Saturday Short Thought: Bible Story Both/And

February 25, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So looking back on three weeks of posts about preaching Bible story…there’s so much more to be said! Let me offer one more thought before I turn my attention elsewhere.

There is a tension between historical accuracy and literary artistry.

Some preachers are so concerned with historical accuracy that they are blind to the literary artistry. Every narrative offers nothing more than a chance to probe the historical accuracy issues, an apologetic opportunity to reinforce our confidence in the biblical text.

Some preachers are so concerned with literary artistry that they seem unwilling to accept the possibility of historical accuracy. Every narrative is so well written that it must therefore be playing fast and loose with the facts. The listeners are impressed with the skill of the writer, but left with the distaste of deliberately fictitious presentation.

We don’t need to fall into one camp or the other. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

I believe we should be alert to all the evidence of historical accuracy, both within the text, and in biblical archeology, etc. Let’s build the confidence of our listeners in the veracity of the biblical accounts. Let’s not act as judge and jury over whether Jesus actually said this or did that.

At the same time as holding to the accuracy of the Word, we need to honour both the human author and the inspiring Spirit of God in recognizing the masterful communication that is the Bible. It is brilliantly written. We don’t have to lose one to affirm the other.

Let’s preach in such a way as to build confidence in both the accuracy and the artistry of the text. It is true and it is effective, for the God who inspired it is a God of truth, and a God of great communication!

Narrative as Super-Genre?

February 24, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

While we tend to think in terms of seven biblical genres, I find it helpful to recognize three types of literature – narrative, poetry and discourse. These types occur proportionately in that order. Narrative is the most common, discourse the least.

In simplistic terms narrative consists of people in plots, poetry consists of parallelism and imagery, and discourse consists of direct speech or correspondence.

For the past weeks I’ve been bouncing around the field of preaching narratives, which I hope has been helpful. But here’s a thought with which I’ll finish this extended series. Maybe narrative should be considered a super-genre.

That is to say, the core features of narrative are not completely absent from the other types of literature. Let’s say the core features include the development and resolution of tension in the situation of characters. There are people with a problem in a plot.

What do we have with poetry? Often we have a person reacting to life in the form of poetic writing. If they are reacting to the threat of enemies, then we might find a psalm of lament. If they have been delivered and are looking back on the experience, then we might have a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Poem’s often function as a snapshot into the response of an individual to the narrative of life lived in a fallen world, in response to our good God. Most poems are not narratival or complete in terms of plot line. But often poems are glimpses into the narratival nature of life’s experience.

What do we have with discourse? Often we have a person addressing others who are facing the realities of life. In the midst of a problem we might find the text offers guidance or encouragement. In the aftermath of a problem we might find gratitude and thanksgiving. Since no individual or church is ever beyond problems in this life, typically we will find the discourse to be engaging the realities of these tensions in some form. Discourse rarely reflects a complete plot (except in review), but it does give a snapshot into an ongoing narrative. Discourse offers a glimpse into the narratival nature of life for a person, nation or church.

We could go through the genres and see the narratival features of prophecy, apocalyptic, wisdom writings, etc. Space does not permit, this post needs a conclusion:

So what? Well, as preachers, this is important to recognize. This means that we can bring some of the skills needed for effective preaching of story over to the other two types of biblical literature. We don’t preach poetry or discourse as pure narrative. But we miss an opportunity if we preach either as if there is nothing narratival about it.

Our listeners are also mid-story in the narrative of life. They also struggle with the incomplete experience of tensions as yet unresolved. Perhaps a narratival engagement with the emotion of poetry, or the wisdom of discourse, might prove invaluable.

Our listeners are living life in narrative. There’s a reason that story engages listeners. Let’s not miss opportunities to engage present story with biblical story, whether that be a full-blown narrative, or the snapshot offered in poetry or discourse.

This is why I consider narrative to be a “super-genre.”

