I Like To Pick a Prophet or Two

October 20, 2011October 20, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

When did you last preach a series from one of the writing prophets? When did you last lay open a minor prophet in a single session? I think God gave us a great squad to choose from with the 16 in the canon. Here are five reasons why I like to pick a prophet or two:

1. God’s Heart on the Sleeve – This is the big one for me. The prophets don’t keep you waiting to let you know what is on God’s heart. They were wonderful communicators of God’s passion, concern, anger, love, etc. In a church deeply stained by centuries of stoic thinking, it is a delight to offer the fullness of God’s affections, passions, compassion, emotion.

2. Punchy Relevance in Abundance – The prophets weren’t under the impression that their job was to fill a sermon slot with an informative soliloquy. They cried out to God’s people in specific application to their pain, their misery, their complacency, their present reality. Preaching on overtly applied texts tends to stir greater levels of contemporary relevance today too.

3. Messianic Goldmine in Places – This is what they’re famous for, of course. It’s a delight to preach of the Servant of the Lord, or of Immanuel, or of Zerubbabel’s signet ring, or of the New Covenant blessings. I’d be careful not to cherry pick the messianic predictions, but to preach them in their full context for full effect. We have a wonderful Christ, so preach the prophets!

4. Thematic Contrasts and Crescendos Galore – Like a stunning diamond on black velvet, so read the prophets. Impending judgment flowing into kingdom hope. Human sin overwhelming, then God’s grace superabundant. Faithless people, faithful God. Doom! Salvation! Darkness! Glory! The bulging muscular arm and clenched fist of the Lord! The tender shepherd holding the little ones close to His beating heart!

5. Novelty Value for Jaded Listeners – Perhaps they’ve heard stories from the gospels for months on end. Maybe they are saturated in epistolary logic. Perchance they have experienced the odd dip into Isaiah 6, 40, and 53. But what about Ezekiel 16, or Jeremiah 20, or Hosea, or Zephaniah? Typically the prophets, presuming they are well preached, will get a good hearing because listeners aren’t used to hearing them.

There you go, five reasons why I like to pick a prophet or two.

Where Are The Signs of Life? Part 2

October 19, 2011October 18, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

We are daring to dream. Preachers discouraged by an apparent lack of response to the Word, imagining together what could happen, what should happen as the Word is preached in our churches. Yesterday we thought about gradual climate change and breakthrough moments in church life. Here are a couple more prompts for pondering and prayer. Imagine if . . .

3. The life injection. I have sat through prayer meetings in struggling churches where people have prayed that the Lord might “bring in a young couple to help us…” Certainly many churches have been helped by the arrival of a keen and helpful new couple or family. Imagine the difference salvation can make to a church! While it is great to receive ready-made church servants who move into the area, how much more exciting to receive newborn believers fresh from their spiritual delivery! When people get saved, they bring mess with them, baggage, issues, interesting perspectives, and lots and lots of joy for a church. Imagine what might happen in your church if God were to suddenly save some local folks. Perhaps people resistant to change might become advocates for change because they care about the nurture of these new believers. Perhaps people apparently dead in their pew might become invigorated by the thrill of seeing people coming to faith in Christ and start to share their faith in Christ. Just as a new baby transforms a home, so a new believer might transform your church. Preach the gospel, preach the Word, God continues to rescue the dead and bring them into the kingdom of the Son whom He loves!

4. The spreading ministry. One of the frustrations many preachers face is the feeling that they are alone. A bit of the Elijah syndrome in a local context. There may be the couple who put out the chairs and the lady who does the flowers, and even a Sunday school teacher or two, but somehow it feels like the burden is all yours. Now imagine if, through your preaching, and your example, and God’s Spirit stirring hearts, you discovered that several of the people in the church are becoming proactive in pastoral care, in counseling, in mentoring, in encouraging, in caring. Maybe nobody wants to preach (who would volunteer for public speaking unless they’re a bit weird anyway?), but imagine the difference it would make if the church had a band of on-fire ministers seeking out others to warm their hearts with the relational grace of the gospel. Imagine that spreading as your preaching fans the flames and the whole church community becoming a community of love and concern and trust and support and care . . . and by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another . . . and imagine the community overcoming their preconceived ideas and media driven stereotypes and discovering that the church is a place where people really love each other!

