5 Radars Every Preacher Needs – #2

January 20, 2015January 19, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The second of five radars may well be the most important and the most difficult to develop. Yesterday’s radar considered one aspect of our textual study skills, but this radar is about our underlying assumptions about everything. I think we should all prayerfully ask God to develop in us:

Radar 2. Hissing Radar (in your assumptions)

The most dangerous assumption we can make is that we are neutral and can think clearly. Every one of us has spent our entire life swimming and soaking in the brine of a post-Fall world system that hisses constantly with The Lie of pseudo-godlike autonomy. The serpent introduced skepticism about God’s word, God’s character, and invited humanity to dive into a totally new version of godliness. This new godliness meant that we humans became the image of the god of this age – self-absorbed, autonomous and overly confident in our own independent capacities. We live our lives deafened to the hiss of our serpent-shaped existence.

The Gospel doesn’t save us from one or two sins we have done, but from the absolute self-loving, God-hating, autonomy of our spiritually dead hearts. The problem we have as believers is that we tend to think we are somehow now immune to the subtle influence of The Lie.

Our flesh has been pickled in the subtle but sour vinegar of that original Lie. As we seek to grow, let’s pray that God will develop in us a radar that will hiss when our assumptions evidence that serpentine autonomous impulse.

Here are some quick flags to highlight areas this lie often surfaces:

God can be a source of resources for us, but always from a distance.
With suitable resourcing I can do the job myself . . . i.e. sanctification.
I can be a good Christian, but I don’t need any sort of relational closeness to Christ.
I don’t need you (where you is God, or you is other believers).
I make independent and uninfluenced decisions, and therefore I am alive.
If my preaching can offer practical guidance, then individuals can make the decision to apply the teaching and be successful at living their individual and independent lives.
Etc.

May God develop in us an early warning system that hisses whenever our assumptions are dangerously autonomous and self-glorifying.

5 Radars Every Preacher Needs

January 19, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

To grow as preachers, I believe we need to develop several internal radars. Think of a radar as an early warning system that beeps when there is an issue in the vicinity. To be without any radar is to be dangerously naïve. This week I plan to work through five radars we can prayerfully develop in our preaching:

Radar 1. Old Testament Radar (in your text)

Sometimes Bible writers flag up their use of earlier texts, “to fulfil what was written…” Often they simply allude to, or hint at, biblical texts that are feeding into their thought. Biblical writers typically assumed that their readers would have a full Jewish familiarity with the Old Testament, but most of us do not have anything like a full Jewish familiarity with the Old Testament. Hence we need to develop the radar. Unless we do, we will miss a lot of what is sitting in the sermon text before us.

I am not suggesting that every sermon should fully develop every earlier biblical allusion in the preaching text. I am suggesting that a preacher who is unaware of how earlier texts inform and shape the preaching text will struggle to be a good steward of the preaching text. The best preachers do not say everything there is to say, and they do speak with clarity and simplicity. Please preach with clarity and simplicity, but with clarity built on the richest and most determined exegetical study already under your belt. This means lots of things, but it must include a growing awareness of earlier texts assumed by the writer of the preaching text.

For example . . . think about John 3:1-16, Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Nic knew his Bible, but was treated as unqualified for conversation about spiritual matters. In the course of the conversation the text is picking up on Ezekiel 36, Deuteronomy 29, Numbers 21, and perhaps the overarching backdrop – Genesis 3 . . . (is Nicodemus dead and needing a new birth, or not?)

How do we develop this radar? Two suggestions:

A. Read the whole Bible, a lot. There is no tool that can compensate for a lack of personal intimacy with the Word of God. Prayerfully and purposefully devour the Scriptures as if they are the most precious gift you have.

B. Double check you haven’t missed something with good commentators. We need the benefit of the community of God’s people and good commentators are a real blessing. At the same time, many do miss the influence of earlier texts and so shouldn’t be relied upon apart from A, above.

Tomorrow I will offer another radar I believe we all need to see developed in our lives.

8 Ways to Become a Warm-Hearted Preacher

January 14, 2015January 11, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

John Stott wrote that a preacher is a bridge builder. That is, in the act of preaching, the preacher is seeking to build a bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of the listeners. A good biblical message will be solidly earthed in the biblical text, but it must also fully embrace the listeners in their world.

Effective communication requires that we know about those who are listening to our message. However, the preacher is not a politician, nor a salesperson. The preacher is a shepherd of souls. God invites us not only to know the listeners, but to really love them.