Lessons from Bible Storying

February 23, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In Cor Deo we have been enjoying the benefits of an approach to engaging biblical story known as “storying.” Coming from the study of oral cultures and the field of orality, storying is a mine of ministerial potential currently somewhat restricted to missiologists in non-literate cultures.

Forgive my brevity in description, but storying involves bringing a group of people into the experience of a story through the process of telling the story and having them re-tell it so as to enter in to it. In our setting we have found the Cor Deo participants discovering the interpretational value of extended exposure through the re-telling process. We hear it, re-tell it, critique and correct together, then repeat the process.

What does this have to do with preaching? Well, for one thing, it re-affirms the challenge we have when we seek to communicate a story to listeners and we only tell it once. A cursory overview of a story is simply not enough. People may get the bare bones, but storying tells us that a group needs greater exposure to a story before they are engaging it fully. As preachers we may not be able to go through the group interaction of re-telling story, but we must tell story well enough, in sufficient detail, with enough time, so that listeners have a hope of the story forming in their hearts.

But maybe there’s more than a subtle reinforcement of my “please tell the story and tell it well” theme. Perhaps we need to consider how to help listeners inhabit the experience of a specific character? Perhaps one idea might be to re-tell a story within a sermon, inviting listeners to imagine the events from a different perspective. Perhaps there is potential in this idea of re-telling stories within a sermon. Perhaps there is scope for listeners being less passive in the re-telling process, even within a sermon.

You might enjoy chasing the various approaches to storying and orality-based ministries – not only as a prompt to prayer for the pioneer mission fields, not even just as a source of potential ministry ideas for outreach to certain subcultures on the fringe of your church, but also as a potential nuancing of approach and nudging toward creative effectiveness in your own preaching of narratives in the church.

Preaching Story: The Challenge of Acts

February 22, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching the narratives of Acts? I think so, but it’s a book I love to preach from. Let me offer a few points to ponder:

1. Acts is not all action. Every biblical narrative tends to lean heavily on dialogue as a key feature in the inspired telling of the story. Ancient texts were often punctuated with the pause presented by means of speeches. To see Acts in all its glory, it is vital to see how the speeches are not a pause in the action, often they are the action. So let’s not skip Stephen’s great speech with a little summary statement in order to get to the stoning, let’s be sure to help listeners experience the power of his impressively targeted speech!

2. Acts is not mere history. It isn’t uncommon to find folks who view the epistles as the source of our theology, but see Acts only as a record of what occurred in the early days. Please don’t suggest such a notion in the presence of a Luke-Acts scholar! Acts is absolutely theological, it is just that Luke was inspired to write his theology in the form of narrative with speeches, rather than discourse in letters. Actually, I suppose Acts has the “discourse” feature of being addressed to someone – sort of an epistle with extended narratival content!

3. Acts is not all history. Some elements of the early history of the church are unique. The challenge for the preacher is to discern and then demonstrate the value of preaching non-normative history. We don’t tend to be pressured by the problem of replacing a dead apostle. We don’t need another Pentecost, whatever the hymn says. I presume your church doesn’t typically experience an Ananias/Sapphira church discipline model. I suspect the apostles aren’t still looking for a specific evidence of Gentile inclusion in the church, etc. We have to prayerfully ponder how to preach the non-normative elements of Acts with relevance to our listeners.

4. Acts is all applicable. So how do we preach Acts relevantly? And how do we avoid using Acts labels for contemporary experiences that may or may not be the same thing? How do we stir an excitement for the thrilling reality that is the church, without creating deep disenchantment with the myriad of ways in which our experience differs from theirs?

Acts is a phenomenal piece of inspired writing, and one I love to preach from, but it isn’t always easy. Let’s be bold in deciding to preach Acts, and extremely sensitive in how we interpret and apply it for the maximum benefit of our listeners. They need us to preach it, and to preach it well.

