Using Used Outlines – Part 2

May 13, 2011May 10, 2011 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Continuing the list of suggestions for the pressured preacher who feels he has to use used outlines in order to be ready to preach . . .

4. Don’t move on too quickly. Most sermons take too long to finish, but then are finished with too soon. While I’m not advocating preaching longer for most preachers, I would say that once the sermon is done, it may well not be done, and might bear the weight of another visit next time. Doubling up exegetical work by preaching the same passage more than once is worth considering.

5. Don’t pressure yourself. There are several problems with borrowing sermon outlines. One is that you might borrow junk and therefore offer junk to your listeners (it is amazing how much poor preaching is offered through the internet!) On the other hand, you might get into the habit of borrowing a standard you find intimidating and can therefore never live up to. Don’t pressure yourself. Your listeners will appreciate a simpler sermon that is truly owned, they don’t need you to pretend to be him (whoever he is).

6. Don’t starve yourself. Another issue with borrowing sermon outlines is that you are cutting yourself off from one of the greatest delights of preaching – the wrestling with a text so that it marks your life. Even if you can’t give 20 hours a week to a sermon (few can), you will do much better to have wrestled for two hours than none.

7. Generate time from elsewhere. Do you create a powerpoint when you preach? Don’t bother, save the time. The powerpoint may or may not be helpful, but if it is powerpoint time or passage time, it should be passage time every time. Do you spend half an hour picking songs for the service? Ask someone else to do that. Do you search the internet for pithy introductory anecdotes? Save the time and get into the Word. Do you scratch your head for illustrations? Look at the text more carefully and describe the images or story in the passage.

More thoughts and ideas?

Eight Ways To Dissipate the Impact of Your Message – Part 2

May 11, 2011May 4, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Finishing up the list of eight ways we can inadvertently dissipate the impact of a passage:

5. By over-qualifying applications

Sometimes we make an application of a passage, but then feel the need to qualify it and state all the ways that might not be the way to act. Some qualification may be necessary or even vital, but trying to cover every possible misapplication can mean the actual application is lost in the mix.

6. By unnecessary balancing of the teaching of this passage

Just as with an application, so with the teaching of a passage. Perhaps your passage is speaking of the opposition of the world to followers of Christ . . . but if you over-qualify this with our need to influence the world (salt of the earth, etc.), then it will dissipate the passage you are preaching. Consider whether the balancing needs to be done in this message, or by preaching another passage another time.

7. By equally weighting every detail in the passage

Every passage consists of details – some weightier than others. Part of our task is to weigh up the relative influence of each on the summation of the whole. If we treat every word or every phrase equally, then we will lose the full impact of the actual message. Consider 2Tim.4:1-5 . . . is “preach the word” worthy of equal attention as “always be sober-minded” in the explanation of the passage?

8. By over-extending the landing

Some of the best sermons lose all their impact by the extra five minutes tacked on the end. Nail it and stop. Hard to do though. I could say more, but won’t.

Eight Ways To Dissipate the Impact of Your Message

May 10, 2011May 4, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The preaching of a Bible text should make an impact, its point should hit home. Yet as preachers there are times when we inadvertently dissipate the impact as we preach. Here are eight ways we sometimes provoke a dissipation situation:

1. By unnecessary multiple cross-references

There may be a need for taking listeners to other Bible passages, but often there is not. If it isn’t really helpful, then piling on references and quotes will only dissipate the impact of this particular text. Don’t steal time from this passage for only a passing reference to something else.

2. By only slightly connected examples

It is tempting to use related examples that may not be specifically related to what the passage is saying. So if the passage is speaking of gratitude toward God for salvation, this may or may not be an ideal moment to tell the “thank you” story you have from your encounter with the child next door, or whatever. Sometimes we see a term and jump to an example that is not really relevant to the specific nature of this text.

3. By unnecessary illustrations

It is tempting to think that we have to add interest to the Bible. Wrong motivation. The Bible is interesting and relevant, our task is to help people see how that is true. If an illustration of some kind will be helpful for explaining, or proving, or applying the passage, then use it. But piling on illustrations is not helpful as it can significantly dissipate the impact of the text itself.

4. By overpowering illustrations

Sometimes a story or image is simply overwhelming. It is powerful, it is effective, it is memorable, but perhaps it is better left out. Is your goal really to have people go away remembering the moving story of the little orphan boy and the sporting achievement, or the message of the passage? If it is too much, leave it out.

