How to . . . ?

Providence and Preaching 2

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In my last post I wrote about the issue of interrupted “zone-ish-ness” – that is, what happens when we are in the zone for a sermon and something comes out of nowhere and knocks us so that we wobble?  I say let’s learn to trust God’s providence and become better preachers.

Here are some thoughts to probe the notion further:

Unsolicited information may be pure gold – One of my most creative sermons was never preached.  Probably a good thing, too.  I had this great idea to preach Ezekiel 16 from another room.  That is, it would just be a voice speaking out to the gathered people, perhaps in low lighting.  The idea was developing nicely, and then the chap giving the church announcements made the suggestion that people might like to bring their friends along to that particular event.  Uh?  No!  Oh wait, perhaps the creativity was a little off target anyway.  I’m glad I didn’t preach that without thinking through the very real possibility that guests would be present (announcement or no announcement).

Hearing just before standing up to preach that such and such a person is present, and is struggling with this or that harsh reality . . . this can be pure gold information.  Suddenly a message that was true and good can become targeted and precise.  It does involve prayer and a bit of thinking in the final minutes before preaching, but perhaps that is exactly what the message needed?  I know I was planning a message recently and it was a bit flat.  A comment from my wife about a conversation she’d had could have sent me spinning, but instead I thank God for that piece of information – it reshaped the message for good.

I remember finding out as I stood up to preach a 20-25 minute message that it had to last exactly 65 minutes.  Not sure I did so well there, but maybe someone listening needed the extra repetition and reinforcement that they got as a result!

There are many times when we find out information a bit later than we might have preferred.  It could be about the listeners.  It could be about the church.  It could be about the passage (hopefully not).  Whatever it is, let’s be leaning on God and trusting Him to be providentially in charge, since, after all, He is.

Preaching & Application 5

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Here’s the end of the list.  Probably the most important post of the series . . .

17. Be wary since not every application is biblically legitimate. That is to say, a potential application in a passage may not be the intended application of that passage. For example, to make a big point out of the problem of grumbling from Luke 19:7 is to entirely miss why the reference to the grumbling crowd is included in the story of Zaccheus. You might point to the verse as support, but you don’t have the support of the passage standing with you.

18. Be careful that an application from here may not be consistent with the rest of Scripture. We are quick to talk about the value of comparing Scripture with Scripture in our exegetical phase of bible study. I think there is massive value in this principle coming to bear at the level of application. Stay where you are during your study (for the majority of your study), but be careful to check your application is consistent with the whole of Scripture. Be a shame to start sacrificing animals in obedience to Leviticus, right? We can fall into less obvious mis-applications too for the same reason.

19. Be wary of biblical application that is sub-biblical in its goal. Let me give one, probably the most common, sub-biblical application. “In light of this passage you need to . . . ” or “let us . . . ” Any application that focuses on listeners becoming self-starting or independently successful individuals should set off alarm bells all over our theology. Remember where the “you can be an independent self-starter” came from? Let the spiritual radar hiss when you hear this serpent-like implication, even when you are quoting Scripture to support your point (I suspect you won’t be quoting it accurately in its broader context!)

20. Be an on purpose “match-maker” in your application. Maybe this isn’t the best phrase for what I mean here, but it is a vital point. If your goal isn’t independent self-moved successful individuals, then your goal must involve some relational connection. The gospel changes lives. God changes lives. When you preach, please don’t beat us up and tell us to try harder. Instead, offer us the Father revealed in the Son by the Spirit and watch our hearts melt, our motivations stir, and our lives change.

Preaching & Application 3

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No clever introduction, let the list continue . . .

9. Be mature in your application. The immature preacher will hammer out simplistic advice. The mature preacher knows that Christianity isn’t about self-help advice and tips for better living. There is a place for clear guidelines, the Bible gives us such in certain areas. But a lot of life’s issues are not effectively addressed by simplistic “try harder” exhortations. We are designed to be empowered in responsiveness, not empowered for autonomous success. How does God’s promise and God’s presence change things? How does He change us? Don’t tell me to be a better man, but show me Christ and you’ll soon see a better me.