Preaching Story: The Challenge of the Gospels

February 21, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Gospel narratives? I believe there are, both in terms of the parables, and in terms of the accounts from the life of Christ. Some points to ponder:

1. We are dealing with two “authors” when we preach from the Gospels. We have Jesus telling the story to a specific audience in about AD30. Then we have the inspired account from Luke or Matthew, etc., some decades later, potentially to a very different audience, and most likely in a different language! The focus of the inspired writer is on the authorial intent of Jesus, so rightly we focus there. But we must see that the writers were inspired to weave together these narratives so that in their arrangement there is meaning conveyed. We need to keep both authors in view.

2. Sometimes we are dealing with more than one account of the same parable or life event. If we don’t compare the accounts we may preach our specific text with inaccurate detail. For instance, caught up in the presentation of the feeding of the 5000 we might get carried away with their plight and describe the terrain as arid or dry (and then have some avid listener point out that the grass they sat on was green from Mark’s rendition). This detail in Mark is not incidental. It fits with the emphasis Mark is conveying, but is irrelevant to the other gospel writers. Be sure to check the others for accuracy.

3. The different accounts offer us more than accurate harmonization. Checking two accounts will allow us to be more accurate in our telling of the story. But more than that, careful comparison will enable us to spot the emphasis in our specific text. What did our specific Gospel writer want to convey? The details included and omitted will help us to determine this (as well as context, flow of narratives, etc.)

4. The different accounts may tempt us to preach the harmonization. Generally I don’t think this is a good idea. Our goal is not to make a composite sketch from apparently inadequate eye-witnesses in order to try and come close to the reality of the event itself (I do not believe they were inadequate at all). Our goal is to faithfully preach the inspired text of a specific writer. There is value in harmonizing, but the goal is to preach the text, for that is what is inspired.

Gospel stories, both life events and parables, can offer challenges to the preacher. But they are so wonderful, I hope I don’t even need to encourage you to preach them, and to preach them as well as you can.

Preaching Story: The Challenges of the Old Testament

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 11 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Old Testament narratives? I think there are a few points worth pondering here:

1. Typically we have less familiarity with the broader flow of the Old Testament and may be tempted to only preach the familiar handful of Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Goliath, Jonah, Daniel narratives. Take a look at some of the lesser known stories. I am willing to guarantee that if you study an obscure story you’ll want to preach it. More than that, if you really wrestle with it in its context, then you’ll probably preach it well!

2. Not only do we have less familiarity with the Old Testament world, but so do our listeners. This means being sure to take some time to orient them to cultural features of the world in which the story is set. For example, we have to help listeners understand what it was like to live in the world of the ancient near east, where the plurality of the gods of the nations made every battle into a playground tiff among the gods (and what it meant therefore to be defeated by a foreign power, and worse, exiled by them).

Typically I think a lot of the challenges here are in respect to two issues:

3. Recognizing the elements of continuity. Even in a radically different world, we can resonate with ancient biblical narratives because human nature doesn’t change, and neither does God’s character. The latter offers another set of issues since many are convinced by the Marcionite confusion that leads to Christians pulling away from the God of the Old Testament. We have to help people see the fullness of who our God is, which isn’t always easy.

4. Recognizing the elements of discontinuity. A lot has changed since back then. For instance, their hoped for deliverer has now been and gone, more than that, he went to the cross, rose again, sent his Spirit, is building his church, etc. So we have to figure out how to preach the text so that we see it in its fullness back then, as well as in its fullness for us today.

Old Testament narratives aren’t always easy, but they are so worth it. Let’s not reduce them to illustrations or children’s talks, but preach them as well as we can!

Saturday “Short” Thought: Thesaurus Needed

February 18, 2012February 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

These last weeks I have been blogging about preaching story – a vital skill in preaching, and sadly too easily neglected (either by avoidance of narrative sections, or by preaching as if they weren’t narrative.) In Cor Deo this week we were looking at a monumental passage in the Gospels – John 5.

John is at the same time both the easiest writing to follow (thinking in terms of the Greek especially), and some of the most profound content to grasp. What makes him “easy” to read includes his consistent use of recurring terminology, but this doesn’t make it easy to hear read.