We’ll finish the list tomorrow, but please add any that come to mind…

Overemphasized Misrepresentation

May 6, 2011May 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Preaching is a balancing act. You are always in danger of overemphasizing some element in a text so that you misrepresent the whole. For example:

1. A theologically weighty word can send you up like a rocket. For example, I was working with a group of preachers looking at Ephesians 1:3-14. We observed features of the text, including the references to God and the relationships within the Trinity, we saw the amount of grace, love, lavished, blessing language. We saw all that God has done for us, in Him. But then we saw the word that might light the fuse and obliterate everything else – predestined! It would be so easy to take off and end up with a message bereft of intra-trinitarian relationality, stone cold and lacking in loving grace toward us, with some personal hobby horse message on predestination (in favour or against, depending on your position). Of course one should preach about predestination in the course of preaching this passage, but not to the exclusion of all else that is so richly interwoven!

2. A seemingly misplaced verse can take over the passage. For example, we were looking at Ephesians 2:1-10. Verse 10 is intriguing. Should it be seen as part of what Paul is saying in 8-9, or does it stand alone? Various groups processed the passage in different ways. Those that included 10 with 8-9 seemed to recognize it as a sub-point (i.e. after affirming that we are not saved by works, Paul does cover himself in case any miss his point and neglect good works altogether, but the focus is on God’s saving grace). Those that separated out verse 10 seemed to end up seeing the whole passage as culminating in the good works of believers, the goal of all that God did in our salvation. In one approach the verse was a passing, albeit important sub-point. In the other approach, it became the goal of all. I’m not affirming one or either of these here, I’m just making the point that how we see a verse working with those around it will determine our understanding and explanation of the whole.

3. A vivid image in a text can overwhelm the whole. So there’s a term in your passage that is particularly vivid and preaches so well in terms of visual imagery. Be careful that it doesn’t take over the message and end up becoming the dominant motif for the whole passage, when in reality it is a small part of a much bigger whole.

Understanding a passage is so much more than simply checking what words mean in a biblical dictionary and breaking the passage down into sections. The whole issue of relative weight and flow of thought is a massively important element in studying a biblical passage.

Control Checkpoints

May 5, 2011May 3, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

During the sermon preparation process there are several control checkpoints. These are points at which we get to check the text yet again and make sure our grasp of the text is accurate. Here are some of them:

1. Writing the summaries of the sections within the passage.

When you force yourself to distill the details in a section of the text into a single complete sentence, it forces you to check that your summary is actually reflecting the details in the text.

2. Distilling all the study into a summary of the whole passage.

When you force yourself to distill the details of the whole text into a single complete sentence, it forces you to check that your summary is reflecting the important content discovered in the outlining of the passage structure. Are the key details showing in your summary? (Your statement of the passage idea)

3. Checking the commentaries

Once you have thoroughly studied the passage for yourself, it is good to check with a learned conversation partner or two. If I’m preaching Romans I’d like to interact with Doug Moo, Tom Schreiner, brother Cranfield. If I’m studying Hebrews I’d like to interact with George Guthrie, Paul Ellingworth, Craig Koester, etc. That’s why commentaries exist.

4. Testing the sermon idea

When I start planning the message and shape the main idea of the text into the main idea of the message, then I need to test that I’ve built the bridge effectively. Part of that includes a look back toward the text to see if the message idea still reflects the uniqueness of the text. I sometimes talk about the Bible Expert test. That is, if I phoned someone who really knew their Bible, and quoted my message idea, would they be able to identify the passage based on my message idea? If not, maybe my message idea has grown too generic and lost the specificity needed to really preach this passage.

5. Listening to the message pre-preached

Sometimes it is not until you stand and preach through the message that you hear with your own ears that it actually doesn’t convey the meaning of the text effectively. That is why it is better to preach it through ahead of preaching it publically (better to discover a weakness before Sunday morning).

Preacher’s Log – 2

May 4, 2011May 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Following on from yesterday’s post . . . Sunday is getting ever nearer!

Tuesday to Thursday before – I am busy all day each day with Cor Deo training, so don’t have time for sermon preparation, but am chewing over the passages and their implications during spare moments, praying for Sunday’s messages to go well. I’m also pondering again the people to whom I’ll be preaching these passages, wanting God’s best for this church.

