How to . . . ?

Oh No! It’s Friday, and Sunday’s Coming!

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While some preachers may be so structured that every preparation is perfect, most of us are not able to create such a vacuum to live in. To misquote Tony Campolo, “it’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!”  For preachers this may not be a cry of hope, but of concern.  What are those final stages of preparation that often get short-changed?  Our Lord understands and is gracious to us when life hits.  However, it would be helpful for us to be aware of these things and adjust our preparation so these things are not always cut-short or omitted altogether:

1. Conclusions matter – As someone has said, you can recover from a bad introduction, but not from a bad conclusion.  That final few moments of the sermon are critical, but often get very little preparation in a tight schedule.  Without preparation the conclusion will be forming during preaching, which often means an over-extended sermon with multiple failed landings (an experience no passenger enjoys!)

2. Cut the fat – Usually the sermon manuscript on Friday will be longer than it should be by Sunday.  While first-time preachers worry about filling the time, experienced preachers should worry about removing the fat in the sermon.  As Dave Stone put it recently, there’s a huge difference between taking on a big-burger challenge and eating at a fine restaurant.  People don’t enjoy forcing down two pounds of ground beef.  They would much prefer a well-prepared 7 ounce steak that they can handle.  So before you preach the sermon, cut the fat, give people a carefully prepared portion.

3. Check the balance – It is important to review the balance of the sermon to make sure the weight is distributed appropriately.  You probably don’t want four illustrations in one point of the message, and none in the other points.  Make sure there is appropriate intensity and passion, but also moments of relief or listeners won’t be able to stay with you.  Be careful to allow an idea (or sub-idea) to develop fully – give the necessary time to explain, support and/or apply the idea in each point.  Before preaching the message, make sure it is balanced.  Don’t preach a Popeye sermon: really strong in the forearms, but lacking everywhere else.

Getting Specific Delivery Feedback – Part 1

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A great message prepared is not job done.  As preachers we also have to deliver the message.  There are some aspects of poor delivery that only others can point out.  Periodically ask a handful of listeners to look for specific things in your delivery.  The feedback may be uncomfortable, but it is worth it for the improvement in your preaching.

1. Voice – The enemy of delivery is monotony.  Have somebody listen to your voice and note how much you vary the pitch (up and down), the pace (fast and slow), the punch (stronger and weaker), the use of pause (stop and start), and so on.

2. Verbal Pause – It is great to pause on purpose, but verbal pauses really grate on your listeners.  It could be an “ummm” or a redundant word like, well, uh, “like” or the popular Christian filler “just really.”  Whatever you do to fill those gaps in the flow, find out and then eliminate them. 

3. Gesture – Are your gestures varied, consistent with what you are saying, big enough for the audience, natural?  You may discover that you have a dead arm, or a repetitive movement, or a bizarre mannerism.  Find out, then you can deal with it.

4. Eye Contact – Your eyes are so important they are worthy of their own observer.  Have someone watch your eyes.  Are you looking at the people, or past the people?  Are you looking at the people or at your notes?  Are you looking at all the people, or do you have blind spots?  If you use notes, and are really up for a shock, have someone time how long you are looking at your audience rather than your notes.  The result of this might convince you to try no notes!

Manipulation in Proclamation

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As preachers we are called to do more than inform the mind.  We are not lecturers.  We are not called to achieve a stated goal by any means possible.  We are not salesmen.  So how are we to navigate the pulpit so that we fulfill our calling, but don’t overstep the mark and take on tasks that are not ours?

1. Preach to the heart.  It is important to understand that people are not just mind and will, but first and foremost are heart-driven.  The Bible teaches this, even with all the gymnastics some teachers go through to avoid what the text says.  The heart is more than mere emotions, but it is not merely the mind as some suggest. In Ephesians 4:17-18 Paul urges the believers not to function like the unsaved Gentiles.  They do not act well because of their minds, thinking, and understanding.  But there is another issue.  Their minds are the way they are because their hearts are hardened.  The heart is central, critical and very much in control.  So, as preachers we must address the heart and not take a short cut to just the mind or will.

2. Don’t stir the emotions and then attach spiritual content to that.  Since the heart includes emotions, it is tempting to merely stir the emotions and then attach our message to that emotional reaction.  You can tell a moving story about the little boy who finally hit a home run (for Brits think of a boy hitting a six), then as people feel themselves filling up, drive home the application of the sermon.  “You too are standing at the plate, Jesus is asking you to commit to this challenge this week, will you commit?  Will you swing the bat?”  This is riding on the back of imported emotion to “achieve” something while preaching.  This is manipulation.