Here are eight nudges in that direction:

1. We love, because God first loved us. We cannot self-generate love for God or for other people. Love is a response to the love God has first poured out for us. As we fix our gaze on Him, our hearts will begin to beat with His. He loves our listeners, so we can too.

2. A lack of love for others indicates a problem. We can’t claim to love God, but not love our brother. Let coldness toward others stir you to ask God to search your heart. Take coldness seriously, God does.

3. Loving those we pastor is sometimes challenging. Loving strangers is a challenge for a visiting speaker. Loving people you shepherd can be harder. Vulnerable sheep can bite.

4. We can connect because we are not in a separate category. Maintaining a permanently stoic resolve does not make you a great leader, it makes you a distant one. You experience many of the same challenges and struggles others face. Be honest with yourself about what you do face, and what you don’t.

5. Diligently study your people. Don’t be a master exegete of the text, but oblivious to your people.

6. Before you talk in the pulpit, listen carefully. Most people don’t necessarily want to be seen, but they long to be heard.

7. Sharing life experience helps massively. Remaining distant is easy, but harmful. Have folks over, visit them at home or at work. Share sport, share celebrations, share sorrow, share life.

8. Pray for people. It’s easy to pray a “God please bless all the listeners on Sunday” kind of prayer. I think God can spot the value you place on people by the prayers you pray for them.

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.

Preaching Holiness

December 2, 2014 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Holiness is a huge theme in the Bible. It should be a huge theme in our preaching. Sadly, what is often preached about holiness seems to fall woefully short of the richness of the biblical reality.

I remember hearing one preacher say confidently that what our nation needs is to be moralized. I suspect he didn’t understand what he was saying. Moralizing is a danger in preaching, not because we don’t want to see society transformed, but precisely because moralizing won’t do the job. Pressuring people to conform to certain standards won’t generate holiness in our churches or our land any more than pressuring a tone deaf choir to sing in tune will lead to sweet music.

Here are a few key thoughts to ponder on holiness and preaching:

1. People don’t make themselves holy, God’s Holy Spirit makes people holy. It is so tempting to pressure people to conform to some standard, but we must preach out of a conviction that God changes lives. The clue is in His title, the Holy Spirit. This reality should influence our pre-preaching prayer, our content and our manner in the pulpit.

2. When we only present holiness as being “set apart from” something, it can sound so sour and empty. What passes for holiness in many churches is so sour and strange that it seems a million miles from the wholeness of life and love we see in Jesus as we read the Gospels. True holiness is not pinched, it is fully alive. True holiness is not a barrel of vinegar, it is a feast of true and abundant life.

3. God’s holiness is not sour, it is infinitely beautiful and attractive. When we present God as a celestial killjoy, we misrepresent the God whose abundant heart created and infinite generosity created unfettered joy and vibrant life. God’s holiness is not the sterile hygiene of an operating theatre, it is the fullness of the rich loyal love He enjoys within the Godhead…

4. God’s holiness is not balanced against His love – it is the reality of His loving Tri–unity. Too often we offer strange balancing acts that seem somewhat foreign to the presentation of Scripture. God is not infinitely loving, but only 50% that way. It is not true that He is love (but also something else, with the “but” being an adversative). God is love. And that love is perfectly faithful, loyal, pure, just, righteous and holy.

The list continues tomorrow…

Creative Christmas Sermon Options

November 20, 2014 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Christmas services are just a few weeks away. You might be getting excited, or dreading another Christmas and the need to generate more messages when the obvious options feel well worn. Here are some other angles to consider:

Prophecies – there are some key Old Testament prophecies, such as Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6, Micah 5:2, even Jeremiah 31:15. Why not take an Old Testament approach to Christmas hopes this year?

People – maybe you have preached through Matthew’s opening chapters, but have you preached the four other ladies in Matthew’s genealogy . . . Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the one “who had been Uriah’s wife.” Four ladies with question marks over their morality, rightly or wrongly, that set up the lady who has to be in the genealogy (also with a question mark hanging over her morality, wrongly in her case). Or perhaps you might trace the Gentiles in the genealogy to show the greater scope of the Christmas hope?

Themes – why not track a theme this year that could be developed with one week in the Old Testament, one week in the Christmas narratives and one week later on in the gospels or epistles. For example, consider the Immanuel theme from Isaiah 7:14-9:7, emphasized in Matthew 1, continued for our age in Matthew 28:20.

Less Obvious Passages – perhaps you might consider the less obvious Christmas passages, ie. those that aren’t in early Matthew or Luke. You have the prologue to John’s Gospel, giving the other side of the story, if you like. Or you have references like Galatians 4:4 and similarly Incarnation focused passages like Titus 2:11-14.