10. Be consistent with the worship. Too often the heart-stirring devotion of sung worship leads to whiplash when the whipping from the pulpit kicks into gear. The whole package should be consistent. If it doesn’t seem right to sing hymns of good living tips – “Raise up the bar so that we might try harder to be good,” or “Amazing Effort,” or “It’s All About Me, Jesus.” If that doesn’t seem right, then maybe it is the preaching that needs to be more consistent with the worship.

11. Be sermonically fresh. When sermons are predictable they tend to lose their impact. So if you are in a rhythm of explanation followed by three points of application in the final minutes, consider whether this tried and trusted method might well have become stale and predictable. Look for different ways to demonstrate the relevance of passages to your listeners.

12. Be consistently relevant. That is to say, instead of ending with application, consider how to demonstrate relevance and application throughout the message. The opening introductory comments are an ideal place to engage listeners and demonstrate your relevance, as well as the relevance of the message and the passage. Try stating your points in contemporary and applied terms. Use transitions for exploring developing application as the message progresses. Drop in hints of relevance, even if not fully developed applications, during the telling of biblical story (avoid trite applications that mishandle the text, but even hints of contemporary awareness can make a real difference to perception).

Application & Preaching 2

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Carrying on with more thoughts on application in preaching…

5. Be aware of the specific people to whom you preach. Just because a church is in a neighbourhood, this doesn’t mean the people in the church are typical of the people in the neighbourhood.

6. Be aware of the people whom the church is trying to reach. Here’s where number 5 becomes tricky. You may be preaching to one group of people but trying to reach a quite different group of people. Application is about targetted preaching – aiming vaguely is never wise when trying to hit a target.  So do you preach to those who are present, or to those you’d like them to feel comfortable bringing?  Both is a good idea.  Neither seems ludicrous.

7. Be applicationally authentic. While it is easy to throw stones at post-modernity with all its relativizing of truth and denial of absolutes, let’s not miss the underarm throw that sits up invitingly before us as if to taunt us. This culture craves authenticity. It doesn’t get excited by authority or formalized religion or establishment stuff. But it does crave authenticity. Where else but in the community of God’s saved people can people go to find authenticity? But will they find it with us? Honesty, vulnerability, transparency, authenticity. We need to find a voice that is personally real, rather than offering application at arms length and so coming across as tipsters from a bygone era.

8. Be courageously bold. Paul told the Ephesian elders how he did not hesitate to proclaim the whole counsel of God. Do we? Do we apply the truth of God’s Word to the quirks and distinctive corporate personality of a local church? This takes boldness. You’ll get praise for critiquing the sins of others, but don’t go touching local sin if you want an easy life! At the same time our culture needs a sensitive, yet bold, propheticc voice to speak out. This is where preaching from personal proof texts doesn’t look good. But preaching through books or sections can allow a greater freedom since the agenda is coming from the text.

The Heidelberg Catechism on Powerpoint

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Question 130.  What does God require of preachers tempted to rely on technology?

Answer:  Ok, this was a provocative title, and technically Microsoft programmers were still in the early stages of development and they hadn’t yet released powerpoint in 1563.  But the title may not be too far off.  I was looking through the Heidelberg Catechism earlier this week in light of a discussion on some historical matters.  Along with several other points that I really appreciated, I noticed one particularly relevant to preachers.  Question 97 develops the issue of not making images of God with a broader question of the use of images in the church.  Then comes question 98 . . .

Question 98.  But may not images be tolerated in the churches, as books to the laity?

Answer: No, for we must not pretend to be wiser than God, who will have his people taught, not by dumb images, but by the lively preaching of his word.

Quick thoughts . . .

1. Do we fall into the trap of thinking that we know better than God in our age of sophistication?  I wonder if previous generations had all the same comments about, “Well, you know, this generation now is different and so we need to . . . “

2. Do we think people can’t be engaged and drawn in and captivated by the teaching of the Word of God?  I won’t get started on attention spans or this will become a long post!

3. Do we do our best to be alive, life-giving and lively in our preaching?  No generation has ever thrived under the dull preaching of God’s Word.

Get the Idea!?

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As a child I would ask my Dad for help with various projects – fixing the brakes on my bike, getting the scalextric set up, getting the lawnmower to work.  Invariably he would show me and then say, “do you get the idea?”  I usually did and that was that.

