most commentaries are very atomistic. In a sense, they have to be. The writer focuses in on each verse, or sentence, in turn. They try to plumb the depths of lexical, semantic, syntactical and cultural meaning. Once that verse is exhausted they probably deserve a fresh cup of coffee and a break. When they return it’s on to the next verse.

Commentators are a real blessing to us and we should be exceedingly grateful for the range and quality of commentaries available (never forget how greatly blessed we are if we can read English since the resources available are so numerous). At the same time, let’s be wary that we don’t just preach a commentary (or a blend of information garnered from several commentators). Our task is not to exhaustively present every detail, neither is it to place historic labels over sections of text, nor to give mini word studies for underlying Greek or Hebrew terms.

Commentaries are there to help us, but good preaching is not dramatic commentary reading or providing the equivalent of a commentary smoothie.

On the other hand, there are many sermons that are anything but atomistic in the way the text is handled. They bounce off a text and range to and fro all over the canon without rhyme or reason, like mining ships exploring the outer reaches of theological possibility.

Somehow our preaching needs to fit between these two extremes. We preach a text (or texts), but we need to present them in their context. This means making sense of them in the flow of the book, and appropriately making sense of them in the flow of the Bible as a whole. In effect we need to cut the log both in slice-ward directions, but also in long cuts along the grain. How we balance those and make sense of the passage is part of the science and art of preaching. But somehow that fits between the often necessarily atomistic approach of commentaries and the unnecessarily free movement of many sermons.

Resolved: No Resolutions

January 2, 2015December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

To finish this week of posts I want to re-visit one I wrote two years ago and develop it slightly.

Resolved: To make no New Year’s Resolutions for me to do, but to cling to the One who is at work in and through me according to His perfect plans for 2015.

A while back I really enjoyed reading the masterful biography of Jonathan Edwards by George Marsden. It is fascinating to see the early resolutions of Edwards give way to a mature spirituality that was delighted in and by Christ later in his life.

Let’s face it, there are so many good resolutions that we could make as we head into another New Year. Bible reading commitments, wider reading plans, personal prayer schedules, pursuit of ministry training ideas, grow theologically intentions, find a mentor strategies, evaluation and feedback gathering plans, sermonic self-improvement schemes, pastoral ministry visitation goals, personal fitness/diet/exercise/rest regimes, family scheduling tactics, and on the list goes.

All of these would be good ideas. But making these determined and resolute teeth-clenched-and-muscles-flexed kind of personal commitments may well not be the best way to go. That is, if we aren’t the autonomous self-made individualists that our culture and our fallen world like to convince us that we are.

Our life and ministry is much more about response to God’s Spirit at work in our lives than it is about our responsibility to act like the god of our own lives. We are not the captain of our own destiny. We are not sheriff of Me-ville. We are lovers defined by who and what we love. And as those who know and love the Triune God, we are in the best possible place to face a new year of uncertainties, trials, complexities and challenges.

My loving response to God’s love for me will result in some determined lifestyle choices and evidences of personal discipline. This will also be true in my married life too – my loving response to my wife will look disciplined and diligent. But I won’t talk about it in those terms. At one level there is no real sacrifice involved in responding to the God we have. Yes, it may look costly at times, but from the perspective of a captured heart?

As we head into 2015, let’s hold all our resolutions with a very loose grip, but squeeze tightly on the hand of Him who holds us, our families, our ministries and our year ahead in the palm of His hand.

Can we even begin to imagine what our Lord might do in us and through us in 2015? Exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we ask or even imagine . . . and certainly more than we can achieve by our own self-determined productivity and improvement plans!

Resolved: Read God’s Heart

January 1, 2015December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Three years ago I wrote a post that really polarized readers. I wrote a critique of a famous Bible reading plan. If you want to see that post, click here. As we start a new year, many of us, and many in our churches, will be making the determination to read through the Bible. For some it will be the first time. For many it will be a repeat attempt. Sadly, for many, they will have failed more than they succeeded.

