How to . . . ?

Sensible Solo Sermon Selection

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are times when we can select a single passage to preach, a stand-alone sermon.  Some people only ever preach this way.  Others rarely preach this way.  So how do we select the passage?  Well, it’s a good idea to pick a passage you want to study and preach.  It’s a good idea to pick a passage that appears straightforward in terms of relevance and application (all Scripture is useful, but let’s face it, some take much more work to “land” on this side of the gap!)  Here are a couple of other things to bear in mind:

The time required for preparation should not be underestimated – If the time available is likely to be limited, then it is usually worth building on a foundation already laid, i.e. preach from a book you’ve studied well and fairly recently.  Before jumping into a Bible book you haven’t studied much, make sure you have the time to study the whole, as well as the particular part.  Make sure there is time to get the resources you might need (commentaries, for example).  Make sure there is time to go through that process of wrestling with the details in order to arrive at the idea of the text.

The macro-context should not be underestimated – In order for your “chunk” of text to make sense, you will usually need to give some explanation of the broader context.  Without the benefit of a series in that book, it may take longer to set the scene than you thought.  Often a brief contextual set-up is sufficient, but not always.  Some texts may be better left to a series so that the reinforcing of key themes can occur “naturally.”

The time required for explanation should not be underestimated – For instance, telling a biblical story can take a lot of effort and sometimes it can take a lot of time.  Be aware of how long you have to preach and how long it will take to tell the story, or explain the content sufficiently.

There are plenty of other factors to take into account when selecting a passage for a stand-alone sermon, but these three shouldn’t be ignored.

Preaching Tired

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

A good friend and commenter on this site sent me a list of about twenty lessons he’d noted after preaching a sermon recently.  I am indebted to Tim for the prompts for yesterday’s post, today’s, and probably a few more to come!

Here’s one of those “lessons learnt” – stress and tiredness do affect your preaching.

Sometimes the problem is that we get stressed about being stressed, or stressed about being tired.  Again, if my night was interrupted because of sickness in the family, then God understands and can provide supernatural strength to compensate.   (Thankfully, as well as an awesome God, I also have a wonderful wife who often handles everything the night before I preach!)

However, it is still worth evaluating the sources of stress and tiredness in our schedule.  Perhaps it is worth guarding the evening before we preach – guarding it from late night socializing or hospitality?  Perhaps it is worth adding exercise to increase the stress-threshold and aid in healthy sleep?  Perhaps it is worth taking a holistic approach to scheduling our future preaching – not just making sure we avoid committing to too many sermons, but also thinking about what the sermons will be, and what our other commitments and challenges will be at the time?

Stress and tiredness do affect our preaching, thanks Tim for the prompt!

Last Minute Sermon Preparation

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I have a personal principle on this issue.  If I genuinely have had to prepare at the last minute, then I ask God for help and know that He understands.  But then there is a second part to it too – if I have procrastinated and end up preparing at the last minute, then I confess that, ask for forgiveness and still ask God for help.

The first part of the principle has been forged in the relatively gentle furnace of family life and missions organization participation!  Sometimes life happens and there is no way to prepare as you would like.  God understands this.  Last minute preparation is not ideal, but it is possible and it is still better to prepare as much as you can, rather than not prepare at all.

The second part of the principle is there because I am human.  I admire people with perfect track records in the area of self-discipline (but I also doubt them!)  Rather than make up excuses and try to convince myself that I genuinely could not prepare fully due to life circumstances, I would rather be honest and admit when I have allowed other things, often very good things, to distract me from what was needed as a ministry deadline loomed.  I may have lacked self-discipline, I may even have succumbed to some tempting distraction, but I don’t want to succumb to another temptation and seek to justify my procrastination.  Hence, I sometimes have to repent and ask for forgiveness and then prepare at the last minute.

May we all be Holy Spirit disciplined in our preparation for ministry and maximize every opportunity to preach the Word.  But may we also accept the reality of the grace we preach to others when we sometimes fail to prepare as we should.  Not an abuser of grace, nor a rejecter of grace!

Gifted to Preach

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

It’s an important question, but not a simple one.  I hope we would all agree that preaching has much more to do with gift than degree.  But which gift?  Obviously the gift of teaching is the typical one people point out, or perhaps a carefully defined (or re-defined) gift of prophecy.  But what about the gift of evangelist, or a leadership gift, or exhortational / encouragement gifts?  It seems that many of the gifts can help in pulpit ministry.  Nevertheless, not everyone is able to, nor should, preach.

Those that have that something – divine gifting, calling, unction, whatever – they should then be responsible stewards of what they have been given.  That is where the training comes in.  The degree or qualification may not matter, but the training does.  However we get it, we should look to fan into flame whatever gifting we have by a combination of both experience and training.  Certification may not be a big deal, but true education is, however we get it.

Incidentally, perhaps one of the benefits of formal preaching training is that it helps some people learn that they should not be preaching!  What church listeners may be too polite to point out, feedback sheets, wise instructors and video recordings can make clear.

So let us be sure that we never rely on gifting without being responsible stewards of all that God has given us for ministry (this means reading, getting training, being a learner, looking for mentors, etc.)  Equally, let us never rely on education or academic qualification (this means being fervent in prayer, humble in attitude, reliant on God, etc.)  We preach as stewards.  It is His ministry.

