Delighted by God: Glorious Gospel – London, next Saturday

April 21, 2012April 21, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Next Saturday I will be one of the speakers at the Delighted By God conference in London. More importantly, Ron Frost and Glen Scrivener will also be speaking. If you are within reach of London, it would be great to see you. There is no charge for attending the event, although donations will be accepted to help with costs.

We will be considering the glorious nature of the gospel we proclaim – a great subject for preachers and non-preachers alike! Please help spread the word – the facebook event can be found by click here.

Saturday Short Thought: Reinforcing Every Time

April 21, 2012April 21, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been pondering how to preach with a more developed set of motivational tools than just the pressure of guilt. I’m convinced this is an important issue, and not just a homiletical detail. It gets to the heart of our faith.

Is Christianity really and primarily about our responsibility to function in our own strength? Is Christianity about how, thanks to Christ, I can now become a good person? Is Christianity about creating good independent citizens, or is there the hiss of Genesis 3 in this version of the faith?

What if Christianity is much more about our response to Christ and His work in our lives? What if Christianity is about transformation from the inside out, born of a family relationship that changes our hearts and consequently, our behaviour? What if Christianity is not at all about independence, but dependence and inter-dependence?

The tension of duty versus delight is present in every sermon. Do I pressure people to perform, or do I offer the vision of Him who transforms?

Responsibility preaching throttles the life out of the gospel. Response preaching offers true life. Our preaching subtly reinforces one view of the gospel or the other, every time.

Beyond Guilt – Part 4

April 19, 2012April 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Some preachers rely exclusively on the pressure tactic of guilt in their preaching. Surely there must be a more biblically rounded approach? This week I’ve suggested we need to consider our stance, our tone and yesterday, our strategy. Let me offer the fourth factor today:

4. The Preacher’s Vision. Essentially, when we boil it down, what are we offering when we preach? Ok, the message of the text. So there will be an individuality to each message since every text is unique. But what does the Bible offer – even allowing for each text to be its own unique entity in the tapestry of the whole?

If you think the Bible offers instructions for living, your preaching will reflect that. If you think the Bible offers engaging ancient stories with helpful morals, then your preaching will reflect that. But if you think the Bible offers a vision of the heart and character and grace and personality of God, then your preaching will reflect that.

To put this another way, what is the good news offered in the Word? Is it the good news of a way in which a sinful humanity can now be empowered to live a more righteous life – that is, a gospel that somehow misses God out? Or is it the good news of who God is, offering a sinful humanity the privilege of relationship with Him who to know is life, and who to know will transform a life?

I wish this were so obvious that I didn’t see the need to write the post, but I have heard sermons where God is essentially, or even actually, omitted and absent. These are the kind of messages I might see as party political speeches, or “if only people would be good society would be better” messages, etc. There are many types of speeches in the world today, but the ones where God is at most a bit-part player are not the kind of speeches we need in the church.

If the vision captivating the preacher’s heart is the Law, then the message will likely be a guilt focused message. If the vision captivating the preacher’s heart is the grace and love of a loving God, then the message is likely to be more compelling, more transformative. After all, the gospel involves the transformation of lives from the inside out, not by the pressure of responsibility, but by the attractive invitation to respond to the goodness of our so very good God.

The vision captivating you will show in your preaching, and if it is the vision of the God who reveals Himself throughout His Word, then I suspect you will offer that same vision in your preaching – a vision that alone can truly transform lives.

Beyond Guilt – Part 3

April 18, 2012April 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So far we have looked at issues of stance and tone in this series. It is easy to have a minimalist default approach of piling on the pressure and using guilt to twist arms. The biblical preacher needs to get beyond that.

3. The Preacher’s Strategy. Let’s face the real issue head on. What is our strategy in preaching? If the goal is life transformation, then what strategy makes sense? It certainly can’t be a simplistic answer since the human is a complex creature. But here are some pointers on strategy issues.