For example, think of the places where Jesus gets going with a “me in you and you in me and us in them that the world may know…” rhythm. Easy words, but not easy to hear read and make sense of it though. Or the example this week in John 5 where Jesus uses the term “witness” about ten times in one paragraph. Even the more formal translation committees were probably relieved to offer two glosses for some variation – witness and testimony.

So what happens when the listeners hear such overwhelming repetition? Do they track with it, or do they roll their eyes and start to wonder when in church history the thesaurus was invented?

In the Gospels Jesus had continual run-ins with a “city gate legal system” over everything from Sabbath misdemeanours to blasphemy. In that system anybody of standing could initiate proceedings, but this didn’t mean constant frivolous charges. So the Jews were not longing for an official trial. They were looking for a charge that would stick, followed by the witnesses to make the charge stick. In that system the key issue in prosecution was not so much the evidence (forget CSI), but the credibility and social standing of the witnesses.

So Jesus made a claim to equality with the Father. That was a more serious charge (blasphemy) than the preceding sabbath breaking charge. Now, witnesses. They had their human witnesses, but what about Jesus, who could he call on? How about the Father, and John the Baptist, and the works themselves, indeed the very word of the Father, speaking of which, how about the Scriptures, Moses? Witness, witness, witness, witness, witness, witness, witness!

They didn’t get a conviction that day. The chess game continued.

So what does this mean for the preacher? Somehow you need to orient the listeners to the culture, the situation, the motivation, etc, and then they can hear the text singing instead of grating. Whether you read it straight through or in bits with explanation, well that is a matter of preaching strategy, but please don’t just read it so their eyes are rolling and they look down on the writing ability of John and the Spirit!

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Next week: I’m enjoying this too much, so how about a record breaking series extension?

Preaching Narratives – I’ll look at some of the issues in different parts of the Bible and even suggest that narrative might be in a class of its own as a super-genre!

Top 10 Mistakes Preachers Make Preaching Story – Part 2

February 17, 2012February 17, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I offered five common mistakes made in the preaching of Bible story, let’s finish the list:

6. They come up with a list of “principles.” A story isn’t given in Scripture to make masses of points (some preachers see launch points for pet thoughts throughout a story). To nuance this error further, stories aren’t given in Scripture in order to offer seven principles for a successful business venture, successful pet ownership or successful anything else. This is not some ancient text currently in vogue because of its timeless wisdom for living life. It is a story about people living under the question mark of God’s Word to a fallen world – will they trust Him, or not? Will we?

7. They make it into a human level story – be good, be better, be like. Don’t be blind! The Bible is not just about humanity. There’s a constant theocentric, christotelic, eternal and heavenly dimension. Whether God is overtly stated or not, the Bible story you are reading is written with at least an implicit assumption that these characters are living their lives, making their choices, facing their struggles in the context of response to God. Preach the story theocentrically, not anthropocentrically (i.e. it is God that is the main character, not just a human).

8. They treat it as a context-less moral lesson. Okay, I’m repeating the moral lesson bit to make a point, but actually the error here is to miss the context of the story. Not only does it have a historical context, which the preacher must plumb to make sense of it and preach it well, but it also has a written context. Why did the author choose to put it here in this sequence? It is both historically accurate and artistically presented to convey a theological point. You typically need to observe context to spot this.

9. They don’t apply the main idea of the story. Either they apply every sub-idea along the way, or they don’t apply at all. Stories mark and change lives. Help listeners to see what that might look like as the story preached is translated into their life lived. Never assume people will take general truths and apply them specifically. Never assume that application is automatic. Never believe that positive statements of gratitude from listeners equate to application. Instead, be overt and be specific.