Preaching in Saul’s Armor?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Brian McLaren finishes his chapter on leadership in Adventures in Missing the Point with an analogy from David and Goliath.  He feels that too many ministers are trying to do ministry dressed up in Saul’s XXL armor, when in fact they are size M or even size S people.  We need to do our ministry, we need to preach our sermons, as ourselves, not as some supposed spiritual superhero.

I recently wrote about preaching to ordinary people.  It should go without saying that we preach as ordinary people.  But perhaps the legacy of pulpit personas and Sunday morning image presentation makes it necessary to make the point.  We preach as ordinary people.  Perhaps size M, perhaps size S, probably not an XXL.  Strangely enough, we know how the story ended with non-XXL David being himself in the task ahead of him, knowing that God was Himself in that same task.

(Incidentally, McLaren and Campolo either write the chapter or respond to the other’s writing.  While not agreeing with either on every detail, I can’t help but mention how much I have resonated with Campolo’s careful critiques of McLaren’s sometimes cavalier criticisms.)

Shifting From We to You

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Robinson suggests that there comes a point in a sermon, at least in a good sermon, when the listener loses track of all the people around them. Before, the preacher was one of us, representing us before God, but now there is a shift so that the preacher is representing God to me individually. There is a point at which “we” language can effectively give way to “you” language. There is that need for each individual to make personal application of the sermon.

If we shift too early, we run the risk of coming across as full of ourselves. We can offend people by our personal presence in the presentation.

If we shift too late or not at all, we run the risk of falling short of making the call of Scripture on the lives of God’s people.

There is no set point. It depends on the sermon, on the speaker, on the listeners, on the setting. But we undermine our ministry by neglecting either “we” or “you” language, or by failing to evaluate when the shift can and should occur.

Effective Verse-by-Verse Preaching

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Following on from the previous post, I’d like to share Mathewson’s four suggestions for using a verse-by-verse approach effectively.  I could have written my own suggestions, but they’d be much the same as Mathewson, so I’ll let him have the credit for this:

1. Keep the big picture in mind. This means thinking in preaching units or paragraphs, rather than atomistically.  Verse-by-verse is a strategy that serves a larger goal, that of expositional preaching of a unit of Scripture.  Commit to work through a block of text, rather than stopping when the time runs out.

2. Highlight the contours of the text. Include structural observation to help people recognize the contours and shape of the text.

3. Determine which details to cover in depth and which to summarize.  What does the audience need explaining, validated or applied?

4. Use verse-by-verse preaching in concert with paragraph-by-paragraph preaching.  Some sermons in a series will cover larger chunks of text, while others will move verse-by-verse.  Give people both breadth and depth, they need both.

Preach Grace Not Moralism

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Tim Keller makes a critical point.  Too often as preachers we preach a gospel that moves people from rebel to legalist.  We so easily preach so that younger sons become older sons, but somehow miss the glory of the father’s prodigious grace in humiliating himself for the sake of both sons.

Let us be careful to distinguish rebellious sin and moralistic self-righteousness (still sin), from true grace.  We cannot overstate the danger of preaching that turns worldly rebels into pew-filling moralists, but fails to preach the unique distinctive of grace that only the Christian gospel has to offer.

Great Expectations

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Perhaps you have experienced it.  Great times of prayer.  Real passionate prayer and even a sense of spiritual breakthrough, all in the context of a forthcoming sermon.  I remember times when I would preach through a message ahead of time, then pray for the people and the event at which it would be preached.  I remember times of great excitement, great expectation.  Maybe you’ve had those times too?  Maybe you’ve also had that let down feeling when the real event happened and the sermon and the response and the atmosphere was all so normal.

It is easy to let the normal-ness of ministry diminish our sense of expectation.  It is as if we don’t really expect people to be transformed or the Spirit of God to be at work.  It is understandable, but it is wrong.  As Haddon Robinson has put it, “we’re handling dynamite, and we didn’t expect it to explode!”  The Spirit of God is at work, the Word of God is powerful, and whether we see it or not, we should prepare and pray with great expectation.  (What about the disappointments and struggles that come internally after we preach?  We pour them out to God and then press on, daring to dream again, daring to pray big and preach big for a big God!)

The Preacher, The Worship Leader

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

In many churches there is a separation of sermon and worship.  Both are seen to occur in the service, but they are perceived to be distinct elements.  In some churches the service feels like two events – the song service and the sermon.  In other churches the preacher is expected to lead the whole service whether or not the preacher is capable or desirous of the responsibility!

I hope we would agree that worship is more than song-singing.  Actually, worship is about revelation of God and response to God.  While revelation of God need not be restricted to the sermon, it should surely include the sermon.  So the sermon plays a role in the worship of the church.

This has all sorts of possible implications in respect to structuring a church service and planning the interaction of sermon and song.  For example, what comes after the sermon?   It can be a horrible feeling to preach a sermon and then see people switch off and switch back to normal life during the token singing of a closing song (sometimes a sermon and its application needs space to “soak” in).  Equally it can be wholly disappointing to be lifted up through a sermon and then not given the opportunity to respond in well-chosen and well-led song.

I feel that as preachers we need to recognize our role as worship leaders, yet at the same time recognize the wonderful ministry of those capable in leading response through music.  As a preacher I am a worship leader, yet I know so well that there are others who can lead worship so much better than I.  We need each other.