Transformation involves movement from a negative to a positive. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply critique the negative. We need to help people see what life would look like if the biblical truth were to take hold. Simply making people feel bad is not a solution.

Often people simply cannot conceive of what a faith-filled Christ-like in-step-with-the-Spirit life would look like in terms of a specific issue. In one sense then we have some role as life coaches. But it is more than that.

Transformation involves motivation for applying the message of God’s Word. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply inform, or even pressure, it needs to motivate. We need to understand how people work at the deepest level. If we think that information plus pressure will generate good things then we have been significantly led away from the teaching of the Bible by the thinking of this world.

What is the root issue Paul points to in Ephesians 4:17ff? People act and behave a certain way because of their thinking – so we need to educate! Hang on, yes we do, but he goes further, there’s a deeper issue…the root issue is the hardness of heart. Somehow the heart influences even how the mind will process information. Christian transformation is not really about well-informed minds and well-disciplined wills. It is an issue of the heart, inside to out, a matter of response as opposed to responsibility.

Transformation involves response to more than a vision of better living. It is not about realizing innate potential, but about responding from the core to a compelling love that alone can truly transform a life.

So our strategy includes presentation of application rather than just declaration of guilt. Our strategy includes communicating with people as if they are heart-driven beings and not just informed decision makers. But the ultimate issue has to be the One to whom people should respond, which I’ll leave until tomorrow’s post.

Beyond Guilt – Part 2

April 17, 2012April 17, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I am pondering how to preach with a more nuanced approach than mere guilt pressure. As I’ve written already, there is a place for genuine conviction of sin, and I am not hiding from that. But equally, I am not just hiding in that, nor avoiding the danger hiding in a non-nuanced guilt approach.

How can we hide in a guilt approach? I suspect some see no other way to help lives change than to pile on the pressure. Every passage is turned into a guilt trip. Doesn’t matter what tone the passage takes, the message will have been filtered into a guilt and pressure tone.

And what danger is hiding in such an approach? There is an implicit danger with guilt focused messages. I say you should feel guilty. If I convince you, then you feel that you must change. Guilt alone will not drive people to God. It will drive them to despair or to efforts of the flesh. Neither result is good. Guilt has to come in a package with hope, with grace, with access to life transformation that has to come from God, not from self.

So, yesterday we looked at the issue of stance. Here’s another element, perhaps an obvious one, but still important nonetheless.

2. The Preacher’s Tone. Too many people think too simplistically. As if communication is about information transfer. But the truth is that communication involves a complex of signals, some of which can override others. So my body language can contradict, and overwhelm my words. So too can my vocal presentation. Voice and body language combine in regards to the tone of my communication.

If my tone is close to that of an angry prophet, that will override the most gracious of poetic content. If my tone is akin to that of a Victorian school master, then my words, my message, will take on a whole new meaning.

Children know this. If a parent says their name with a certain tone, they know they’re supposed to feel guilty. It’s voice, expression, posture, etc. But it boils down to tone.

Do you have a default tone that is guilt inducing? Can you make the most encouraging passage into a pressure text? Can you turn Psalm 23 into a rebuke for not being a good sheep? Can you take Jesus’ yoke and burden, which are easy and light, and make them tricky to put on properly if your listeners aren’t living just right?

Let’s be sure that when we preach, it is not just our words that reflect the meaning of the text, but that our tone also reflects the tone of the text, and the tone of the God who is speaking to these people on this occasion.

Stance and tone can be adjusted to avoid a guilt-only approach. They can be factors in a better motivational methodology. But tomorrow we’ll zero in on a key factor in preaching to encourage and motivate.

Saturday Short Thought: Rooted Preaching

April 14, 2012April 14, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

John Stott wrote about preaching as requiring a certain familiarity in two worlds – the world of the Bible and the world of the listener.

Haddon Robinson takes this a step further by adding two more “worlds.” The world of the listeners is the world of the congregational culture, as well as the societal culture at large. Then there is the world of the preacher’s inner life.