Here’s the bottom line for me – I want people to be reading their Bibles. Whatever else goes into the mix of a personal devotional life, being exposed to the Scriptures is a critical ingredient (really it is the “without this, nothing” ingredient in the recipe for relationship with God). Now it may be that someone you know is not a confident reader for whatever reason . . . know the audio options and be ready to promote them (even good readers would benefit from listening to the Bible too!)

Motivation Issues – I know the motivation of reading plans is to help give some structure and sense of progress to readers. That is great. My concern is that the plan can easily become both the focus and a taskmaster. We should be concerned when there is a lack of motivation for God’s Word – both in our own lives, and those we care about. A lack of motivation is not an irrelevant emotional blip that can be overcome by our great diligence, determination and accountability.

Motivation Matters – Let’s treat a lack of motivation as a flashing light on the dashboard of our lives. When the oil light flashes I don’t “obey” it and choose not to drive the car. Equally I don’t disregard it and press on. I address the issue. It is the same with a lack of motivation for Bible time . . . don’t simply obey it, nor ignore it, but address it.

Addressing Motivation – The best way I have found to address this motivation issue is to talk to God about it. Be honest. Out loud. Tell him what is more attractive to you than His self-revelation. That will typically be convicting and bring us back in humility with brokenness and renewed, albeit weak, hunger to hear from Him.

Best Motivation – The best motivation for Bible reading is a hunger to know God more. Therefore the best motivator for stirring others to read their Bibles is to know God more and be infectious with it. When you are captured by a person, others will want to know Him too. This is a far cry from language of diligence, duty, discipline and so on.

Marital Accountability? – I don’t ask my friends to hold me accountable to pretend to love my wife and listen to her. I may ask them to point out if they see me rationalizing a drift from healthy relationships though. It is the same with the Bible reading. I don’t need someone to crack the whip to make me do it, but I am wide open to hearing from a friend that I seem touchy or less excited about God than is normal.

I would love our churches to be filled with people eager to hear God’s heart as they chase Him in His Word. I know that for our churches to be filled with this kind of people we will need our pulpits filled with this kind of preacher.

Resolved: Preach Christ

December 31, 2014December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Here’s another resolution to throw into the mix as we head into another year. How about making a prayerful determination to preach Christ, rather than the tempting alternatives?

Here are some tempting alternatives that are worth dumping in favour of Christ:

1. Don’t preach issues – It is tempting to be contemporary and to buy into the idea that what people really value above all else is contemporary relevance. Of course the Bible is relevant and Christ is relevant, but that doesn’t mean your preaching should be salted with relevance like meat in a medieval barrel. Some preachers are so concerned about being up-to-date that they lose sight of what they have to offer those sitting before them. Relevance is important, but it is not the primary and central goal in preaching.

2. Don’t preach tips – Of course God’s way is the best way and lives gripped by the Gospel tend to work a whole lot better than lives lived according to the values of the world. And yes, the Bible does include a lot of insight into living life, both legitimate and moralized. But our job is not to be the weekly top tip provider for a people totally absorbed with successful living. There should be a huge difference between our preaching and the self-help guru folks may pay a fortune to hear on Friday night. The gospel will transform lives, but we are not called to be known as life coaches.

3. Don’t preach pressure – With all the best intentions we can easily undermine the work of the Gospel in the lives of those we preach to each week. That is, we want them to be thriving spiritually and in life. We know the damage sin can do. So we will always be tempted to twist arms and pressure people to conform to an outward Christianity. It makes church life easier if all messes are hidden and people act appropriately. But pressure preaching assumes that listeners can fix themselves and that we can achieve God’s goals without any meaningful involvement from Him. There will be moments where we seek to appropriately apply the pressure of God’s Word, but that is not what defines us as true Christian preachers.

4. Don’t preach yourself – Over the years our own flesh has this amazing ability to get used to being the centre of attention. If you are naive enough to believe the polite comments you receive after preaching are objective evaluations of your ministry significance, then you can easily start to buy into your own hype. Please don’t.