Friday before – Key preparation day. I work on outline of the text, main idea of the text, and prepare to form the main idea and outline/strategy of the sermons. I check a couple of commentaries. Actually, three. I check RT France’s NIGTC commentary, particularly to interact with some key sections of Greek exegesis (I simply haven’t had time to work through the whole section of Mark in Greek, but I do check a few key verses and decide whether I want to change anything based on his input). I check Rikki Watts’ focused presentation of Mark’s reliance on Isaiah’s “new exodus” motif (this was massively helpful in some sections of Mark, less so in others). I check Donald English’s very accessible BST (very good on seeing the big questions of Mark and the larger flow of the text).

Prayerfully thinking about the people to whom I am preaching on Sunday, I think through my strategy (outline) and message idea for Sunday’s messages. I would have liked to get to the details of how I will explain, any illustrative/applicational elements, but have run out of time.

Saturday morning – I have an hour and so can try to catch up a bit and think through the details of the messages. Actually, Sunday morning’s message comes first and so gets the attention.

Saturday evening – I don’t have time during the day (family are important ministry too), but in the evening I take some time and preach through Sunday morning’s message. Couple of things need to change, so I make a couple of notes, then head to bed (better to have slept than to have worked through the night striving for a better message!)

Sunday morning early – I pray and preach through the morning message. It is very hard to think about the evening message with the morning one looming.

Sunday afternoon – I take a couple of hours to look at my notes for the evening message on Mark 10, and then preach it through. Couple of tweaks, but time runs out.

Message is preached.

Monday after the message – I listen through both messages as I prepare the files to put them online. This is a chance to evaluate and also to be thankful to God for His help. I think back on the feedback received and process that before the Lord in prayer.

I was very happy with the Mark 10 message. Wasn’t perfect, they never are, but I am thankful for how that went.

Preacher’s Log

May 3, 2011May 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

A friend asked me to offer something of a mini-log of a sermon preparation. Here goes:

Several weeks before – So I know I’m going to preach on Mark 10 in a few weeks time. I don’t have much time now, but I grab a few minutes to read it through and make a list of initial observations or questions about the text. I also make the time to read the whole book of Mark (both because I’m preaching a series, and because I need that for understanding chapter 10). I start outlining the series so I know which passage will be preached on which Sunday. The calendar dictates Good Friday’s text, and Easter Sunday morning, and Palm Sunday, but otherwise I have some flexibility.

10 days before – I’m in the thick of preparing messages for the Sunday before, but I take a few minutes to look ahead at the passages coming up the following Sunday. Again, just make the odd note, and pray for clear understanding and application of the passage (I’m starting to feel quite convicted as I see the contrast between Jesus’ resolute journey to the cross, and the disciples’ continual pyramid-climbing attitude – is that true of me, too?)

Monday before – Now that the previous two messages are done, I am more free to think and plan for this coming Sunday. Spent some time outlining the text and looking at how the content flows together. Am contemplating how to preach the passage around 8:27-30 in the morning, and then the third passion prediction in chapter 10, with the passage around it. I’m pondering whether I should use the three passion predictions in the evening message, but also deal with the first passion prediction in the morning. I feel I have to do that in both cases (no extra sermons to deal with other content in this section, unfortunately…looks like the transfiguration isn’t going to feature this time, shame).

Now it would be nice to have the rest of the week free to prepare the messages for Sunday. No such luxury. It will be Friday before I can give the messages any real attention again.

Images Right Before Your Eyes

April 27, 2011April 22, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Most preachers don’t aspire to being dull and lifeless, bland and black and white. We want to preach vivid, full-colour, living messages from a truly living Word of God. So why are we so quick to look beyond the Bible for every image and illustration in a sermon? Sometimes it seems as if we have been preconditioned to believe the Bible itself is boring and dull, so part of our work is to find lively little pithy anecdotal marshmallows to make the Bible palatable. Before we look outside the Bible (which is a legitimate option, of course), let’s be sure to check our passage carefully:

When preaching from biblical poetry – such as a psalm, the writer will usually give us some very helpful images. Why go hunting for new images when the psalm provides a resting child, restless hours fretting in bed, God lifting His face toward us, climbing the mountain toward Jerusalem, entering the city gates in procession, etc. We need to work on relevance and be sure to handle the imagery appropriately, but handle it, it is right in the passage. It would be a shame to waste the head-start we are given right on the page.