It isn’t easy to live in multiple worlds at once. There is always a danger that we will give diminished attention to one of these worlds. That was a point Stott made. Instead of building a bridge from one world to the other, there is always a tendency to build heavily on one side only – either being in this world only or building a tower from the Bible straight to heaven.

How do we measure our engagement with each world?

The world of the listener – prayerful concern for specific people and watchful awareness of the cultural influences, local and national?

The world of the Bible – prayerful fascination with the text, the culture, the people, the politics, the geography, the history, etc?

I was struck by this quote from John Smith, in The History of Virginia. A nudge to keep history and geography tied together:

As geography without history seemeth a carcus without motion, so history without geography wandereth as a vagrant without certain habitation.

Preaching isn’t a simple task, but what a privilege!

Preaching Cross-References?

April 13, 2012April 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

How much should the preacher use cross-references? Yesterday Dave wrote this in a comment:

In an effort to avoid falling prey to the errors you outline here I kept myself from using many cross references. When reviewing the sermon, my pastor said his biggest advice was to use more cross references! Do you have any hints on how to balance preaching the text and using cross references?

Dave, my advice is don’t use cross-references.

That should be the default. It will keep you in your passage and help your message stay focused. If there is a need for cross-reference, then do so, as much as is needed. For instance, if your passage is building on an earlier one, you might cite it. Or if the idea in your passage seems unusual in some way, it may be worth proving from elsewhere. I can’t think of many more reasons to cross-reference.

I certainly wouldn’t add cross-references to satisfy others who assume there should be lots of them. If someone advised me to use them more I would be inclined to ask why, what would they add, what is the reason for the advice? Some people think a sermon has to have lots of cross referencing, or three parallel and alliterated points, or application just at the end, etc. These are all strategy decisions that should be made on a case by case basis, not given as a standard guideline.

We have to keep in mind the down side of cross referencing in order to make an informed choice:

1. You lose focus on your passage. Some of those listening to you will hear a cross-reference and instantly have a clear view of that passage’s context, content, argument, occasion, etc. Most won’t. As they start thinking about that passage and whatever thoughts it triggers, they will not be contemplating the passage you are trying to preach.

2. You overwhelm listeners with scattered information. Some will try to turn to any reference, even after you’ve moved back to your preaching passage. Some will try to take notes of the references. Either way, their attention will be diverted and the potential for concentration burnout increases.

3. You lose depth in explanation of your passage. If they don’t understand the preaching passage, will going somewhere else really help explain it? Sometimes it might, but typically it means explaining another passage. Why not stay here and present it more clearly?

4. You lose time for application. If they do understand the preaching passage, why abdicate your role of applying it to them by going elsewhere and half explaining another one?

As a default, I suggest we use zero cross-references. Then when we do cross-reference, let’s do so on purpose. A sniper’s bullet, not scattered buckshot.

Preaching This Passage or That?

April 12, 2012April 10, 2012 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

There is another subtle temptation all preachers face, potentially every time they preach. That is to preach a text other than the text they think they are preaching.

I saw this firsthand once when I listened to a series of lectures on the Pastoral Epistles from a lecturer who I could tell wished he had been given the more prestigious Romans class. Every chance he got, he was back to Romans. At the end of that series I didn’t feel like I knew the Pastorals much better than before, but maybe Romans!

There are several dangers in doing this sub-conscious leap from your passage to your preferred passage:

1. You will lack variety and richness in your ministry. That is, every passage will sound like the handful of your favourites that always trump the text before you. This does not make for a healthy and balanced diet for your church.

2. You will teach listeners that the Bible is very limited. They will start to copy you and soon be reading one thing and seeing their pet passages instead. Your people need the whole Bible for spiritual health.

3. You will lose integrity as a biblical interpreter. Your listeners will sub-consciously, if not consciously, start to recognize an inability to let the preaching passage mark your life and ministry. People typically have less respect for a pet passage preacher, or if not, they should.