5. Do preach Christ – The Gospel is not a self-starting life-change program, it is good news that involves us introducing listeners to God in Christ. Don’t preach self-help programs, or church programs, or Christian morality, or even Christianity . . . preach Christ. Make 2015 a year marked by a weekly introduction to a heart-capturing Saviour!

Resolved: Preach the Text

December 30, 2014December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

I am not a huge advocate of resolutions. But since everyone will be talking about resolutions this week, why not offer some nudges here?

Here are some preacher resolutions that might grab your attention:

Perhaps to pray more specifically and fervently, to apply your preaching more directly, to call for response more overtly, to preach from a book you’ve never touched before, to continue to develop by reading a preaching book (or maybe one each quarter). Maybe you want to spend some time with a preacher who can shape your theology and influence your preaching? (Perhaps Luther, Sibbes, Cotton, Newton, Edwards, Spurgeon?) Maybe you could resolve to attend a conference or training event for further equipping, to take a formal class or distance learning course, to get specific feedback or pre-sermon input every other month, to begin the process of mentoring another preacher during the year, to get more involved in your church small group program so as to get to know your people more fully, to read through the Bible in English a couple of times or more, to read the New Testament through in Greek, to approach someone and request their input as a mentor, to preach first person properly for the first time, to preach from a difficult genre, to refresh or stretch yourself in exegetical skills, theology or some other area of “divinity” studies. Do you have a resolution?

Here’s one you might like to try on for size: Some time back I finished preparation for a Sunday sermon on Hebrews 13:20-21. I had some spare time and was curious what other preachers have done with the text since it is not a typical epistle paragraph. So I did a search and a quick skim through about ten sermons on the text. I entered the process with a small amount of interest, but I finished with a large amount of concern. Some of the sermons had good content, they very orthodox, theologically solid, but why was it that none of the examples I looked at seemed to be trying to preach what the author intended? Why did they feel like Bible truths strung together with passing reference to these two verses, rather than actually preaching the intended truth of these verses?

A suitable resolution for 2015 would be to always genuinely seek to preach the meaning of each text as intended by its author. Let’s not preach messages from texts, or messages based on a text. Let’s preach the message of the text.

10 Questions for Your Preaching Year Review

December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

As we come to the end of another year, it is good to look back and take stock. Be careful though, it is easy to do this in a way that isn’t helpful.

As you look back, don’t emphasize things like ‘what fruit has my ministry produced?’, or ‘which was my best sermon?’, or ‘whose life has changed the most under my ministry?’ These kinds of questions put your focus entirely on yourself. Negative versions of the same questions still do the same.

The right way to look back is in conversation with God. Here are ten questions that may help:

1. What am I thankful for in respect to the opportunities I have had to preach? Whether you have preached a couple of times, or a couple of times a week. Whether it has been to one church, or to multiple groups, give thanks.

2. Where have I seen prayers answered in respect to my preaching? Take time to reflect on prayers answered as you look back over the specific preaching opportunities you have had. Were there some challenging sermon preps that came together as you prayed? Did certain people hear certain messages?

3. Where might my prayers have been answered without me knowing during this year? This is the important impossible one – what might have happened that you don’t know about? A lot. Ponder and pray about that.

4. What sermon preparation has most stirred my heart during this year? A specific text, or a certain series?

5. What lessons does God want me to learn from what has happened this year? Lessons about preaching, about life, about ministry, about yourself, about Him?

6. What life change have I seen that I can give thanks for? It could be gradual or sudden, salvation or growth. Give thanks for the privilege of being a part of what God is doing!

7. How has God protected my integrity during this year of ministry? You could be out of the ministry right now. How has God guarded you from that?

8. How has my intimacy with Christ developed (or faded) during this year? Don’t automatically self-evaluate. Ask God to search your heart and show you His perspective on this.

9. What should I be thankful for in terms of provision to allow my ministry? Whether it is paid employment that allows you little time to prepare, but pays the bills, or ministry-related income that makes it possible . . . give thanks.