Then I studied preaching at seminary.  All of my teachers (thankfully) were proponents of “Big Idea” preaching.  So now, as I prepare to preach, I am haunted by the question from years ago – do I get the idea?  If I don’t, I’m not ready to preach.  However, finding the main idea in a passage is usually not as easy as fixing the brakes on my bike.

It seems like a disproportionate amount of time can be spent trying to formulate a single sentence in the preparation process.  But this single sentence is so important that it is always time worth investing.  The payout is always sermon-wide.  And the fallout should be church-wide and beyond.  So let’s spend some days chasing the issue of the main idea, or as Haddon Robinson would put it, the Big Idea.

1. Ideas are the building blocks of communication.  We communicate in ideas.  Not words.  Ideas.  It is possible to get across a message without speaking a word – just think of advertising on the television or a billboard that uses imagery rather than words, just think of your mother when you came up with a creative activity as a guest in somebody else’s home.  Words matter, but ideas communicate.  So with any biblical passage – it consists of a set of ideas, some bigger, some smaller, all interrelated, and ultimately, all serving the main idea that drives the whole passage.  Our job as communicators is not to parrot words, but to grasp and give out the main idea of a passage.

2. Ideas are made up of two parts.  I tend to call it the single sentence summary.  Somehow that feels easier to grasp than the full explanation of an idea.  But let’s go to the full explanation, it isn’t that bad.  What is the passage about?  This is the subject.  What is the passage saying about that?  That is the complement.  Put them together and you have the idea.  Sounds easy.  Sometimes it helps to ask, “what question is this passage answering?” (subject-question), and “what answer does it give?” (complement-answer).  Or just summarize the whole passage in a single sentence.

Whatever it takes, let’s be sure we get the idea!

What Teaches Us?

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Today’s post looks at Paul’s teaching to Titus on the mechanism for producing godliness in believers.  From our perspective as preachers, perhaps the bottom line is this: let’s do a better job of preaching Jesus.  Seems like many preachers are too concerned to be the moral police for churchgoer and society alike.  But if we are really concerned, perhaps we need to let Him become greater, and other arm-twisting approaches become less.  Feel free to comment on either site.  Click here to go to the post.

Faint Not: The Discouraged Preacher 4

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What are we to do when facing discouragement?  Yesterday I started with crying out to God and to a helpful friend.  I think that is fundamental.  But there are some other thoughts that are worth throwing into the mix as well.

3. Keep pressing on.  Discouragement is all about losing the courage to persevere.  It can be so hard to move forward when it feels futile, or you feel opposed.  Our minds will always and quickly justify whatever our hearts desire.  “I don’t want to compete” or “Maybe this is time to move on”, etc.  Maybe.  But typically it is better to first, inasmuch as it depends on you, do whatever you can to make things right.  Perhaps this is a season of spiritual attack.  Or perhaps you are personally drained.  It probably isn’t the season of life to make big life-changing decisions.  The alternative is to press forward, eyes on the Lord, trusting Him to bring you through or make it clear if you actually are in a cul-de-sac.  As a default, when times are tough, press on.  Just be wary of doing so in your own strength.

4. Look for the bigger picture.  It is natural that during times of discouragement we tend to look inwards and take our eyes off the Lord.  One way to pursue the bigger picture is…

5. Don’t surrender, but do retreat.  Not in the military sense, but go on a retreat.  Perhaps a day in the woods.  Maybe head for the coast.  Turn off the phone.  You and God.  Pray.  Plead.  Pause.  Pursue Him in the midst of everything and ask Him to help you see clearly in a time when your vision feels clouded.  Listen to great chunks of Bible.  If you’re married, don’t always just retreat alone, but share together the ministry journey you are called to together.  And in retreat, don’t simply dwell on your own corner of the great mission field.  Take some time to consider the greater things that God is doing (after all, it isn’t all about you and me!)

6. As you look outwards, consider giving.  Huh?  Ministers are always giving.  I know.  But it might be worth finding someone totally disconnected and serving them in some way.  Take time to pray for a ministry you are only vaguely connected to.  Give a financial gift anonymously to something or someone that isn’t part of your own sphere of influence.  Go cut an elderly neighbour’s lawn.  Perhaps it is an act of faith, or just recalibrating the fact that you are a servant and it is blessed to give.  Somehow preaching and ministry can easily get complex, so that our self-giving in our own sphere grows entangled and confused.  But in giving we reflect our most giving God.  It might help.

