How to . . . ?

What Are the Best Echoes?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Echoes of heaven.  When believers listen to a preacher, they don’t want to hear the echoing sound of plagiarized preaching.  However, echoes of heaven are a different matter.  It’s that sense that the preacher hasn’t just written a message packed with information and illustration, but has been before the throne of God above.  That sense that this message is an accurate explanation of the passage, but not a cold academic explanation of the passage.  That sense that the preacher knows the Book, and also the Author of the Book.  They want to also hear relevant application of the passage, but not a relevance born out of the worldliness of the preacher’s own life, but the incisive relevance of a “prophet” who speaks forth into this world, yet somehow is anchored in that world.

You can’t fake it.  I suppose we could try.  But faked heavenly echoes will surely clang just like when people drop famous names to try to impress us in conversation.  Genuine echoes of the glories of heaven’s throne room, of angel voices singing, of intimacy with God; these genuine echoes will not clang.  They will usually be faint, even subtle, but resonating with reality if, in fact, they are real.

For the best of echoes we must genuinely spend time in the presence of a God who invites us to boldly come.

Plagiarism and Echoes

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

At some point I will write a review of Preaching on Your Feet by Fred Lybrand.  I need to finish it first.  Today I’d just like to raise an interesting thought.  Is there a connection between plagiarism and the way most preachers preach?  To put it another way, is it possible to steal your own sermon?

Stealing sermons isn’t good.  Maybe you’ve tried it.  Maybe you’ve heard it.  (Maybe you do it every week – and sing private praise songs about the internet!)  No matter how good the original, no matter how well-crafted the wording, no matter how inspiring the passion, or amusing the anecdotes, somehow a stolen sermon can only be, as Phillips Brooks described it, a “feeble echo” of the original power.  It seems to bounce around in the second preacher’s head and come out as an echo.  It doesn’t resonate from every fiber of his being, it pings out with all the added noise and cavernous emptiness of  a poor recording from a low quality cassette player.

Lybrand raises the possibility that preachers of integrity (ie. not verbatim sermon stealers) might still preach with the same kind of echo.  It’s easy to preach on Sunday morning, referring to notes that prompt your thinking back to your preparation on Thursday.  It’s easy to be preaching trying to recall exactly how you had it before.  It’s not as hollow an echo as a sermon that has bounced through cyberspace (or even through history!) and landed in your memory.  But there is still a hollow-ness.  Still an echo.  Somehow we can fall into preaching the sermon of another preacher – that is, the sermon of you three or four days ago (and God has changed you since then).

I won’t offer Lybrand’s solution today.  I’ll just leave this as a point to ponder as we wrestle with how to really preach, how to really connect with real people at a real moment in time.

Make Two Key Times Count

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I just saw a chart showing that there are two key times in any presentation.  I’ll describe the chart for you.  On the vertical axis, from 0 to 100%, is the scale of attention and retention.  On the horizontal axis, it reads “beginning … middle … end.”  The chart consists of a U-shaped curve.  Attention/retention are highest at the beginning and the end, but dip significantly in the middle.

This poses some concern for me as a preacher.  If this is true, then we need to consider whether we’ve packed the best meat in the middle of the sermon.  Surely we wouldn’t want to give a “meat sandwich” of a sermon if our listeners miss significant amounts of good meat, but take in all the white bread at the start and finish?  Perhaps we need to give more attention to the bread of the sandwich.  Too many sermons are fine steak in the middle of dry cheap white sliced bread.  We need to give more time to preparing our intros and conclusions (so the bread is a higher quality homebaked wholemeal something or other).

Ok, enough of the sandwich analogy, I’m starting to get distracted by my own hunger.  When we preach, let’s think carefully about how to maximize the value of our introduction – not just grabbing attention and building rapport, but also raising need for what is to follow and moving powerfully into the message in order to protect against an excessive dip in attention and focus.

Let’s think carefully about how to make the most of our conclusion – not just fizzling to a faded flop of a finish, but finishing strong, driving home the main idea, encouraging application of it and stopping with purpose.

If attention and retention are highest at the beginning and end of a message, let’s make these two key times count.

(If you want to see the chart and the suggestions given in that post, just click here.)

Bible Study Is Not a Hop

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I don’t want to oversimplify Bible study, but in most basic terms it involves two steps. The first step is to understand what the author meant by what he wrote back then.  The second step is to then consider the enduring application of that text for us today.  Back then . . . today.  Two steps.  One.  Two.

Bible study is not a hop.  We cannot simply try to understand what the text means for us today.  But this happens all the time.  Last night I was enjoying a Bible study in Isaiah 28-35.  We noticed how easily writers will try to explain the content of the passage in terms of “us.”  The problem with this “melded” approach to understanding a passage is that it flattens and simplifies everything.

You might say that actually simplified is good when it comes to complex books like Isaiah.  Indeed, but not when simplified comes at the cost of understanding what Isaiah was actually writing, and at the cost of enjoying the multi-layered, complex, intricate and beautiful plan of God.  When we look at the way God works out His promises we should be stirred to cry out, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”  There is a richness to the way God works through history.  That richness can be lost so quickly – in the time it takes to change two steps into a hop.

Wherever we are in the Bible, let’s be sure to wrestle with what the author meant back then, followed by the possible applications for us either by enduring theological truth or by extension (interpretation before application).  One … two.  Not a hop.

Who Needs the Day Off?

/ Peter Mead / 9 Comments

Just a thought to throw into the mix of life as a preacher.  I just had a fairly busy weekend – preaching three times in two churches.  That means not only preaching, but being mentally distracted in the lead up to the different meetings.  As any preacher knows, it can be a draining experience.  This is why many pastors take Monday as their day-off.  I understand that.

