How to . . . ?

Revisiting Preaching Style

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I’ve written about style before, but it’s worth revisiting.  Not surprisingly, I am resonating with much of what Jay Adams wrote about style back in ’82.  The reason I resonate is that I still come across pockets of preaching activity that fall into the three inadequate styles he lists in his book (I will quote and condense):

Preacher’s Style – This is a stilted style pockmarked with King James’s terminology and Elizabethan constructions (beloved, unto, beseech, the person of, babe, vale, etc.)  This sort of style, unknown to the apostles, who spoke an elevated (by their content) fish-market Greek, or even the translators of the KJV/AV who wrote exactly as they talked.  This style is a modern travesty totally without previous history or biblical warrant.  Cleanse your preaching of all such “preachy” language.

Scholastic Style – This technical, super-sophisticated and bookish style is equally unhelpful.  The great biblical, theological terms must be used, but not without exlanation, nor should be be used in profusion.  Don’t sound like a theological treatise (or an academic essay).

Chatty Style – This approach majors on the slang and jargon of the day and lacks all form and order.  Again, Adams sees this as unhelpful to effective communication.

Good preaching style is a plain (but not drab), unaffected (but not unstudied) style that gets in there and gets the job done without calling attention to itself.  It should always be clear and appropriate to both content and mood.  The best analogy Adams sees is the news reader on TV.  Our preaching style should not be lower than this, but should be elevated by its content slightly above this standard style with its standard use of language.

That’s Adams take a generation ago, what now?  I know some still choose preachy, scholastic or chatty styles.  Is there a better standard than the TV newsreader?

Practice Preaching With Senses

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In yesterday’s post I highlighted a helpful point from Jay Adams’ book, Preaching with Purpose, in which he emphasized the need for preaching to all five senses.  For some of us this may come easy.  For others of us, this will take some real work.  Here are a couple of practice exercises that may help.

The Study Search – Adams suggests working within the confines of your study.  Touch, smell, taste, listen, and look at everything around you.  What does that wood feel like?  What does that old book smell like?  How does the painkiller tablet taste?  What about the sound of the door opening?  And that pile of stuff on your desk, what does it look like?  Take a few minutes and observe carefully.  Perhaps in the process you will come up with numerous similes and anecdotes to vivify your preaching.

The Scripture Search – Take a poetic passage – a psalm or song.  Carefully comb through it looking for sensory language or allusions (direct or implied).  Make note of ways to preach that text so that the senses are fully engaged.  For instance, try Psalm 113 or 133 for starters.  Then consider a narrative passage – life is lived with five senses, so this shouldn’t be too hard.  What sensory language could be used to communicate this narrative vividly?  Perhaps try Luke 15, or Genesis 39.

Appeal To All Senses

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Just a quick quote today, again taken from Jay Adams, Preaching With Purpose:

Most homiletics books speak about “illustrating” truth and making it “vivid.”  But those terms refer to communication by means of appeal to but a single sense: the sense of sight.  That failure, so inherent in the very single sense vocabulary of homiletics, has led to dull, lifeless preaching.  Of course, there are many dull, lifeless preachers for whom it is difficult to “paint word pictures” that appeal to the sense of sight, let alone learn to help congregations to taste, touch, smell, and even hear with the ear.

I think this is a helpful point.  Listeners have five sense and preachers can communicate to every sense by means of carefully chosen words and well-crafted delivery. I remember sitting under the teaching of David Needham, a master of using words and emotion that caused us to salivate as he described the taste, smell and sound of the golden delicious apples of his Californian childhood!

Adams goes on in the same paragraph to make the same point I want to make today.  When we appeal to the full range of human senses, we only do what the Bible does so often.  Be sure to look carefully in your preaching text for any sense appeal that is already there.  Then think carefully about your message, each detail, and how it can deliberately target various senses as you preach.

Don’t Stop Short

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Tomorrow’s passage is relevant for our listeners.  Hopefully by this stage in preparation we see the relevance and have a message that will present the idea of the passage, built on explanation of the details, with applications that point to the relevance.  But it is always easier to only go 75% of the way there.  Don’t stop short.

Don’t just ask a vague question when the passage is set up for a probing question.  Don’t just make a vague application.  Help people see the specific ways in which this passage can make a difference in their affections, their belief, their conduct.  Their thinking and their actions should be changed by biblical preaching.  It’s easy to keep it general, vague and maybe even nice.  But don’t stop short, push through and drive the message home (with grace, of course, but home nonetheless).

