How to . . . ?

Preach As If You Know The End From The Beginning

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about the issue of concentration and sermon length.  Haddon Robinson taught me that when it comes to sermon length the real issue is not minutes, but perception.

A good sermon is going somewhere and the listeners know it.  Apparently, there was a study of some 2500 people with the question, “How long should a sermon be?”  Preachers would answer in minutes, but listeners would answer along the lines of, “As long as it takes to get to the end.”  By this measure, a sermon that is too long is one that takes too long to get to the end.

Haddon Robinson may not be a perfect preacher, but he is a good model of this principle – when he’s through with the message he finishes.  While I often fall into the trap of several false landings, he seems to nail that ending, and often does it a couple of sentences before the listeners expect it.

A good sermon does not have several stopping places, it has an end.  A good preacher knows the end and goes straight there.

Careful of Clips – Part 2

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Yesterday I raised what is probably the main reason for caution in the use of movie clips – they can so easily overwhelm and therefore undermine the message.

But then there are other issues. Here are five more to ponder.

1. Transitions. The transition from you to the clip and back to you needs to be seamless (picture, sound and lighting). A five second pause in a message is no problem, but a five second pause before a movie clip is about four seconds too long!

2. Necessary explanation. How much explanation needs to be given to contextualize the clip for those that have not seen the movie (and would you use a spoken illustration that needs minutes of context in order to make sense?)

3. Time consuming. Finding an appropriate clip can be very time consuming (I’m sure I’m not the only one who has searched for a clip only to be thwarted by one inappropriate word or image in every possible clip).

4. A better option? Is showing it the best option or would it be equally or more effective to verbally describe the scene yourself? (I once used an illustration and quote from Gladiator that worked well, but the clip was unusable due to gory content.)

5. Movie content issues. Finally there is the ever-present issue of movie content – are you condoning everything in that movie for everyone present?

A movie clip can be an effective enhancement device in a sermon. But for it to work many things have to line up – idea of clip, placement in sermon, composition of audience, content of movie, length of explanation required, emotional power of clip, expertise of tech-crew, etc. When these things all line up, go for it. Otherwise, be careful of clips.

Careful of Clips – Part 1

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Yesterday I made a passing reference to the use of movie clips in preaching.  I love movies.  I love preaching.  So I should combine the two whenever possible?  Actually no, I rarely use clips in preaching (although I do in interactive seminars – totally different dynamic).

Movie clips can be very powerful and very effective.  But they can also be too powerful and too effective.  For example, if you build your sermon toward the climax, then use a powerful clip (all the senses, all the emotion, etc.), then it stops and people have to listen to you again . . . no music in the background, no make-up, no camera angles . . . well, it can be quite a let down!  So it is typically better to use the clip earlier rather than later in the message.

However, if the clip is too powerful, then you’ll touch people too deeply too early and the whole message will fall flat.  Somehow the preacher and the message have to touch people more powerfully than the clip.  It’s a hard balance to find.  You should only use the clip if it is the best way to get the point across, but you don’t want it to be too powerful or it will overwhelm the message.  Support material has to be proportionate to the import of the particular point being communicated at that stage of the sermon.

Tomorrow I’ll mention more reasons to be careful rather than cavalier in the use of movie clips.

Please Only PowerPoint on Purpose

/ Peter Mead / 8 Comments

For some people, whether or not to use powerpoint is not even a question.  It is assumed.  I don’t assume I should use it.  My default is no powerpoint, then if I use it, I use it on purpose.

I think it may be worth using if there is an image that will really help, such as a biblical map, image or a contemporary scene of significance (the person to go with the quote, etc.), or if there is a series of verses away from your preaching text that you want people to see quickly (have good reason for sharing multiple other verses), or if there is a movie clip that will reinforce and help (but not overwhelm) the message.  I only think it may be worth using if either you or another person can design it and control it perfectly (clear and consistent fonts of the right size, very limited use of words, transitions that work to the millisecond both coming on and going off, etc.)  Sadly, often even appropriate powerpoint material is sabotaged by very amateurish use.

I don’t think it is worth using in order to show your outline (that’s for you, not them), or to show your preaching text (they need the practice reading their own Bibles).  I don’t think it’s worth using if it means sacrificing preparation time for formatting time.  I certainly don’t think it’s worth using just because you have a projector and a laptop.  I don’t think we should use it just because it is used in the business world (please note many in the business world are lousy speakers, and many of the good ones left compulsive powerpoint use behind years ago!)  I’d rather have listeners engaged with me and with the Bible in their laps than with a screen.

