Overqualified! Heart, Head.

March 2, 2012March 2, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just one more post to finish off the series. As preachers there are various areas where we can fall into the trap of adding comments or thoughts or meaning or clarification or balance or just plain error to what the Bible says. When we overqualify, we under-preach. There’s one more example I want to highlight.

Preaching through a text we come across a reference to the heart. What is the tendency? “Ah, the word is really mind, not heart, its about thinking, not feeling, ah, uh, next verse…”

If you do this you are not alone. But the Bible shouldn’t be interpreted via a democracy. Many have the tendency to impose a stoic anthropology onto the biblical text that is simply not there, and most do so without knowing they are doing it. That is, any reference to the heart, affections, desires, wants, responses, etc., are filtered out based on the presupposition that such features of humanity are ignoble and untrustworthy. (This also means that negatives like lust tend to get left in, since the negative fruit makes sense to a stoic mindset.)

A pre-commitment to the ideal of our being thinking, choosing individuals overrides what the text might be saying. A slightly more sophisticated fudge comes in the form of, “the word here is not heart, but guts, kidneys, etc.” Implication? Since it isn’t “heart” it cannot have meant what we mean when we refer to the heart. Oops again. We tend to speak of the heart due to its physiological response to external stimuli – to attractive beauty, to fear, to anger, etc. Other cultures might speak of the stomach or guts for the same reason.

This is only scratching the surface of a much deeper issue, no pun intended. But we need to beware lest we talk the text out of speaking of deeply felt inner responsiveness as the driver of human faculties. We might be strongly committed to a notion such as our decisions being determined by a partnership between our thought processes and our will, in alliance against the dangerous and untrustworthy affections. We may believe that with good information and disciplined wills, right decisions will be the outcome. But our commitment and belief, along with that of many others over the past years, may be profoundly wrong.

What if the Bible is right in pushing us to a more profound issue, namely, that the heart is the source, the wellspring, the chief inner faculty? What if it isn’t out of the overflow of my education and discipline that my mouth speaks? What if my reflection of the image of God is not determined by my efforts to suppress affection in order to think and choose freely? What if love determines everything? And what if love isn’t really an act of a free will?

I’ve run out of words, but if you’d like to hear more on this subject, click here.

Narrative as Super-Genre?

February 24, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

While we tend to think in terms of seven biblical genres, I find it helpful to recognize three types of literature – narrative, poetry and discourse. These types occur proportionately in that order. Narrative is the most common, discourse the least.

In simplistic terms narrative consists of people in plots, poetry consists of parallelism and imagery, and discourse consists of direct speech or correspondence.

For the past weeks I’ve been bouncing around the field of preaching narratives, which I hope has been helpful. But here’s a thought with which I’ll finish this extended series. Maybe narrative should be considered a super-genre.

That is to say, the core features of narrative are not completely absent from the other types of literature. Let’s say the core features include the development and resolution of tension in the situation of characters. There are people with a problem in a plot.

What do we have with poetry? Often we have a person reacting to life in the form of poetic writing. If they are reacting to the threat of enemies, then we might find a psalm of lament. If they have been delivered and are looking back on the experience, then we might have a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Poem’s often function as a snapshot into the response of an individual to the narrative of life lived in a fallen world, in response to our good God. Most poems are not narratival or complete in terms of plot line. But often poems are glimpses into the narratival nature of life’s experience.

What do we have with discourse? Often we have a person addressing others who are facing the realities of life. In the midst of a problem we might find the text offers guidance or encouragement. In the aftermath of a problem we might find gratitude and thanksgiving. Since no individual or church is ever beyond problems in this life, typically we will find the discourse to be engaging the realities of these tensions in some form. Discourse rarely reflects a complete plot (except in review), but it does give a snapshot into an ongoing narrative. Discourse offers a glimpse into the narratival nature of life for a person, nation or church.

We could go through the genres and see the narratival features of prophecy, apocalyptic, wisdom writings, etc. Space does not permit, this post needs a conclusion:

So what? Well, as preachers, this is important to recognize. This means that we can bring some of the skills needed for effective preaching of story over to the other two types of biblical literature. We don’t preach poetry or discourse as pure narrative. But we miss an opportunity if we preach either as if there is nothing narratival about it.

Our listeners are also mid-story in the narrative of life. They also struggle with the incomplete experience of tensions as yet unresolved. Perhaps a narratival engagement with the emotion of poetry, or the wisdom of discourse, might prove invaluable.

Our listeners are living life in narrative. There’s a reason that story engages listeners. Let’s not miss opportunities to engage present story with biblical story, whether that be a full-blown narrative, or the snapshot offered in poetry or discourse.

This is why I consider narrative to be a “super-genre.”

Preaching Story: The Challenges of the Old Testament

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 11 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Old Testament narratives? I think there are a few points worth pondering here:

1. Typically we have less familiarity with the broader flow of the Old Testament and may be tempted to only preach the familiar handful of Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Goliath, Jonah, Daniel narratives. Take a look at some of the lesser known stories. I am willing to guarantee that if you study an obscure story you’ll want to preach it. More than that, if you really wrestle with it in its context, then you’ll probably preach it well!