3. Allow the text to reach the heart. The solution is not to merely preach an intellectual sermon and avoid the heart.  The key is to preach the text well so that the text itself and the message of the text can do its job.  If the passage is moving, let it move people.  If the passage is stirring, let it stir people.  When the text itself and the message itself stir the emotions, great.  Don’t feel you have to import a moving story to get the job done.  Make sure that emotions are stirred by the text, the message, the idea itself.

Review: Preparing Expository Sermons, by Ramesh Richard

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Sub-title: A Seven-Step Method for Biblical Preaching

Sub-sub-title: The Scripture Sculpture Method

ramesh.jpg

Ramesh Richard teaches preaching at Dallas Seminary as well as around the world in a noteworthy international ministry.  His cross-cultural training and ministry experience gives his book a good level of sensitivity to preaching in various settings and cultures. 

As a student and successor of Haddon Robinson at Dallas, there is a clear mark of Haddon’s influence throughout.  This book is a good introduction to sculpting sermons and is worth reading.  However, for reasons noted below, I would place others higher on my list of best introductions to the subject.

The book itself is short, 140 pages before the appendices.  It is nice to read a concise work, but at times the writing feels slightly overwhelming, with one example or teaching element after another.  Richard takes the reader through seven steps of sermon preparation.  The steps make good sense and are similar to the seven stages I use on this site (main differences in stages 1, 6 and 7).

Throughout the book I found strengths, and usually a “but” as well.  For instance, in stage 2 the focus is on the structure of the text.  This chapter is great at demonstrating content cues and structural markers in a text, but it is almost exclusively focused on individual verses.  By having one verse on a page, as suggested, it is harder to focus on the flow of thought in a “chunk” of text.  On several occasions Richard suggests handling the Bible one paragraph at a time, but there seems to be little attention given to narrative texts that may need multiple paragraphs for a whole plot.  In fact, even in the appendix that deals with narrative texts specifically, the idea of “plot” is strangely absent.

Probably the strongest step in the process is the fourth step, the purpose bridge.  This stage links the Bible study to the stages of sermon formation.  As far as Richard is concerned, the author’s purpose influences the process sufficiently in the Bible study stages of 1-3, so that now at 4, the preaching purpose is the only concern.  I would suggest the author’s purpose must be specifically discerned, rather than assuming it will be discovered in the Bible study process provided, and the author’s purpose should be the starting point for the modern preacher (who obviously can and will sometimes select a differing purpose for the contemporary audience).

Richard is essentially very deductive in approach.  He allows for inductive sermon shapes, but it seems that each major point in any sermon should follow a deductive pattern with the stating of the point up front.  This feels a little rigid.

The final 60 pages of the book are given to 13 appendices.  These deal with issues that regularly come up in Scripture Sculpture seminars around the world.  Strong appendices include one on the Holy Spirit’s role in preaching (a regular concern when people formally interact with the process for the first time), and another on understanding your audience (brief, but with some helpful comments on differing cultures).  On the other hand, several of the appendices are relatively weak and have the feel of an information dump for things that didn’t fit in the text of the book.  Appendix 5 on principilization contains non-stop warnings, but does little to instruct the reader how to avoid the pitfalls.  Appendix 10 provides a sample sermon introduction, but I would assume this sermon was for seminary students, since the language used seems a little lofty for a typical church congregation – omni-function, self-deification, apokalypsis.

For people wishing to have a book that gives a detailed step-by-step process for sculpting a sermon from an epistolary text, this would be a decent option.  For those who, like me, are perpetual students of preaching, then this does contain much to commend it.  Yet as a practical introduction to expository preaching, I would recommend others, such as Robinson and Sunukjian, above Richard.  

(Ramesh Richard also has a book on preparing evangelistic sermons, which I suspect would be a very worthwhile read.)

Speaker Introductions

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

I have heard a lot of introductions.  I’m not writing of those by the preacher, but those about the preacher.  My ministry has never been in a solo-preacher church.  So with different speakers (be they team members or visiting speakers), there is potentially some need to introduce the speaker.  In my traveling role I hear many introductions before I speak.  Here are some musings on the subject:

1. It is easy to say too much.  In an attempt to help the people know the preacher, or to establish his credibility, many will say too much.  I feel that academic qualifications are relevant only in an academic setting or when they relate to a specific and unusual subject matter.  Excessive listing of achievement or position achieves little other than making the speaker’s life sound impressive (and more distant from the “normal” listener).  When asked what to say in an intro, I will usually request that they say as little as possible, perhaps mentioning that I’m married with four children (i.e. a normal person). 