Haddon Robinson has said that, “A picture is not worth a thousand words (the people who make pictures came out with that!)  Some words will never be captured in a picture.”

Powerpoint may be helpful.  Steve Mathewson has written that he periodically has a powerpoint enhanced sermon, but he never has a powerpoint driven sermon – amen!  If you use it, please be professional, be subtle, don’t turn to look at it yourself or even refer to it unnecessarily, don’t overload the screen and don’t lose sight of the fact that it is you who is called to be the preacher, not the screen.

Give Me A Break!

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Listeners can concentrate when we motivate them to do so. But it is important to remember that it is mentally tiring to maintain intense concentration.

In a conversation we find ourselves checking out now and then, or cracking a joke periodically to bring relief from the intensity. In preaching we need to be considerate of the mental energy of our listeners.

When I was growing up and preaching some early sermons (or versions thereof!), my church decided to believe the hype about concentration spans (i.e. it is impossible for contemporary listeners to concentrate beyond 15 minutes). They were conservative enough to want to keep their 30+ minute sermons, so they decided to break up the sermons with a hymn or chorus at the half-way stage. The logic seems clear enough. The idea was flawed. As a listener I could tell it didn’t work. When I preached I could feel the problem! After singing and switching off for several minutes, the preacher had to re-introduce the sermon in order to get listeners onboard again. Don’t try this at home.

However, listeners do need breaks in the intensity now and then. A good illustration can really help (as long as it is somehow moving the message forward rather than merely pressing pause). Humor carefully used can break tension, release some steam as people take the chance to laugh, then re-engage more willingly. Varying pace, pitch and power of the voice are critical, not to mention the strategic use of pause. In reality people can’t concentrate for even 15 minutes at once, it is more like 3-5 minutes – so carefully shape the sermon in appropriate length movements with very deliberate and careful transitions!

Concentration uses energy, even when people are motivated. So as a preacher don’t simply shrink every sermon or chop it up to allow for commercial breaks. Instead strive to stir motivation (interest, need, thirst), design sermons in suitable movements with careful transitions, and present with an engaging enthusiasm that provides appropriate breaks to keep people with you.

Concentration Confusion

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

We are regularly told that contemporary listeners have drastically diminished concentration spans due to the changes in contemporary culture (sound bite journalism, bite-size online reading habits, commercial break saturated television, etc.)  What these “concentration span experts” fail to mention is that movies seem to be getting longer, not shorter (whatever happened to the good old 87 minute tales of the 1980’s?)  They don’t recognize that people engrossed in a good book will still read for uninterrupted hours on end.  They omit to note that a good conversation still eats up many telephone minutes.

Undoubtedly our culture has shifted on numerous levels.  Perhaps people are less willing to tolerate boredom.  But concentration spans are not the issue.  A good movie, a good book, a good conversation all hold attention as they always did.  The issue is whether or not people are interested in what is before them.  With interest people will watch a movie without flinching, focus for hours on a football game (whichever football you think I mean by that!), with interest they will surf the web losing track of time, read a book for hours on end, converse without looking at their watch.  With interest people will even listen to a sermon.

So should we indiscriminately shrink every sermon?  No.  But we should be interesting.  We should craft messages that not only pique imagination, but create a thirst for God’s Word relevantly preached.  We should endeavor to improve every aspect of delivery so that we don’t get in the way of effective communication.  The CSEs (concentration span experts) point to the listeners and claim they can’t take preaching anymore.  I point the finger at us and say let’s prove the CSEs wrong!

Preparation Place

/ Peter Mead / 7 Comments

A good sermon in the pulpit will reflect hours of work in the study.  Hours of prayerful reading, careful thinking and sometimes tearful wrestling through the process.  But no rule says preparation has to happen at the desk.  In fact, the desk can be a place of distraction!

Personally I tend to work either at home at my desk, or at a friend’s house (quieter).  However, there are times when I find I need to prepare somewhere else.  Not because I have to, but because it helps.  I sometimes think and preach through a sermon while driving (sorry for the carbon footprint!), or on a walk, or pacing around in my living room.  One time I had to answer questions from the police about what I was doing at such and such a time (“Uh, I was preaching a sermon while staring out of the window, officer!”) – I happened to fail to see anything suspicious as a crime took place down the street, but my bizarre excuse precluded further questioning!