Whether we are discouraged or not, all of us stand at a fork in the road.  One way is the way of trusting God, the other is the way of trusting self.  In times of victory, or in times of failure; in times of great hope, or in times of discouragement, the paths remain the same.  In response to His self-giving, let’s give ourselves first to Christ, and then let Him lead us carefully on.

 

Making Truth Understood

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So we’ve thought about making biblical truth memorable, and making it known, but what about making it understood.  Is that what preaching is?  Yes.  And no.

1. Contemporary listeners need help understanding the Bible.

There is a significant distance between today’s world and the world of the Bible.  As the preacher, you have a key role in helping to bridge that divide.  This means overcoming differences in culture, in language, in politics, in religion, in worldview, in geography, in customs, in perspectives, etc.  When you preach the Bible you need to help make sense of a very different world for the sake of those in yours.

This means we can’t just read the text and then apply it.  We have to make sense of what is going on.  This means plumbing not only the historical setting and context, but also the literary setting and context.  We have to help people make sense of not only a strangely different world, but also an unusual collection of texts.  People need to understand the canonical structure, the development of thought, the informing theology feeding into a passage, the shape of the story beyond the passage, the nature of the genre of the passage, the forms of literary design within the passage, etc.

And all this means that as preachers we have to make value judgments.  We can’t just dump all the information we know and learn into a message.  This would make it overwhelming and too long.  So we must decide what needs to be said, this time, to make sense of this passage.

2. Your listeners need more than just understanding, but not less.

Just to make matters worse, understanding is not the only goal.  It is the foundational step.  That is, without understanding, then we cannot build effective application, and we cannot expect genuine transformation.  It is no shortcut to bypass understanding and go straight to application, pressing for compliance or hoping for transformation.  Application and transformation must be built squarely on clear understanding of the text.  God is not into radically new revelation.  He has given us His Word to transform lives. He invites us to engage Him there, and as we do so, He also encounters us to change us now.  God hasn’t appointed us to simply explain the truth of His Word, nor to simply seek transformed lives by means of pointed application.  He has appointed us to put it all together – explain, apply, pursue transformation.

Making Truth Known

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Yesterday I critiqued the old idea that homiletics is about making truth memorable.  I’d like to ponder a similar issue with both affirmation and critique.  Can we say that preaching is about making truth known?  Yes.  But not only.

Preaching is certainly about declaring and proclaiming truth.  We live in a world of lies and confusion.  Whether we are focusing on evangelism or building up believers, there is a massive need for the proclamation of biblical truth.  Here are some pointers:

1. We cannot assume that people have knowledge of truth.  We live in an age of increasing biblical illiteracy.  Actually, we also live in an age of increasing access to information, but increased shallowness in engaging with available information.  People are not well-read.  Thus it is not wise to assume that people have a certain level of knowledge of the Bible, or philosophy, or history, etc.  Assuming knowledge can lead people to either disengage from presentations, or to take that information and wrongly integrate it with their own perceived insight.

2. We must demonstrate the authority for our authoritative statements.  We do not live in an age where a person’s perceived authority can be assumed based on position or title.  Simply because you are the speaker does not mean much anymore.  Thus we have to demonstrate and prove authority for what is said.  Obviously we must be well-read and accurate in our handling of information.  More than that, we need to help people see for themselves that what we are saying from the Bible is what the Bible actually says.  They may or may not accept that the Bible is inspired by God, but we must show that we are not simply giving our own personal take on what it says.

3. We must recognize that truth statements alone will not suffice.  We should be declaring truth, but let’s be sure to proclaim a person.  People are trained to hold any truth statements at a distance, but we are wired to engage with other persons.  Thus we don’t just state truth, we proclaim Him.  We have to have an authentic personal relationship with the One we then seek to offer to others.  We need to speak from a life of authentic integrity, not performing, but sharing genuinely.  And we need to recognize that we are not simply addressing a brain in a body, but a person whose heart determines the value system of their life.