Christmas Titles – it would be interesting to explore the titles used in the Christmas narratives – Jesus, Saviour, Immanuel, King, etc.

Carol Theology – while some are keen to cut down the errors in the carols, there are some great truths encapsulated in the carols too. Perhaps you could take Hark the Herald Angels Sing or another carol and trace the biblical background to a verse each week. Different, but for some congregations this might be a blessing. Remember that you are preaching the Bible, not the carol.

Contemporary Emphases – you could take key emphases in the world’s view of Christmas and present a positive biblical engagement with each one. Gifts, peace, goodwill, family, etc.

November is here, Christmas is coming. Let’s not have our pulpits filled with preachers trying to hide a creative fatigue over such a great subject. Let’s take a new angle, dive into the Bible and preach with hearts spilling over!

Identifying with Bible Characters

November 16, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The Bible is full of stories. Stories are very effective ways to communicate. When a story begins, people tend to do two things – first, they identify with (or disassociate from) characters, and second, they feel the tension in the story, anticipating the resolution. So when we preach Bible stories, let’s be sure to help listeners connect with what is going on.

1. Don’t give a history lecture, preach the story to today. It is easier, perhaps, to dispassionately tell what happened back then. But it is not easier to listen to that. It is, typically, dull. However you may choose to do it, please make it clear to your listeners how the ancient story impacts contemporary life. That doesn’t mean you have to constantly make up-to-date references (sometimes telling a story takes time and making lots of links to today can become distracting), but do frame the sermon with relevance so people know there is value in engaging the story fully.

2. Don’t caricature the characters, encourage identification with their fallen and frail human-ness. It is easy to pick on one solitary feature of a character in a story, but fail to give a fair representation of them. Peter puts his foot in his mouth, but he also has the guts to get out of the boat. Zechariah doubted the angel, but was also a faithful pray-er over many decades. Don’t simply beat up listeners with a quick connection to the failure of a character. Stories work slowly as the listener engages with a character all the way to the point of resolution in the story. Simply pointing out a flaw and applying it carries all the sermonic tension of a limp rope. Try to reflect the fullness of the character portrayal offered in the biblical narrative and its context.

3. Don’t identify without theocentrizing. It is also possible to present the characters effectively so that listeners can identify with them, but miss the point that God is at the center of biblical narrative. It’s not just Joseph’s kindness and personal character quality that is significant in Matthew 1, it is also very much focused on God’s revelation of His plan to both save His people from their sins and His presence with His people. Joseph is a great example of a “fine, young man.” But the passage presents this fine, young man responding to the revelation of God’s purposes. Jesus, Immanuel. That is the information that Joseph acted upon. The amazing thing about Christmas narratives is that the theocentric truth is bundled up in a tiny human infant. (And we get to preach the amazing truth of the Incarnation soon!)

Christmas preached as just peace and happiness and quaint idyllic scenes is a travesty – Christmas is also a set up for theocentric preaching (but don’t lose the humanness of the other characters too).

The JtB Principle

November 5, 2014 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Years ago I experienced a weekend of preaching that marked my own ministry for life. Our church had managed to book a very well known speaker for its annual retreat. That weekend, his preaching was a disaster. As my wife and I drove home we reflected on the weekend of ministry and I knew this was a key moment in my life and ministry. Reflecting on how he had ended up preaching like that stirred me to choose a different path.

I am convinced we all need to settle this core issue now, whatever stage of life and ministry we are at:

The John the Baptist Principle: Jesus must become greater, I must become less.

There is a fork in the road before us all. One pathway is signposted “Jesus” and the other one is signposted “me.” For all his good ministry over the years, this particular preacher seemed to have been okay with promoting himself through his preaching. It felt so uncomfortable for us who were listening. I decided that I wanted to choose the other option. What does that involve?

Instead of seeking to impress listeners, let us seek to communicate – Our flesh and ego will be tempted to bust out our lofty learned vocabulary and heavy-duty theological terminology. But if we are on the “Preach Jesus” pathway, then we will seek to be as clear and simple as possible. We will be more satisfied to hear that a twelve year old listened attentively, than we will be to be told our preaching was “deep” (i.e. over the head of the person seeking to give polite feedback).

Instead of seeking to impress listeners, let us seek to equip – Again, our fleshly tendency toward pride will naturally want to make folks want to hear us again. It is nice to think that people are dependent on you for their weekly dose of truth. But if we are on the “Preach Jesus” pathway, then that will include a desire to equip them to read the Bible for themselves, meet Jesus for themselves, feed themselves, etc. If every sermon is primarily about presenting God through an accurate, clear, engaging and relevant presentation of that text, may every sermon have a secondary goal of motivating listeners to want to engage with God in His Word during the rest of the week.