Anyway, where do you find preparation works best for you?  Driving, walking, pacing, sitting in a Starbucks to see and sense the reality of people?  There are no rules here, but I am interested!

Let Agony Reassure You

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching is agonizing.  Giving birth to a sermon is a regular pain.  The effect is felt in our emotional, spiritual, mental and physical selves.  Rarely does a sermon fall together with ease, get delivered with nothing but joy and result in tangible spiritual fruit for all.  Typically the preaching experience is unlike any other.  It hurts.  It raises huge question marks on a regular rhythm.  It takes something out of you that leaves you vulnerable and broken.  You can shrug off a bad round of golf, or a poor session at the gym before your peers, or even am uncomfortable evening of hospitality that didn’t quite go to plan.  But a sermon is different.  You don’t shrug it off.  Even a good one leaves lingering doubts, feelings of failure and the gentle scars of sermonic ministry.

These things can be discouraging.  The interrupted preparation.  The blind side critique.  The barbed feedback.  The polite feedback.  The excessive hand-shaking response coupled with the pathetic life response.  It can all be discouraging, but let it encourage you today.  If it was easy, if there were no struggles, no emotions, no sense of inner turmoil and personal agony, then perhaps it would be nothing more than a hobby, a personal venture.  Preaching the Word of God is a spiritual battle of the first order.  Just like evangelism.  Just like missions.  It’s not meant to be easy.  It’s meant to be real.  Let the agony reassure you.  It’s real.  God is real.  So is the enemy.  So is the battle.  So will be the lasting fruit wrought through it all.

Don’t Blame the Wrong Thing

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I regularly hear that contemporary audiences, or postmodern audiences, don’t appreciate or engage with traditional expositional approaches to preaching.  It is easy to blame the change in culture, or the shift in lifestyle, or the influence of MTV or video games.  People blame the diminishing attention spans, or the reduced openness to propositional truth, or the need for increased use of visual media.  There’s a whole lot of blaming going on.

I want to suggest a different target for our finger pointing.  Us.  People who tell me they don’t appreciate expository preaching are essentially telling me they haven’t heard any worthy of the label.  People who supposedly cannot concentrate for more than thirty seconds are somehow able to stick with good preaching for well over a snippet or micro-message.  People who are so resistant to propositional truth seem very willing to buy into presentations of truth that are carefully designed and effectively communicated.  Let’s not blame postmodernity, MTV, Nintendo Wii, or whatever.  Culture is culture and culture shifts.

We need to point the finger at ourselves.  People typically react against a caricature of expository preaching.  They react against unnecessarily dull monologues.  The solution is not to be found in gimicks, gross shrinkage of sermon length, or the random spraying of video clips.  The solution is, at least in part, better preaching.  Creative preaching.  Biblical preaching.

The finger is pointed our way.  Let’s respond well.

Why Was the Text Written?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In a general sense everything written in the Bible was written for our instruction (Rom.15:4).  Yet as preachers we can fall into the trap of looking for a sermon in a text, rather than fully pursuing the process of allowing the text to be boss of the sermon.

Yesterday I was discussing Genesis 3 with a friend.  I’ve heard sermons that essentially ignore everything after verse 7 in order to give a how-to guide to resisting temptation.  Was that why the chapter was written?  This was not merely an example of temptation, it was the Fall.  While there may be a place for noting the steps Eve took that led to disaster, surely this cannot dominate the message to the extent that the passage becomes a mere instructional piece.

Why was it written?  There is instruction about a one-off event with lasting implications that face us all everyday.  There may be passing lessons to learn about the way the enemy works in our response to God’s instruction.  There also is significant space given to explanation of the consequences of the Fall.  There is also hope interwoven with judgment in the seed of the woman to come.

When we pause and ponder enough to recognize that the passage is not an instructional anecdote, but one of the most significant events of history, and that the reverberations of that event are wobbling our world moment by moment right until this moment, and that the solution is not in our ability to implement lessons from Eve’s conversation, but in the hope of the seed of the woman who would come and crush the serpent’s head.  When we spend enough time in the text and see why it was written, then we are in a better place to preach the Word.  After all, it was written for our instruction, so that through the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope!  (Rom.15:4)