Dense Packing Doesn’t Prosper

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It is commonly referred to as a mistake new preachers make, but we can all fall into the trap.  A sermon will not work well if it is too overwhelming.

Let’s say you study the passage for several hours.  You discover interesting bits of information regarding background, structure, syntax, grammar, word meanings, not to mention parallel passages, cross-references, informing theology and later use of this text in the canon.  You discover fascinating insights through archaelogical reference tools, an interesting textual critical debate concerning one word that may or may not be original, and an interpretational debate that has gone back and forth since Calvin’s commentary was published.  Plus you stumbled across some useful anecdotes, an amusing story or three in a database of illustrations and you heard a great opening remark that you’d love to fit in, somehow.  Several hours of preparation will yield a significant resource pool of information.

But then you have to pack up what you intend to carry into the pulpit.  You only have a limited time.  Listeners only have a limited capacity to take information onboard.  After all your work, you have enough to load up three large suitcases and a trunk, plus a carry-on bag and a personal item.  But you can only pack a small suitcase and take it with you into the sermon time.  Prayerfully select.  Leave some of your work neatly folded for a future journey.  Graciously drop some of it in the waste.  Pack only that which will help you achieve your message purpose and drive home your message idea with application for their lives.  And don’t mention all that you couldn’t bring with you.

When you travel into the pulpit, just take one small case.  Don’t overstuff it either, tempting as that may be.  In the preaching journey, dense packing doesn’t prosper.

How to Preach Error in a Series

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Perhaps you are preaching a series of messages on a book of the Bible.  Perhaps you are one of several preachers preaching such a series.  So naturally you take the first passage of the text and study it to the best of your ability, Sunday comes and you preach it.  Next week you give your efforts to the next passage in the book.  This is how to preach error in a series.

It seems obvious, but in the busy schedule of ministry, it is so easy to forget.  A passage has to be studied in its context.  You may misrepresent the author’s intent in chapter 1 if you have not studied chapter 1 in its relation to the other three chapters.

Practically this means finding ways to do as much of the exegetical work as possible, in the whole book, before you preach message one.  If you are only preaching one message in the series, then necessarily your broader study will not be to the same level as the passage you are preaching (but perhaps this should push us in the direction of some study in teams whenever possible in multi-preacher series?)  If you are preaching the whole series, this macro view of the whole will benefit every individual message and be a blessing to your soul.

If the passages are connected to each other, as each series in a book surely is, then you cannot afford to prepare only one message and then preach it.  That’s how to preach error.

Content Differences in Preaching and Lecturing

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In his book, Preaching with Purpose, Jay Adams regularly distinguishes lecturing from preaching.  One is designed to inform, the other to motivate appropriate response and change.  One is about the Bible, the other is about the listeners and God, from the Bible.  But does this mean that applicational preachers will say less about the Bible than “lecturers” in a pulpit?  Not according to Adams:

The preacher explains the text just as fully as does the lecturer; in fact, more fully.  He explains the ‘telos’ as well.  Everything of importance that the lecturer might say about the passage (and, lecturing lends itself to by-paths, discussing unimportant details, it must be remembered) the preacher can say also.  The difference is in how they handle the same material; the difference is in their orientation and use of it, and in how they say what they say.

So a Bible lecturer in a pulpit may state truth, but the listeners don’t know why they are looking at it when it is presented.  The listener to true preaching will know the why as well as the what, of that which is presented.

A call for expository preaching is neither a call for apparently irrelevant informing (even with application tacked on at the end), nor is it a call for applicational messages weak in content.

Communicate Relevantly . . . Carefully

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As a preacher who desires to be firmly planted in the world of the Bible and the world of the listeners, it can be a real challenge to be appropriately specific in your preaching.  In a small church, everybody knows everyone and can easily figure out who you are referring to if you give a specific example – confidentiality undermined.  In a larger church, people may not know who you are referring to.  However, the person you are referring to can easily sense you are referring to them, and suddenly their trust can feel undermined.