However, it’s worth asking the question, who needs the day off?  As hard as my weekend was, my wife’s was harder.  She had to handle preparing four children for church, being aware of them at church, dealing with bedtimes without me home, etc.  Busy time for me is busy time for her.

Maybe you have Monday off?  Perhaps that is the perfect opportunity to look for ways to bless, serve and encourage others who work hard when you work hard.  For many preachers, Monday can’t be a day off because preaching isn’t your primary source of income.  Perhaps there are other ways to show appreciation to a spouse who lost part of their weekend because you were serving others during your weekend?  For me, this morning will not be the usual relaxing admin catch-up that I almost enjoy on Mondays (brain dead work), it will be handling homeschool and lunch so my wife can enjoy a morning to herself.  She deserves that after the weekend I just put her through!

Chatting Through Sunday’s Sermon

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Sunday’s coming and hopefully your message is not too far away now.  Allow me to engage you in a brief conversation about your message.  Perhaps this is the kind of conversation you have with your spouse or a staff member of your church.  So we chat about the passage, the main idea as you see it, perhaps the tension you plan to build into the message.  We go back and forth, all very cordial and maybe with some humor thrown in.  Then I ask,

“How will you apply this message?”

What is your answer?  If your answer is vague and fluffy, this says a lot about how you will preach the message (although the question might prompt some extra preparation in this area!)  If your answer is specific, with concrete and tangible contemporary examples of the message applied, then things are looking good for Sunday.

So.  How will you apply the message?  There . . . I asked.  Now it’s over to you.  The answer that matters is not one you give me, but what you give them on Sunday.  (Thinking about it, perhaps I should ask me that question too . . . )

Spontaneous Preacher Combustion

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote that “Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.”  In fact, allow me to quote further (from 97-98 of Preaching and Preachers):

What is the chief end of preaching?  I like to think it is this.  It is to give men and women a sense of God and his presence. . . . I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul . . . if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the gospel.

That’s a great thought to ponder as we prepare for the next message.  In reality, it may take longer than from now til Sunday.  Let’s face it, the title for this post is patently ridiculous.  The kind of divinity and spirituality implied by Lloyd-Jones’ reference to a man on fire is not the kind that comes by “spontaneous” combustion.  It comes through the long slow warming of the soul in the warmth of God’s embrace, through slow-cooked spirituality as the preacher is consistently exposed to the burning truths of God’s Word, through the patient grace of One who does not put out a dying ember, but gently fans it into flame over time.  Don’t expect miraculous fire if you are not spending extended time in the presence of God.  Only if we are much at home with God are we likely to give listeners a real sense of God.  Spontaneous?  No.  Fire?  Let’s hope so.

Smooth Preaching Doesn’t Mark

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I like this term, “smooth preaching.”  I was just reading about it and resonating with the thought.  Peter Jensen uses the term in his chapter on the role of the seminary in the training of the preacher.   (Preach the Word, p216.)  He writes, “There is a variety of smooth preaching that replicates what it sees as the main theme of a text but does not bring to the surface anything in the text that surprises, contradicts, creates tension.”  It is the kind of preaching that rushes too easily to conclusions or fails to spot the points of stress in a text.  It is dull preaching that dulls the Word of God.

I suppose some might wish that someone would publish a book, perhaps a New International Textual Stress Points Commentary, or a Passage-By-Passage Jagged Edge Guide.  But in reality, there is simple no better way to avoid such smooth preaching than this – spend significant time dwelling in a text, wrestling with the text, allowing the text to wrestle with you, opening your own heart to the text, leaning so close to it that it can draw blood.  Close and personal encounters with God’s Word will bring the Bible into real conflict with sin in our lives.  It will expose and challenge our pride, anger, doubts, motivations, attitudes, habits, tendencies.  If we keep texts at arms length, then we will preach smooth sermons.  If we handle texts only briefly before preaching the obvious, then we will preach smooth sermons.  If we really prayerfully vulnerably wrestle with a text, and lose, then we will be in a better position to preach sermons with the textual edge bared to make its mark.  The Word of God does cut, but smooth preaching will only conceal that edge.  Smooth preaching doesn’t mark.

Easter is Coming – The Power of Identification

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I know Easter is still a couple of months away, but as a preacher it is never too early to think about Easter.  In fact, there is a sense in which commemoration of Easter is never more than six days away – the Lord’s Day is a weekly gathering because of His resurrection.  So here’s a thought regarding Easter (whether you’re planning for April or preparing for tomorrow’s message).

In preaching any narrative section, we need to consider whom listeners will gravitate toward, with whom they will identify.  We should consider how to encourage that or redirect that through our preaching.  In the case of the passion narratives, this tendency to identify can be powerfully used in our preaching.  Luther pointed to this when he wrote:

“Although Christians will identify themselves with Judas, Caiaphas, and Pilate; sinful, condemned actors in the Gospel story – there is another who took the sins of humanity on himself when they were hung around his neck.”

When it comes to the story of the crucifixion we find ourselves identifying with so many characters: Judas, Peter, fleeing disciples, Caiaphas, Pilate, Roman soldiers, Simon from Cyrene, mocking executioners, mocking crowds, mocking thief, repentant thief, followers standing at a distance, followers standing close by, even the Centurion.  Yet the wonder of it all is that we are invited to identify with the perfect One hanging on that cross, for in that act He was most wondrously identifying with us.

Consider how the natural function of narrative – to spark identification – can be utilized to communicate the wondrous truth of Calvary this Easter, or even this Sunday.