10. Is there anything else that I should give thanks for as I finish my review? Family support? Key friends? A mentor? A preacher you look up to and learn from? A book that has helped? Challenges that have shaped you? Take time for God to bring to mind whatever has been missed in the earlier questions. Gratitude is the critical ingredient in a truly faith-driven ministry. Give thanks.

The Incarnation is Not Just for Christmas

December 27, 2014December 27, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

(This post appeared yesterday on www.trinitytheology.net)

The morning after Christmas Day is quiet. In our house it is quiet because the children were wiped out by a long and fun day yesterday. In other houses it is quiet because everyone is out shopping for bargains in the sales. For many, the magic of Christmas has now given way to a gradually growing anticipation of return to work or school.

So let me be up-front about this. I have a vested interest in a continued interest in the truth of Christmas. After all, Pleased to Dwell is a book I have authored and I would like it to be of interest to folks for more than just a few weeks each year. Maybe that is my motivation in pondering the subject of this post, but I hope that is not my only motivation.

Christmas is in the DNA of the Christian faith. Why? Because God’s Son didn’t just become one of us to launch an annual holiday. It wasn’t a publicity stunt to stir the sales of Christmas cards and boost end-of-year retail revenue. God’s Son became flesh and dwelt among us because that was the ultimate expression of the heart of God – a heart that wants to draw our hearts out of the black hole of our self-loving-vortex (think January sales), and back into true communion with the God who made us.

The Son of God didn’t become one of us for some temporary period of time, or on some fleeting agenda. He became one of us forever so that we can be united to Him forever.

Whether Pleased to Dwell continues to be a blessing to folks for the next few months is not important. Whether we a gripped by the wonder of the Incarnation and the every day, forever lover of our souls, is.

Preaching Christmas

December 16, 2014December 16, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Christmas is an amazing opportunity to preach to people who normally wouldn’t be coming into church. Here are seven top suggestions for making the most of the opportunity:

1. Pray a lot – there is a spiritual battle going on and the enemy wants to keep people distracted from the truth of the gospel. In the busy world of Christmas service planning, he can also keep preachers distracted from the wonder of the gospel too!

2. Preach fact – the Christmas message is not, as most tend to think, another holiday season fairy tale and religious myth. Luke launched his gospel with a declaration of the trustworthiness of his message, let’s take a leaf out of his book. Look for ways to make it clear that there was an original Christmas.

3. Correct carefully – nobody likes a cavalier critique of comfortable traditions, so be careful when you point out that Jesus was not born in a cattle shed, or that Mary wasn’t timing contractions as she arrived in Bethlehem, or that the Wise Men actually arrived months later. One of these “facts” is probably wrong, but even truth can be unhelpful if people think you are just being critical, or there is no benefit in the clarification you bring.

4. Celebrate sensitively – it is easy to hype up Christmas like a children’s TV presenter, but for many people it is a bittersweet season. Be sure to take a moment in the message, or in a prayer, to recognize the difficulties as well as the joys.

5. Proclaim good news – yes, Christmas is a season of giving and cheer and peace. Yes, this is a good year to mention the famous Christmas truce of 1914. But remember that Christmas is not about stirring sentimentality and periodic pauses for peace, it is ultimately about something on the vertical plane and not just the horizontal. Jesus came to us to bring us to God. Don’t preach just a nice message, be sure to preach the best news!

6. Undermine assumptions – as well as communicating the gospel message in some way, remember that there is also an opportunity to undermine some common assumptions. Making clear that there is a historical reality to the Incarnation is a good idea, and why not take the chance to clarify the nature of God’s character too? Everyone comes into church thinking they know what God is like. If they don’t really know Jesus, then they don’t. Christmas is a great moment to point people not to speculations about the Majesty of God, but to bring them to the manger to meet the One who makes God known to us.

7. Worship personally – if the Christmas message has grown old for you, then you can’t preach it well. Take some time out with your God and let Him stir your heart afresh. Then you can preach Christmas.