2. The introduction is mostly the preacher’s job.  After a short and simple introduction, I can then decide anything I need to add explicitly for increased credibility or connection.  It is important to note that people are struck far more by the preacher’s manner and delivery in the introduction to the sermon than any achievements they may have in other areas of life.

3. Be sensitive to the worship mood.  In some settings a lot of prayerful thought has gone into the flow of the meeting.  It is a shame to interrupt the moment with an unnecessary introduction of the preacher.  (There have been times when an introduction was so over-the-top that I expected it to end with the words, “so will you join me in worshipping our speaker this morning, Mr . . .”  Obviously this is not the kind of worship I have in mind when I refer to the worship mood!)

4. Is it necessary then, or at all?  It is not a rule that the speaker must be introduced before they come up to speak.  Consider whether the whole meeting would be better served by an introduction in the notice sheet / bulletin, or earlier on in proceedings, or not at all.  Something special can be achieved with a seamless transition between music and message that can never be replicated with an interlude for introduction. 

That Message from That Text?

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

It is vital that the listener be able to see how the message comes from the text they are looking at. The credibility of the speaker matters, but the credibility of the Bible matters more. It matters that people listening to a sermon can look at the text before them and see how the message flows from that particular text. It is not good enough to preach truth, or to preach a sound idea. It matters that the truth and the idea come from the text presented to the people.

Some years ago my wife and I sat in church as the visiting preacher preached the gospel. The message was true, the gospel was clear. But the message was not true to that text, and the gospel was not clear from that text. His “clever” presentation of the gospel undermined the very credibility of the gospel he proclaimed.

Since you’re wondering, he preached the gospel using the three phrases from Job 41:8. First point was that we must identify with Christ (lay your hand on him). Second point, that we must remember what He did for us (remember the battle). Third point was that our salvation is not dependent on us, but on Him, there is no need to keep “getting saved” again (and you will do it no more). The text is not presenting the gospel, it is God telling Job to get in the squared circle and slug it out with leviathan.

May our listeners never leave saying, “Great message, but I don’t see how he got that message from that text!”

Peter has responded to comments on this post.

Preaching Resource Teams in the Local Church

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I know some pastors who love this idea. I know others that seem to flee from it. Consider it. Consider approaching a group of people in the church and ask them to be part of your Preaching Resource Team.

1. Tell them what sermons or series are coming up. They can be on the look out for illustrations, information, stories, statistics, etc. They feed this to you and you filter it for helpful material. In reality, a lot will never get into a sermon, but that is also true with your own hunt for illustrations. Having others feed this stuff to you will help you as there will be a nugget here and there.

2. Tell them when you are going to use their stuff. “Hey Steve, thanks for that moon-landing story, I’m going to use that this Sunday!” Steve will be there. Steve’s family and friends will probably be there too as he herds them in with his head held high.

3. Tell the people where you got the story. “Steve passed me a story that really makes this idea clear for us. When Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon . . .” Now Steve is really beaming (maybe on the outside, probably on the inside), and will double his efforts to help you. Others will also want to help you too, once they see that you are open to input.

4. Tell the team you appreciate them. Perhaps once a year you could throw an appreciation meal for your Preaching Research Team. Make them feel special, appreciated and involved. What do you have to lose?

There are numerous ways to involve members of the congregation in sermon preparation or feedback. I’ll mention others in time, but liked the sound of this idea when I heard it mentioned recently by Dave Stone.

Using a PC in Preaching Preparation

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

It is so easy to take technology for granted.  Some of us have access to more tools than we know what to do with.  Others who read this may have access to relatively little.  Just for fun, here’s my top five helpful tools on the computer, in reverse order:

5. biblicalpreaching.wordpress.com – not a shameless plug, but a pointless plug since you are here already!  I hope this site is useful to preachers as they prepare to preach, that is the point of it.

4. Google – the internet is an incredible thing.  If I want to use the Challenger disaster as an illustration, I can use google and have as much detail as I want almost instantly.  There are dangers though.  The internet can be more effective than an Oreck Excel vacuum cleaner at sucking away your time.  Be disciplined, tread carefully, filter wisely.  In the spiritual battle of sermon preparation, the internet can be an easy tool for the enemy too.