When preaching a biblical narrative – such as a parable or event, then the passage itself is an image! Too often I’ve heard preachers at pains to explain the story, but the preaching lacks zing because they forget to actually tell the story. Don’t dissect a story to death, allow it to live in front of people and let them observe its power. Be sure to explain and apply, of course, but don’t let the vivid imagery of the story itself get lost in your study. Bring the story to the people.

When preaching biblical discourse – such as an epistolary paragraph, then you may have extra work on your hands. Often the passage will be very effective and logical explanation, or even direct application. But it may be so direct that it lacks imagery. This will not be the case in most of James, but is true in parts of Paul. Just because it is prose and perhaps plain in presentation, do not fail to look for images that will help the truth stick in the hearts and minds of your listeners. Sometimes alertness to word-study will help, other times simply reading the text carefully will do the job. Be a shame to preach a “put off, put on” passage and not utilize the visual impact of that imagery, or to preach a “love one another” and not paint the picture of what that looks like in vivid terms. Abstractions don’t do the same work as concrete descriptions, so be sure to preach what it is saying in specifics so listeners can “see” what you mean.

Perishing the Thought of Performing

April 26, 2011April 22, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Most people almost perish at the thought of public speaking. As only the statisticians can say, most people would choose death over public speaking (a good twisting of a statistic). But for those of us who preach, presumably we aren’t petrified of public speaking any more. Perhaps instead our fear might be turned toward performing.

As a preacher we study an ancient text, determine its main idea and its contemporary relevance, then design a message to communicate both the meaning and the relevance to the congregation who will sit before us on Sunday morning. Our goal is not to fill time, but to see people marked by God’s Word and to see lives transformed. If we’re honest, there are ways to generate some sort of response. It is not out of our reach to spin a story a certain way in order to turn the emotions of our listeners, or ask a rhetorical question that we know will poke a nerve of guilt in them. So how are we to avoid stepping up to the pulpit and treating it like a stage?

1. Give preparation time to soak. Last minute preparation will lead to last minute desperation wherein “preaching tactics” will seem like our only hope. We must be diligent to begin the study and thinking process early enough for a message or a series to soak in before we must pour out. Even if all we can do is to start reading and making some notes ahead of time, it is worth it. Performance is lines through an actor, but preaching is truth through personality (Phillips Brooks succinct definition). Allow time for the preparation to become a part of who you are so that you preach something you truly believe and know deep down, because it has already deeply marked you.

2. Prepare more, not less. In the quest for “natural” delivery, it may be tempting to prepare less. The hope is that what comes out will be less of a performance and more “from the heart.” The reality is that unprepared preaching will often lean heavily on our own abilities. It is better to craft, to sweat, to wrestle, to pray, to think and to think some more. As I have written before, in an ideal world it is best to write out a manuscript in full and edit it closely and prayerfully. All that extra work will result not in performance, but genuine preaching “from the heart” as well as “from the text” – choosing to do minimal work will compromise both the text and your heart, leaving only any performance skills you may have.

3. Pray. Not just a “bless this effort” prayer, but real prayer. Personal wrestling with the God who is at work in you first. Persistent wrestling for those who will receive the message. There is a great spiritual battle raging around you and around them. Let us not fight in the pulpit a battle we have not first heavily engaged in the closet.

Preach the Passage

April 21, 2011April 18, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Easter Sunday offers us all a temptation as preachers. Whatever the passage being preached, we’re all tempted to actually preach something else. For example, let’s say your passage is in Luke’s gospel. Will you preach the pairs of witnesses that Luke scatters liberally throughout the passage from the death of Christ on? Or will you just read that and preach 1Cor.15?

What if you are preaching Mark, as I am this weekend (short ending). Will you preach Mark with his brief message of the resurrection, pointer back to Galilee where the ministry all began in 1:14-15, and the fear of the first followers? Or will you read it and flee to 1Cor.15?

What if you are preaching John? Will you preach the questions of Thomas and Jesus’ response to Thomas, and the uniquely Johannine commissioning of the disciples and the climactic statement of Thomas? Or will you read it and essentially preach 1Cor.15?

Actually I have no problem with 1Cor.15. It is familiar territory and that is why many of us easily end up there whatever text we think we are preaching. If we are preaching 1Cor.15, then please let’s preach it in all its power. But if we are preaching something else, let’s not miss what God inspired the writer to include.

Obviously there are other passages too, many in fact, from which to preach the risen Christ (obviously Matthew, but also Acts, numerous other epistles, earlier predictions of Christ, etc.) Let’s be sure to let people benefit from whichever passage we are preaching this Sunday. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful!