How to . . . ?

The Mastery Challenge – Rationale pt 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Here are the last three points of rationale for my list.  This follows on from the last two days of posts.

5. The brick wall approach urges book by book study – By definition it helps avoid the “mastery of preferred proof texts approach,” or the “selected doctrines based on preferred theology approach,” or other less than ideal approaches.  To be a real Bible man or woman, I’m convinced we need to really know the books of the Bible (i.e. verses in context!)

6. The brick wall approach taps into personal motivation – What do you want to study next?  Romans?  Revelation?  Psalms?  Esther?  Nahum?  This approach says go for it!  When the heart is in the task, the study is a delight.  When discipline alone is boss, then the tanks feel permanently empty.

7. The brick wall approach recognizes that study is never exhaustive – So you’ve done a few weeks in John, and for now you feel that is enough.  You’ve come to a point of closure, thanked the Lord, finished well and moved on to another book that is attracting you.  Does that mean you are done with John?  Of course not.  In a few months or years you’ll come back, motivated again, and you’ll go deeper and further.  By then you’ll be building on top of other bricks that have been laid in the mean time.  Perhaps a study of Psalms will bring John’s use of Davidic Psalms out in a fresh way, for instance.

This approach encourages success by generating achievable goals, by tapping into personal motivation, and by progressively building throughout life in a way that never suggests completion, but recognizes progress continually.

I could add more rationale, but I’ll leave it at that for now.  I’m not saying this is the only way, or even the best way, but I’ve yet to find an approach to Bible mastery that has tempted me to change my approach (or to change what I suggest when asked for my suggestions!)

The Mastery Challenge – Rationale pt 1

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Yesterday I shared my foundation and brick wall approach.  This post won’t make sense without reading that one first.  Here are seven of the underlying thoughts that make me think this approach is a healthy one:

1. Motivation is Key – This approach is designed primarily to facilitate the motivation of the individual.  Too often Bible study is shot through with guilt associations and the need for motivation is overlooked.  That we should be motivated to study God’s Word does not mean that we always are motivated!

2. Success breeds motivation – Too often people begin a study program and then fail to complete it.  This leaves a lingering guilt.  Think of how many times people start reading through the Bible in January, but give up in February or March (Leviticus or Numbers tend to wipe them out).  This model that I am suggesting has success built in.  Every time a Bible book is selected and studied for a couple or a few weeks, there is a point of closure, a point of successful completion of a task that can be celebrated before the Lord (giving thanks to Him).  I would even suggest a deliberate act to celebrate.  Perhaps enjoy a favorite bar of chocolate, or listen to a certain praise song . . . anything, but do something to mark the completion of a season of study (all while giving thanks to the Lord for the privilege and His help).

3. Demotivation by integrating the two halves kills study – People typically try to read through and study at the same time.  The problem is that it is hard to retain anything and keep up the required reading pace.  So people get bogged down in the Pentateuch, while their motivation is really to study a New Testament book (but that seems so far away!)  Much better to give yourself permission to just keep moving in the read through, and study what you want to study.

4. The foundation covers the need to study the whole counsel – Instead of feeling compelled to study Leviticus as you read through it, this approach accepts that often you will read through it quickly, but when the motivation is there to study it, you will have opportunity to really get stuck into it.  By constantly cycling through the whole canon, you are getting the bigger picture of God’s revelation, which in turn provides continual context for the book studies you pursue concurrently.

Tomorrow I’ll share the other three points of rationale that make sense of the brick wall (book by book) approach.

The Mastery Challenge – Suggestion

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Back on April 7th I wrote about the need for us all to prioritize mastering, and being mastered by, the Bible.  Winston commented and asked for my suggestions on this.  I’ll share my thinking briefly here.  I’d encourage you to read the earlier post again to refresh your memory and stir the motivation – it is here.

My approach is to split personal Bible study into two halves.  These two halves are best explained as a foundation and brick wall approach:

Half 1 = Foundation – The foundation is to be reading through the whole Bible.  My strong encouragement is to keep reading through the whole Bible, at a fairly persistent pace.  Allow the big story to wash through you.  Don’t get caught up in details, or in trying to remember every interesting fact you find.  Don’t try to pronounce every long name.  Just keep moving.  Like pouring water through a sieve, the goal is not to retain, but to be cleaned and to get a big picture awareness of the Bible God has given to us.

Half 2 = Brick Wall – With the other half of the time available I suggest getting your teeth into study.  By default I would suggest a book-by-book approach.  God didn’t give us a topical index, or a collection of proof texts; He gave us a collection of books.  So pick a Bible book and study it.  Use whatever skill and resources you have.  Begin with inductive study of the book, constantly moving between analysis of the details and synthesis of the whole.  If you have original language skill, use it.  If you have quality commentaries, eventually consult them.  Make it your goal to master and be mastered by the book you are studying.  After a few weeks of this you will find that your motivation for that book wanes and you feel like you are coming to finish point in your study.  I like to be able to explain my way through a book, section by section, without looking at the text.  Perhaps you would choose another way to define the finish line.  Then move to another book you want to study.  Periodically you can do a topical study, or a character study, or a theological study, or whatever, but default back to book by book.

Tomorrow I will share my underlying thinking that helps to make sense of this approach.

When Training Is Spurned?

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I received this comment a few days ago from a reader of this site:

How do you convince a man who fights against every opportunity placed in his way that he needs, that he requires, further training in preaching?

Answer that and I’ll be grateful! I know the need, but a lay-reader in my congregation has no concept that he does. Short of removing him from preaching there is beginning to seem little else that can be done to get this need through to him – and the reality that this must come before anything else. Excuses to avoid the training come thick and fast from him – and most make no sense anyway!

If we could answer that question, many of us would be grateful.  Recently I was co-leading a preaching course in a city.  Four years of preparation had gone into that event (not from me, I came in at the last minute).  It was a great success, but the big church pastors of the city felt that they did not need it, they were above what we were offering.  This greatly disappointed the organizers who strongly insist that those pastors do need the training that was given!  What to do?

I suppose training in preaching is not dissimilar to preaching itself.  You cannot force it on people.  Even if they are coerced into being present, they need to want to hear it.  In preaching that is why we must work so hard on our introduction in order to motivate the listeners to care about the message – we rub salt on their tongues to make them thirsty for God’s Word.  In the same way, we need to carefully consider winsome ways to motivate people to be open and receptive to training.  Forcing attendance will not work.

This post is not a definitive answer to the question, but I hope it could be the start of a conversation.  What will motivate the resistant to participate in preaching training?  What barriers must be overcome?  For instance:

Pride is a barrier – so we must be careful not to give the impression that we have it all together and they don’t.  Sharing the joy of learning and demonstrating that you’re a learner can motivate others to join the joyful journey of lifelong learning.

Insecurity is a barrier – I constantly observe how insecurity and pride go hand in hand.  The resistant may feel deeply insecure and scared of opening up to input that will shine light on their inadequacies.  Again, humility on our part, as well as a generous dose of encouragement might help (it’s tempting to never encourage lest we demotivate them from taking training, but the opposite may be true).

Overwhelmedness is a barrier – it all might seem like too much at once.  Perhaps giving people a small taste of good training is the way to go – a one-day seminar in the church for all the preachers (I’ve found these quite effective, invitations welcome!), a single magazine article, a single particularly helpful post on this or another site.

What else?  I’d love to hear more thoughts on the complexities of motivating preachers to take helpful training.

Short Cuts to Nowhere Good – Two

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Yesterday I pointed out that prayer is by no means a short cut when it comes to preparing to preach.  It is critical, but it should not be viewed as a short cut.  Today I’d like to share another unhelpful short-cut.

2. Passage Details. It is always tempting to bounce off a detail in the passage and preach a message that may be biblical, but is not the message of this passage.  For instance, you might see a theological term that is rich in meaning and you can easily put together a series of thoughts on that aspect of theology.  Or perhaps you spot a name of a character that you’d like to speak about.  Or maybe there is some other detail in the text that is familiar and lends itself to a message that just falls together easily.  Wait.  This may be a short-cut, but it is not a good path to take.  Instead be sure to study all the details in the passage so that you can wrestle with what this passage is actually saying, not just what words it includes.  Using details in the text, but failing to actually preach the text is what I might call pseudo-expository preaching.  It sounds biblical, it looks expository, but it has a weakened authority since the message of the text is not the message of the sermon.  It takes longer to study a passage through in detail, but it is so worth the effort!

Short Cuts to Nowhere Good

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There are a couple of short-cuts taken by many preachers that need to be highlighted for the sake of Biblical Preaching.  Please be sure to read the explanation as well as the heading (it’s amazing how people miss the point of what’s written sometimes!)

1. Prayer. Prayer is not a short-cut.  It is a necessity.  It is critical.  However, it is not a short-cut.  In fact, praying in preparation will probably make the preparation take longer, but it is worth the longer journey.  Many preachers think that all they need to do is pray and then preach their impressions.  This is neither pleasing to the Lord nor helpful for the listeners.  Why do some preachers think God is so pleased when they essentially dismiss the Bible by skirting around the study process in preparation?  I suspect that if we pray “Lord, please show me what I should say from this text!” that His answer would include “I want you to say what the text says.” God takes His Word very seriously, so should we, and prayer is not short-cut around the blessing of spending significant time and effort wrestling with the true and exact meaning of the passage.

Tomorrow I will add another short-cut that is not worth taking if we are to be Biblical Preachers!

Don’t Blame the Wrong Thing

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In his book, Explosive Preaching, Ron Boyd-MacMillan delineates two factions in a debate over the place of preaching.  On the one hand, there are those he calls the pro-sermon faction who need to wake up to the fact that their logic is often overdone.  That is to say, in their mind “preaching = sermonizing” and this does not ultimately help their side of the debate.  He marshals the evidence from Scripture to suggest that preaching in the Bible was not the common “sermonizing” of recent history.  (I would add the comment that in his survey of preaching in the Bible he fails to note the book, or perhaps better, sermon to the Hebrews.)

On the other side there is the faction he calls the anti-monolog brigade.  To this crowd he points out that “monolog = boring” is also flawed logic.  Let me quote him (p161):

Don’t go blaming monolog.  Blame boring monolog instead!  Returning home from this conference [where the avoidance of any “talking head” monolog had resulted in meaningless activity without understanding] I wrote in my journal, “I think the greatest problem facing preaching today is the fear of the monolog.”  There’s a lunatic fringe in the anti-monolog brigade that want to banish the sermon completely.  Fat chance.  The monolog will always be with us.  In large groups and even small, it is a communicational necessity.  But the effect of this scaremongering is a bunch of preachers who keep their monolog to an embarrassed minimum and fill up the minutes with film clips, skits, and roving mike questions.  The problem is this – if they are poor at the monolog, they are probably poor at other forms of communication too!  In this conference I mentinoed, one preacher introduced a series of completely banal and boring skits, but you don’t hear anyone calling for an end to drama!  He also used PowerPoint images that were completely off the point, and he had a person wandering around the audience with a roving mike s that anyone who felt led could interrupt the speaker if something wasn’t clear, but it was so staged we were squirming.  One question was, “Would you say more about the theology of the book in relation to the historical period?”  Well, amazingly, it so happened that this was his next segment of material, with PowerPoints ready to go.  A miracle?  Come on.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I do know that monologs are not the problem.  Boring monologs are to blame!

We Need Repeated Prodding

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I believe we need repeated prodding on this issue.  It’s a critical issue in ministry and church health.  I believe it is the heart of biblical ministry.  Here’s a prod from Explosive Preaching, 145:

There is no greater tragedy for preaching today than the senior pastor who claims to be too busy to mentor preachers.

I say, amen.  This line comes at the end of a paragraph describing the mentoring of Martin Luther-King Jr by J. Pius Barbour.  He would spend time every Saturday with a group of younger preachers who would practice their sermons in front of him and the group.  Then on Sunday, after he had preached, he would ask them to analyze his sermon under the headings of content, delivery and audience reaction.  Talk about accountability as well as mentoring!

It takes effort, time and sometimes even sacrifice.  Yet mentoring is multiplicative ministry, it is exponential ministry, it is biblical ministry.

What’s Fresh?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

If you are a regular preacher, then the chances are that you have a rhythm in your preparation.  This is good in many ways.  However, it also runs the risk of getting into some well-worn ruts.  If you are an irregular preacher, then perhaps your preparation process lasts over several weeks.  This is also good in many ways.  However, it also runs the risk of getting into ruts (you forget what you decided you should improve next time).

Both schedules also run the risk of lacking freshness in content.  Regular preachers feel the pressure of the weekly cycle, irregular preachers sometimes end up preaching on a passage that they have personally “moved on” from by the time the Sunday comes.

As you look ahead to your next message, whether it is this Sunday or this summer, what is fresh about it?  What will be fresh when it is delivered?  Is it time to freshen up your delivery in some way, or do you have a standard sermon form you always fall into, or is it time to pour effort into specific wording, or perhaps your support materials (or lack thereof)?  And is the text, the truth, the walk with God fresh?

What Is Love? Part Trois

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

No reason for the French numbering of this series, just a sprinkling of creativity!  So far we’ve considered the GS, the SE, and the FC people in a congregation.  There’s one category left, according to the pastor cited in Boyd-MacMillan’s book, Explosive Preaching:

AH = Apathetic Horde. This is usually the majority of the congregation.  They know God, but they are struggling to get close to Him.  They are struggling to swim against the tide.  What is love from us?  Well, it is tempting to harangue them, to guilt-trip them, to pile on the pressure.  According to the book, it is also tempting to offer ourselves as their guide who thereby takes away their freedom and responsibility.  The advice on how to love them? “Stay winsome, and resist the impulse to be coercive.”

Okay, in my opinion the majority category deserves the best advice.  I feel this is a bit weak, although accurate as far as it goes.  The book goes on to talk about developing compassion and overcoming compassion fatigue.  How do we love the apathetic horde in the church?  Surely the aim of resisting coercion is critical, but so is the concept of winsomeness.  We need to be winsome, gracious, attractively compelling in our spirituality.  We need to preach to the heart and not just to the mind and will.  We need to preach so that people are given many opportunities to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  We need to be faithful to the heart-message of the Bible, and not twist every text into a guilt-pressure-cooker to vent your own angst in your half-hour where people at least pretend to listen.

Loving the AH is so important, but not easy.  It costs us to love.  When we love we risk getting hurt, being rejected, seeing failure, etc.  But love we must.  We are compelled by the love of One who gave everything for us, “when we were still sinners.”  That love has spread to us and now yearns to spread through us to others . . . others who may not respond in the right way, or respond at all, for that matter.  Ministry is not about performing certain duties.  It is about serving God by loving people, it is about life-on-life investment – whether we are preaching, counselling, listening, or whatever.

(GS) + SE + FC + AH = the church where we serve … what is love to each?