10. They avoid preaching it altogether and stick in discourse sections. This is a mistake. Maybe they think stories are for children, or they think stories aren’t theologically rich enough, or they think that churches only need to be fed the food of epistolary discourse, or they think that they aren’t any good at preaching story, or for whatever reason, they avoid preaching story. This means somewhere between 50-70% of the Bible will remain unpreached in their ministry. I think it was Tozer who said that nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

There are lots of other things that could probably be listed, some of which are specific to certain sections of narrative. But let me make the unstated assumption stated – stories are good for preaching, good for listeners and good for the church. Go for it, preach stories and preach them well!

Top 10 Mistakes Preachers Make Preaching Story

February 16, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

As we come toward the end of this series of posts on preaching Biblical narratives, let’s have a list post (they’re always popular!) How about the top 10 mistakes preachers make when preaching stories?

1. They don’t tell the story! They refer to it, they draw lessons from it, they theologize all over it, but they omit to actually tell the story. Big oops! The story is not there to be exhibit A in your demonstration of your theological acumen. The story is there to change lives, so tell it!

2. They don’t tell it well. I don’t like adding to the sin lists already in existence, but making God’s Word boring or telling a story poorly must surely qualify as a transgression or iniquity on some level. God has given us everything necessary for a compelling message – tension, characters, movement, progression, illustrative materials, interest, etc. To tell it poorly is to miss an open goal with the ball placed carefully at our feet and thirty minutes to take a shot!

3. They think their thoughts are better than God’s inspired text. I’ve blogged before about the nightmare I suffered when a preacher read the story of Jesus turning water into wine, then said, “you know the story, so I won’t tell it again…” then proceeded to offer us his fanciful imposition of a theological superstructure all over the text. The text is inspired, it is great, God is a great communicator (so please don’t think God is desperate for you to add a good dose of your ideas to His – please preach the Word!)

4. They spiritualise details into new-fangled meanings. Suddenly listeners start thinking to themselves, “I never would have seen that!” or “I never would have made that connection – the donkey represents midweek ministries, brilliant!” Actually, they never would have seen it without you, not because you are God’s gift to the church, but because your fanciful insertion simply isn’t there. Preach the text in such a way as to honour it, not abuse it. And can I be provocative? Sometimes people force Christ into passages in ways that seem to undermine the whole richness of the text in its context – just because it is Christ doesn’t make it right.

5. They don’t let every detail feed into the powerful point of the main idea. Every detail counts, but it counts as part of the writer’s strategy to communicate the main point of the story. A story doesn’t make lots of points, it makes one point. Develop a sensitivity to the role of details in the communication of the single plot point.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with another five…

Bible Story: Read or Tell?

February 15, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Let’s assume that the reading is taken care of, and as I suggested yesterday this might not mean the reading of the text itself. Now, what to do with the telling of the story? Should we just read it, or should we tell it? I say we should tell it, and we should tell it well (and typically in the telling of it we may add detail not included in the text). Typically we will tell it with certain sections, or even the whole text, read along the way. Why tell and not just read?

1. The preacher’s task is to present the text by way of explanation. A big part of the explanation of the story is the effective telling of the story, and the effective telling of the story requires the preacher to describe the action, the scene, the situation in vivid colour so that the image can form in the hearts of the listeners.

2. The preacher’s task includes applying the story with contemporary relevance emphasized. A big part of the application of the story is helping listeners inhabit the tension of the story, identifying with the characters as they wrestle with life in response to the Word of God. A well told story carries a significant proportion of the explanation and the application of the message.

3. The preacher’s task includes not only saying what the text says, but doing what the text does. To put it another way, we need to honour the genre inspired by God’s Spirit. By telling story, we honour story as the genre of God’s own choosing.

4. The Bible text tends to be both lean and distant. It is lean in that every detail counts and every detail carries significance in the telling of the story. It is distant in that the original writers could assume awareness of culture, politics, history, geography, flora/fauna, etc. To simply read the text is, in some cases, to dishonour the inspired story by not allowing it to hit home in the imaginations and hearts of the listeners.

I could probably offer more reasons to tell the story and to tell it well, but I’ve gone long enough for today!