Preach the Word, serve the church, look to Christ, don’t give up.

Where Are The Signs of Life?

October 18, 2011October 18, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I often speak to preachers who are discouraged by the apparent lack of response to the Word in the congregation. For today’s post I’d like us to dream together about what may happen in the next months. After all, we have a God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine. So let’s dare to dream together and pray for each other to see one or more of these scenarios working out in the church where you serve . . .

1. The climate change. You have probably heard this before, but most preachers overestimate what can be achieved in one sermon, but massively underestimate what can be achieved through consistent biblical preaching over the months and years. We hear a lot about climate change, but imagine if the whole ethos of your church were to gradually change. What if people in your church had their hearts warmed by the sunshine of the gospel? What if they became enlivened by the freshness of God’s grace and the Narnian winter of legalism began to thaw? What if people gradually started to see God for who He is and began to delight in Him, starting to move beyond a dutiful Christianity to a delightful responsiveness to Him? Keep preaching the Word and making much of the Lord and pray for climate change in the church!

2. The breakthrough moment. I suppose this is the one we hope for on a weekly basis! What if there is a long running conflict simmering under the surface in a key relationship and you don’t even know about it? And what if this Sunday one party went to the other in tears of repentance and brokenness? What if there is a deep seated sin issue in the church, and this Sunday hearts are broken in repentance and turning to the Lord and stepping into the light? What if one individual is a power broker and this Sunday they decide to finally let go of the reins and trust God with His church? Lots of what ifs, and if any Sunday can be the Sunday, then it might be this Sunday, or the next . . . so keep preaching the Word!

Tomorrow I’ll add a couple more. Let’s dream together and pray for each other. There are a lot of discouraged preachers out there. Preachers placed very strategically, by God, in situations where His Word, His Spirit, His preacher can make the world of difference!

Is Godliness Goodliness?

October 17, 2011October 17, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

As we preach, we both reflect God’s character and we target God’s character in our listeners. The question we have to ask is this – what is God’s character? Some seem to subsume every facet of character under holiness and piety, prioritising the presentation of and pursuit of a personal piety of pursed lips. Today’s post, as is the case every other Monday, is hosted on www.cordeo.org.uk – please click here to go there, thanks!

Strategic Application Saving

October 14, 2011October 14, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I met with a good friend to talk through a passage he is going to preach soon. I love conversations like that! As usual, within a few minutes I was starting to wish I were also preaching that passage. Just a side comment, but pre-preaching conversations about a passage with another preacher can be so fruitful! Anyway, onto the point of today’s post…

I think application is generally best incorporated throughout a message. So instead of lengthy explanation followed by a block of application at the end, we can demonstrate the relevance of the message from the introduction onwards, and at every transition, within every movement of the message, etc. But with the passage we were looking at yesterday, I felt that this was an opportunity for strategic application saving.

His passage has two foci of potential application. One relates to the kind of people we will encounter as we go out into the world to share the gospel. The second relates to the kind of people we are within the church. My suggestion was to make the whole focus on the former, and save the latter until the very end. Why?

My sense was that if he hinted at, or overtly referred to, the possibility that there might be people with false motives in the church, then subconsciously the listeners would have their guard up. Instead, better to focus the application of the passage on “the big world out there and what we will encounter as we share the gospel” for the bulk of the message, allow the listeners to become engrossed in the narrative from Acts, and then at the end introduce the “but what about us in here” target.

Withholding an aspect of application can be very strategic when listeners drop their guard and are therefore more open to be struck by its relevance. Our tendency as preachers is to give away too much early on in the message. Even a little comment like, “this passage speaks to what we will meet out there, and also what kind of people we are…” – that mini comment early on could change the reception of the entire message.

If part of the relevance of a message might be resisted, pay special attention to when you introduce the thought. One option is to avoid early references to it, get the guard to drop, and then perhaps it will hit home more strategically.

Is Everything In Church Life a Preaching Issue?

October 13, 2011October 13, 2011 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Church life seems to be a complicated mixture of many issues. There is the biblical/theological, the worshipful, the devotional, the instructional, the personal, the interpersonal, the contemporary, the cultural, the cross-cultural, the politics (in-house), the financial, the counselling, the development of leadership, the infrastructure of programming, the discipleship, the discipline, the pre-marital, the marital, the building issues and on it goes. So is everything a preaching issue?