3. Good reference software – I have Libronix on my computer.  This is a huge help, especially when traveling away from my bookshelves.  It is possible to quickly skim through numerous commentaries helpfully turned to the right page at the click of a mouse button.  I say Good reference software for a reason.  There is a lot of filler material on reference software.  Learn what is quality, up-to-date material and generally don’t give too much time or attention to the tools that aren’t. There are some real exceptions, but a lot of free software is free for a reason.  While some titles may have been cutting-edge in their day, public domain status now is not without cause (generally they won’t sell).  Use the best tools available to you, but they are tools – you still have to do the thinking work!

2. Good Bible software – I use Bibleworks for Bible software.  I hear great things about Accordance and Gramcord, and Logos is also in the running.  It is helpful to have a quick reference for parsing verbs, checking the lexicon, analyzing the frequency of a term and so on.  It is no substitute for being able to handle the original languages and can become a crutch that allows whatever skill you have acquired to atrophy.  Those who have not studied the languages should not think that merely parsing a verb makes you a language scholar, there is still much that the software won’t and can’t do for you.  The blessing of speed in research is a responsibility, it means you theoretically have more time to do the hard work of thinking!

1. Word processor – Useful in so many respects.  Obviously you can type outlines, manuscripts and so on.  Cut and paste allows you to reduce a message to an appropriate length and focus.  Material removed from this weeks message can go in what Dave Stone calls a “leftovers” section and may be perfect for next weeks message.  Illustrations can be stored in a folder and searched for using any keyword you put in the file.  Record, remember and retrieve, the key elements in effective filing.  I could go on.  I’ve put a potential danger or warning in the previous listed items.  I can’t think of one for the word processor (I suppose I should say “back-up your files” – nothing worse than losing so much great material!)

The Preacher & Prayer

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Sometimes the obvious needs stating. Preachers should be pray-ers. While it may be possible to follow a procedure and produce a sermon, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is not possible to achieve life transformation unless God is at work. Thus, we need to be on our knees. I could leave it at that, but let me give some examples of how I stimulate my own prayer life regarding ministry (although I know I could do so much more):

1. Pre-prep prayer. Before planning the preaching calendar, and then before preparing a series or a specific message, pray. For example, while driving I will sometimes mentally survey through forthcoming ministry in my mind and pray for each meeting. I might cover three to six months worth of varied ministry in a decent length car journey.

2. Pew and pulpit prayer. Before moving into the role I have now, I was in a more normal local church situation. This meant I could go to the church and run through my message on the platform. I know some preachers who like to pray through their notes as preparation, which is a good option. For me it works well to actually preach through the message and then pray about it. So after preaching it through I would spend time pacing the platform, praying for the meeting, then sitting in the pews and praying for the people who would be there. It is easy to be specific in the prayer when you can see in your mind the people who will be sitting there. (It is not so easy to do this when you preach in different churches, or your church meets in a rented facility. To be honest, I miss these times.)

3. Pre-preaching prayer. Before the sermon, if possible, I like to be near the back of the room. That way I can be thinking through the message and praying for the specific people who are present. Unfortunately some churches expect the speaker to sit on the front pew, or even worse, to run the whole meeting.

Just three of many many possibilities. I’d love to read what other preachers do, please comment. Whatever you do, may you be like James the brother of Jesus, aka camel knees.

Pointers for Points

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The preacher’s outline is a representation of his thought structure.   It is the skeleton on which the flesh of the preaching content lives.  The main chunks, or movements, in a message are often referred to as the “points” of the sermon.  Assuming you write an outline, here are a few pointers that may help your points:

1. Write each point as a complete sentence.  It is tempting to write a title describing the content of the section of text, just as a commentary might.  Often such titles are not full sentences.  Each main point in a sermon is an idea in its own right (a sub-idea in relation to the main idea, if you will), so it should be a complete sentence – not incomplete or vague.  Writing a sermon and writing a commentary are different tasks.

2. Write each point applicationally.  This means a declarative statement, rather than a question or functional description (like a commentary).  By forcing yourself to write the point as a complete sentence that is targeted at the lives of your listeners, you are maintaining the connection between text and audience throughout the message.  In many sermons there is no advantage in saving the application just for the end.  Stronger connection equals stronger message.

3. Write each point to support the main idea.  Each point in a message is a complete idea, but it is not a stand-alone idea.  It’s role is to support the main idea of the message.

4. Remember that the outline is for you.  The outline is for you, not for them, so think carefully before making your points show.  Full and applicational sentences communicate well, but incomplete and vague thoughts, if stated, make the skeleton stick out.  Fashions may change, but bony is not attractive.

5. Remember the importance of transitions.  Since they are hearing, rather than reading the message, you must give real attention to the transitions that move the message between points.