Here are a few suggestions, perhaps you can add others:

Instead of defaulting to more general applications, translate away from one specific to another. Don’t refer to specific marriage problems when you’ve been counseling a couple in that area, but perhaps the application would work in terms of parenting struggles, work relationships, etc.  Remember that people will translate one specific that you preach into the specific situation of their own life experience.

Keep a record of specific observations, potential illustrations, etc., so that you can adjust them and use them at an appropriate time. Right now everyone knows that particular marriage is on the rocks.  You have an example from the situation that could be helpful, but right now is not the time to use it, even if confidentiality is protected.  So having a good record system allows you to decide when to bring in an example to your preaching.

Always review carefully before you preach, considering how it could be taken as well as how you intend it. It may be easier to become non-specific and generic, but the result is not worth it.  So keep the specificity in your preaching, but be careful to review ahead of each sermon to make sure you are aware of any potential land mines.

We Preach By Faith

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Life is often hard.  Life is often deeply disappointing.  Despite what some may claim, life is not one great victory march of pain-free delight through this fallen world.  Living by faith is not a great party free of trouble and hardship.  And preaching is a lot like life.

We prepare to the best of our ability and saturate our lives and ministry in prayer.  Yet so often it falls short.  We get tired and frustrated, saddened by the lack of change in others, or even in ourselves.  We give of ourselves to people who then somehow turn and tear out our hearts.  We find ourselves seething deep inside at great failure or simply at the persistent polite feedback.  And then typically we find ourselves praying stained glass prayers about our next sermon, the kind we feel we’re supposed to pray.

But look to the examples in the Bible of the brutal honesty of God’s men in prayer.  Consider Job chapter three, David in numerous psalms, Jeremiah in chapter twenty, or Paul with his thorn in the flesh.  They poured out their emotion, their hurt, their anger to God.  They didn’t sugar-coat their prayers in sanctified clichés.  They were real, and they knew God could take it.  Yet when all their energy was spent, when all the feelings were out, when they lay totally wiped out before God . . . there was still a trust in God’s Word, still a burning in the bones, still a faith though weak and smoldering.  My grace is sufficient for you.  Will you take my hand and press on?  Do you trust me?

Real faith is not all about grand and glorious certainty.  Often it is found in the midst of total inadequacy, absolute weakness and apparently overwhelming failure and hurt.

We live by faith.  Let us also preach by faith.  Be brutally honest with God about ministry, about preaching, about the preparation that takes so much out of you, the delivery that leaves you deeply vulnerable, about the sometimes sweet agony of it all . . . and about the feelings of failure, inadequacy, discouraging results, the backhanded slap of polite platitudes with no hint of life change, the deep questions, the temptation to settle for less, or to quit altogether.  Pour it out, pour it out until there is nothing left.  Then remember that whisper from above, “my grace is sufficient for you.”  That hand outstretched to take yours and lead you on.  To prepare another sermon, to preach another sermon, to give everything you’ve got to the best of your ability, and to do it all by faith.

Technique and Skill Alone Are Not Enough

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I believe in being a good steward of the privilege of preaching.  It is a privilege to have opportunity to preach.  And it is a privilege to do the best you can.  I believe in being trained to handle the Bible and well trained in homiletics.  I believe in continuing to study hermeneutics and homiletics, not to mention contemporary culture, your listeners, and other related fields.  It is good to hone your technique using feedback, perhaps watching yourself on video and so on.  It is appropriate to put effort into effective communication skills.  All this and so much more, it’s all about being a good steward of your ministry opportunity.

But preaching takes more than that.  Preaching to change lives goes beyond technique and skill.  There is also the entirety of your life – what you stand for, give yourself to, how you walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  But preaching takes more than that.

Ultimately preaching to change lives has a dimension that goes beyond any skill or technique, beyond anything to do with you.  Ultimately there is a divine dimension that cannot be forced.  No preparation on our part, or specifically phrased prayer, can twist God’s arm to do what only He can do.  Nothing on our part is the key to God’s involvement in today’s sermon.  Just as the prophet Joel could only point to character of God in the hope that repentant Judah would be delivered (see Joel 2:12-17), just like our salvation springs from the gracious, compassionate, abounding love of God’s character, so the ultimate and most critical element in our preaching His Word springs purely from who He is, as He chooses.

Prepare well, pray fully.  Perhaps He will move in His grace among your listeners today.  Let’s be sure we are good stewards, but good stewards that lean fully on His grace alone.