Yes and no.

No first. I think some have taken well-meaning comments by famous preachers of the past and pushed them to an extreme. More effective preaching from the pulpit should result in less personal crises in the pew (and hence, less time in counselling). In theory there is truth here, but it would be naive to think that sermons alone will do the pastoral care of a church ministry.

Preaching cannot replace the life-on-life ministries of discipleship, mentoring, pre-marital counselling, interpersonal conflict resolution and on the list goes.

The preacher must be very wise and sensitive about levels of specificity in preaching. A specific issue in the church should not automatically be presented from the pulpit, even in cloaked form. So if Mr and Mrs XYZ are facing significant marital issues, that isn’t a preaching issue.

However…

Yes. Preaching is not one distinct category of church ministry to be listed alongside others as a mutually exclusive function in church life. There is good reason for preaching preparation to take a potentially disproportionate amount of time in our weekly schedule. We may do five or ten things in ministry, but if preaching should not be one fifth or one tenth of our focus. Why? Because preaching is a central ministry of the church that can and should influence every other area.

I cannot simply preach to solve the problem of marital conflict in the church, or address the issue of programme overload, or stir a desire for training and growth within the leaders, etc. But my preaching can influence every one of those areas, and more.

How people view the building, each other, the programme, music, training, missions, relationships, and so on can all be influenced by preaching. We mustn’t fall into the trap of seeing preaching ministry as the weekly Bible bit that speaks detached truths to maintain tradition. Rather the preaching is the primary opportunity to shape a biblical ethos in the character of the church. It is the occasion for marking the very DNA of church life with biblical values. It is the foundation on which all aspects of church ministry can flourish.

Is everything a preaching issue? No. But yes.

Woven Threads of Meaning

October 12, 2011October 12, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here’s a post from back in the early days of this site that I think is worthy of a review (and as in sermon preparation, I’ll find myself tweaking it as I look at it again!)

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Sometimes a passage may prove more complex than it initially appears. This is almost always the case with stories in the Gospels. Christians tend to view each story as a distinct unit that can be pulled out from the context in which it is placed. In reality, each story or account in a Gospel is carefully woven together with others for a purpose.

For example, the stilling of the storm in Mark 4 is placed after, and linked to, the first part of the chapter where Jesus is teaching about the kingdom using parables. The episode is connected to teaching on the small beginnings, but inevitable growth of the kingdom programme. However, in Matthew the account is in a series of miracle stories, quite separate from those same parables (which appear later). While someone might suggest this indicates that what comes before and after is irrelevant to the interpretation of the passage, actually the opposite is true. The stories themselves, just like words, seem to get their meaning not only from within themselves, but also from the company they keep.

So while a story may appear simple to understand, as you study it in its context you often find greater clarity in its meaning and purpose. Then as you consider the context and flow of thought more, the interpretation may become more involved and complex. As a preacher your first priority is not to “find a sermon,” but to do everything you can to understand the passage.

Once you’ve done all that you can to understand the passage, you then have to form the sermon. The temptation will be to dump every element of your study into the sermon. Don’t. What is necessary and helpful? What must be explained, what can simply be stated, what parts of your presentation need proof? How much time do you have to support what you say? Sometimes you will discover that your understanding of a passage has multiple threads of complexity, stretching out through layer after layer of other stories and accounts within the Gospel.

Be thankful for the back-up support you have, but only give as much as is necessary and your listeners can handle. They may be fine with one layer of contextual explanation, but overwhelmed if you present five. Know the passage fully, but also know what your listeners need and are able to take onboard!

This principle applies in every genre – explain as much as necessary, and save as much time as possible for connecting the passage to the people in front of you!

Distraction Decisions

October 11, 2011October 11, 2011 / Peter Mead / 7 Comments

Jon commented on the issue of distraction with the following:

Peter, do you have any solutions for #3, distraction? A few weeks ago I preached a message. I was prepared, everything was ready, and the night before, a dear friend and church member almost passed away, and was still critically ill.

My sermon wasn’t really related to what was on my heart and the heart of everyone else. I wondered if I should have just set it aside, but there was no time to even really think about something else to preach. I could have just spoken without notes/preparation about trials, etc.

Thoughts?