Instead of seeking to impress listeners, let us seek to introduce – Our fleshly inclination to present ourselves as the centre of the universe will nudge us toward assuming personal introductions are over as our sermon introduction begins. That is, “I am here now, and I am preaching.” This will typically be followed by an attempt to impress people with my knowledge, or my wisdom, or my suggestion for their betterment, etc. But if we are on the “Preach Jesus” pathway, then we will feel compelled to introduce the person of our God, typically by pointing to His Son, throughout the message. The personal introduction is the core of the message and the person being introduced isn’t ultimately us, but Him. And when lives aren’t transformed as we prayed they would be, then our prayer will tend to be, “Lord, please help me do a better job of introducing you . . . because I know that if they could just catch a glimpse of you, change would follow. PS Please let me know you more before next Sunday too!”

Preaching Big Books

November 4, 2014 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Perhaps you shy away from preaching series from the bigger books in the Bible? Maybe it would help to think differently about big book series. There is more than one way to preach a series from a big book (like a major prophet or Acts):

The one way – the traditional approach would be to start at the beginning and work meticulously through each passage. It might take a couple of years to get through, but it might be worth it. God can certainly use a book like Isaiah or Chronicles to shape your church. At the same time, people may grow slightly disenchanted after a while. So perhaps you’ve avoided these longer books?

Other approaches:

1. Whole Book, Varied Text Length – Just as the label suggests, you can still preach the whole book, but don’t always preach the same length textual units. To cover a few verses one week and a few chapters another week can add energy and momentum to a series.

2. Whole Book, Highlight Texts – Again, my labels are giving the game away here, but you can also preach the whole book by offering sample highlights from each section. Carefully done this can motivate people to read the whole for themselves, which is never a bad by-product of your preaching.

3. Section of Book – God did give us 66 whole books, but I think it is allowed to take a key section and preach it methodically. Some sections of books are bigger in size and richer in content than other entire books, so why not? Just remember to keep the section in its larger context as you study and preach.

4. Whole Book in One, Plus Whatever – To start or finish the series, why not preach the book as a whole in some way? By doing this you give the benefit of the big picture, and also have the freedom to not cover every detail in the rest of the series.

5. Section Overview, then Highlights – Another approach is to give a big picture of a section, followed by a highlight passage in that section. Then the next two weeks do the next section. For instance, you could preach an overview of Isaiah 1-12, followed by a week in Isaiah 6 alone. Then overview Isaiah 13-27, followed by Isaiah 25 alone. Etc.

There are other approaches too. Feel free to share any ideas I’ve missed here…

Sermon Strategy

October 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Part of the preaching preparation process is the sermon strategy phase. After studying the passage, determining its main idea, prayerfully deciding on your goal for the sermon, and the wording of the sermon’s main idea, then it is time to plot your strategy. Here are the big questions to be asking:

1. When do I reveal the main idea? Do I reveal it early and repeat it often? Do I build up to it and reveal it later? How does the text set up the communication of the main idea? How does my audience influence when the main idea should be given?

2. When can I demonstrate the relevance of this message? How early can I form a connection between preacher/message/Bible and listeners? As well as the conclusion, can I show relevance in the introduction? How about in the wording of the main points or movements? What about in the transitions? Can I drop hints into the explanation of the text itself?

3. How can I do what the text does, as well as saying what the text says? Since this passage is unique, how will it influence this sermon so that it too is genuinely unique? Since God inspired the author and God is a great communicator, how does genre choice influence the way this sermon is preached? Where can I replicate the force of the text – perhaps the tension of a narrative, or the imagery of a poem, or the forcefulness of a discourse, or the provocation of a parable?

4. How can I reinforce the flow of the sermon with delivery details? Can I reflect the energy or warmth of content in the manner of delivery? Perhaps I should sit on a stool for some, or be able to put my Bible down for a part, or have the freedom to step away from the furniture, or would a prop help, or . . . ? Am I spotting danger areas where I may feel rushed, or may become monotonous, or may lose momentum?

5. What is God’s heart in all of this? Have I allowed my own strategic planning to become a private thought process instead of a prayerful dependence on God? Can I talk all this through prayerfully instead of privately so that I lean on God? Can I talk all this through with a team from my church so that I can benefit from their perspective before I preach it and enable them to pray more intelligently too?