4. You will miss out on the richness of the Bible. You will flatten it out into a 2-dimensional line drawing when actually there is a depth and richness throughout the canon. Even though you’re tempted to go elsewhere, study and preach the passage in front of you – it will be profitable!

Preaching What’s There But Not

April 11, 2012April 10, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned it before, as have many others, but its worth another shot – don’t rush to “find a message” in your passage, be sure to find the message of the passage.

There are shortcuts that inevitably are attractive to busy and often tired preachers. Here are a few variations:

1. Harvesting Imperatives – you scan the passage and determine there are about three imperatives in the text. Bingo. Three point sermon. But what if those imperatives are all working together, but actually two-thirds of the passage has no imperative? There’s a lot more to making sense of a passage than just spotting terms that look like they might be imperatival.

2. Chunk Chopping – you scan the passage and determine a specific number of roughly equal chunks and chop the passage accordingly. Divide and conquer! Then each chunk becomes a point, and voila, a sermon! But what if there is an internal logic to the passage that isn’t simply about numbers of verses (there usually is something more going on!)

3. Highlight Spotlighting – you scan the passage for something “that will preach” and then you put the spotlight onto it. For instance, I heard a sermon where the preacher spent almost half the message extolling the virtues of getting out of financial debt, all because the passage made a passing transitional reference to having no debt except…well, except the one thing the passage actually was addressing (but that didn’t come through in the message, and nor did the actual message of the author).

4. Morals as Morales – you scan the passage, especially narratives, and identify a moral morale of the story, then preach that. Essentially you are using the text to make your “improving society” speech, but you are probably not actually preaching the text in its context. Certainly the Bible does address morality issues, but it does so in the context of a greater God-human framework than would lead to trite after-dinner morality speeches.

5. Shallow Starters – you say enough about a passage to look like you’ve said something about the passage, and then you get to say what it is you want to say. But this is preaching your own wisdom, why bother? I guarantee God’s content is better than yours.

There are other ways too, I’m sure, but it all boils down to this: do we believe that God is the greatest communicator? If so, then let’s do our best to actually preach the message of the passage, not just settle for a message from a passage.

Preaching Christ or His Benefits

April 10, 2012April 10, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are many subtle problems that can creep into our preaching. This week I’d like to highlight a few that could undermine preaching effectiveness.

Do we fall into preaching the benefits of a hidden Christ? That is, does Christ recede into the background as a “given” in our preaching, so that what we offer people is really all about them?

It is so easy to do this. It is not just the “you can be rich” preachers that do this. In Christ, after all, we are offered forgiveness, identity, status, hope, transformation, eternal life, heaven, etc. But these are all offered in Christ. They aren’t just handed over so that we can continue in our apparently blissful independence.

To see the danger here, I think we have to be much more alert to the shadows of Eden in which we live. We can easily think the Fall has left us with the propensity to do sins, but not realize just how pervasive and absolute that fallen state actually is.

Sometimes the gospel is presented along these lines: God’s perfect standard will not tolerate the slightest blemish. So because I stole a paperclip from work once, therefore my record is forever blighted unless I am forgiven by Christ. This “49/50 is still falling short of the glory of God” idea can convey a couple of false ideas. One is that God is petty. Another is that I only need a bit of help for salvation.

The truth is that all of us are at 0/50, since even our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. Even the good things we do are not good if they are done in fleshly independence from God.

Consequently if we preach the benefits of Christ and miss the greater matter of the relationship we were created for, then the fleshly impulse will drive listeners to make an expedient decision – i.e. trust Christ so that they can have the benefits of forgiveness, status, hope, etc. I sometimes refer to this as “get your ticket to heaven” preaching.

We have to see that this is still shot through with the sin of Genesis 3, rather than the wonder of a heart transforming gospel.

Let’s be careful when we preach not to make the subtle shift from preaching a gospel that draws people out of their self-love, to preaching a gospel that essentially reinforces that self-love.