My feeling would be that if the cause of your distraction as a preacher is known to everybody in the congregation – i.e. the whole church is feeling the weight of the situation – then I would lean toward setting aside the notes. In this case it was a dear friend in the church who lay critically ill. On other occasions it could be a global event like 9/11. But if all are thinking of the same thing, then it makes sense as the preacher to engage with that present reality. A few thoughts:

1. Sometimes the situation is personal to you, but less so for others. In this case I would lean toward preaching as planned. There are no rules here, just a sensitivity to the situation and the congregation, not to mention the Lord, of course.

2. If you only have a couple of hours to prepare, God knows. I wouldn’t advocate leaving preparation until the last minute. That smacks of abusing grace. But when it is genuinely minimal preparation, God understands and undertakes (as they used to say in my church back in the day).

3. You don’t know the impact of sensitive, relevant, engaged, pastoring. But you might guess the impact of irrelevance. Even an outsider who doesn’t know the individual concerned might be touched by the love of the church for the brother or sister in Christ. By this will all men know that you are my disciples . . .

I don’t think these decisions are at all easy. And the challenge is to make the decision in a moment of personal distraction (perhaps it is good to consult some trusted colleagues on this kind of decision?) These thoughts are just off the top of my head (and while the intermittent internet connection is temporarily on!) Any thoughts you’d like to add?

Where Do You Preach From – Part 2

October 10, 2011October 3, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Continuing the list from last time, I’m contemplating why a preacher may seem to be emotionally or spiritually a couple of feet back from where their body and mouth appear to be – that sense of distance or aloofness that undermines good engaging preaching.

4. The preacher may be nervous and so suffering from presentation freeze. It’s simple. Nerves freeze the vocal range, facial expressions and body language of the preacher. Maybe nerves have frozen the delivery into a “safe” zone that comes across as stilted, dispassionate and distant.

5. The preacher may be feeling hypocritical due to personal sin. This probably isn’t one to ponder on behalf of another (unless you know something). But it is worth praying through personally. We should all ask the Lord to search and try our hearts to see if there be any wicked way in us.

6. The preacher may be dour in personality. I don’t mean to be rude, but some preachers are just plain dull people. Not sure what to suggest, but do try to reflect the joy, enthusiasm, love, laughter, expression and life that is fitting for one representing our God!

7. The listener may be struggling to engage and projecting the issue onto the preacher. It is entirely possible that it isn’t an issue with the preacher at all, but rather the listener. Then again, if more than one listener points out that you seem distant when you preach, it probably isn’t them!

There might be other reasons too. Perhaps the amplification isn’t set at the right level. Perhaps the lighting isn’t working to full effect. What else might cause this issue, and how can we overcome it? After all, surely we would all rather be effectively communicating and fully engaging to listeners?

Where Do You Preach From?

October 7, 2011October 3, 2011 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Have you ever got the sense that the preacher is preaching from a couple of feet behind where their body is located? Perhaps there’s a better way to put this, but I’m struggling to think of how to do so. What I mean is that sense that the preacher is speaking the words, but somehow, behind the speaking there is a gap. It’s a gap from heart to mouth, a gap from personality to mouth. It’s as if the preacher’s mouth is being held at arms length from the core of who the preacher is. Somehow the preacher is not giving fully of themselves, but seem rather to be holding something back. Why might a preacher come across this way?

1. The message may not be fresh and overflowing. When a message is old and hasn’t been worked to the point of dynamic freshness, the preacher may stumble through, overly relying on notes, fumbling for words, lacking heart and enthusiasm. It may not be the preacher’s fault, necessarily, but the best preaching comes not from having good notes, or just from good content, but also from being “prayed full” to overflowing with the message God has given.

2. The message may not be truly owned. Perhaps the preacher started preparing too late and so the message hasn’t penetrated the spiritual fibre of their character. Perhaps the preacher remains unconvinced, or even resistant to the full implications of the text. Maybe the preacher has plagiarized the message and hasn’t genuinely worked it through until it is fully owned. The preaching event is not just the message, it is about the message through the messenger.

3. The preacher may be spiritually or emotionally distracted. Everybody has an off day, maybe this is the case. We shouldn’t judge too harshly without knowing the facts. Equally, God sometimes comes through in power when the preacher is at the lowest ebb.

I don’t want to go too long, so I’ll finish the list next time. Love to hear your thoughts on this . . .