2. Not only do we have less familiarity with the Old Testament world, but so do our listeners. This means being sure to take some time to orient them to cultural features of the world in which the story is set. For example, we have to help listeners understand what it was like to live in the world of the ancient near east, where the plurality of the gods of the nations made every battle into a playground tiff among the gods (and what it meant therefore to be defeated by a foreign power, and worse, exiled by them).

Typically I think a lot of the challenges here are in respect to two issues:

3. Recognizing the elements of continuity. Even in a radically different world, we can resonate with ancient biblical narratives because human nature doesn’t change, and neither does God’s character. The latter offers another set of issues since many are convinced by the Marcionite confusion that leads to Christians pulling away from the God of the Old Testament. We have to help people see the fullness of who our God is, which isn’t always easy.

4. Recognizing the elements of discontinuity. A lot has changed since back then. For instance, their hoped for deliverer has now been and gone, more than that, he went to the cross, rose again, sent his Spirit, is building his church, etc. So we have to figure out how to preach the text so that we see it in its fullness back then, as well as in its fullness for us today.

Old Testament narratives aren’t always easy, but they are so worth it. Let’s not reduce them to illustrations or children’s talks, but preach them as well as we can!

What Kind of a Bible Would You Give?

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

If you were God, what kind of Bible would you give by inspiration? It really depends what kind of a God you were.

This post is hosted on the Cor Deo site, please click here to read it.

Top 10 Mistakes Preachers Make Preaching Story

February 16, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

As we come toward the end of this series of posts on preaching Biblical narratives, let’s have a list post (they’re always popular!) How about the top 10 mistakes preachers make when preaching stories?

1. They don’t tell the story! They refer to it, they draw lessons from it, they theologize all over it, but they omit to actually tell the story. Big oops! The story is not there to be exhibit A in your demonstration of your theological acumen. The story is there to change lives, so tell it!

2. They don’t tell it well. I don’t like adding to the sin lists already in existence, but making God’s Word boring or telling a story poorly must surely qualify as a transgression or iniquity on some level. God has given us everything necessary for a compelling message – tension, characters, movement, progression, illustrative materials, interest, etc. To tell it poorly is to miss an open goal with the ball placed carefully at our feet and thirty minutes to take a shot!

3. They think their thoughts are better than God’s inspired text. I’ve blogged before about the nightmare I suffered when a preacher read the story of Jesus turning water into wine, then said, “you know the story, so I won’t tell it again…” then proceeded to offer us his fanciful imposition of a theological superstructure all over the text. The text is inspired, it is great, God is a great communicator (so please don’t think God is desperate for you to add a good dose of your ideas to His – please preach the Word!)

4. They spiritualise details into new-fangled meanings. Suddenly listeners start thinking to themselves, “I never would have seen that!” or “I never would have made that connection – the donkey represents midweek ministries, brilliant!” Actually, they never would have seen it without you, not because you are God’s gift to the church, but because your fanciful insertion simply isn’t there. Preach the text in such a way as to honour it, not abuse it. And can I be provocative? Sometimes people force Christ into passages in ways that seem to undermine the whole richness of the text in its context – just because it is Christ doesn’t make it right.

5. They don’t let every detail feed into the powerful point of the main idea. Every detail counts, but it counts as part of the writer’s strategy to communicate the main point of the story. A story doesn’t make lots of points, it makes one point. Develop a sensitivity to the role of details in the communication of the single plot point.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with another five…

Saturday Short Thought: What Do Stories Do?

February 11, 2012February 9, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been sleeplessly enjoying Daddy-daughter time with Kaylah. It won’t be long before a well told story will engage her imagination, captivate her attention and shape her life. What begins in the toddler years doesn’t end. Stories are not just for children, but can continue to transform lives of all ages.

Steve Mathewson explains what good stories do:

Proclaiming a well-studied story in a well-prepared way will do what good stories intend to do: sneak past the listener’s defenses to penetrate the heart.

And I suppose this is painfully obvious, so please excuse my fatigued new-Dad-again state, but what we need to do as preachers is understand the stories we preach as well as possible, shape our messages as well as possible and then present our messages (including telling the stories) as well as possible.

Let’s hear a bit more from Steve Mathewson’s great book on preaching Old Testament Narrative (p157):

“Stories move. They have tension, movement, interaction, emotion. We cannot tell a story while standing like a four-storey building. We need to consider motion, body language, and emotion in voice, face and gesture. Consider how to physically and subtly represent the movement of the story on the platform. Don’t get stuck behind the pulpit (Spurgeon called it a “coward’s castle!”) Always point to Goliath in the same direction, generally let time flow from left to right from their perspective, etc. Stories move. Good storytellers generally do too. And the best storytellers move physically, in large gesture and with clear expressions in a way that is consistently natural! Being natural takes work!

Next week I want to probe preaching narrative a bit more. For the most profuse genre in the Bible, my sense is that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in many pulpit ministries.

The Bible Story – Preached with Power

February 10, 2012February 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

The Bible story you are looking at was inspired by God. Not only did He inspire the content, but He also inspired the form. God felt that having that truth clothed in the genre of story was the best option. Now you have the opportunity to preach it. How can you preach that story with maximum power?

1. Be sure to grasp and preach the main point. A story does not consist of details collected together to offer you numerous launch points for vaguely connected ideas and insights. The story consists of details deliberately chosen to help make the story work, to make the main point effective. Be sure to grapple with the main point more than you hunt for “preaching points.”

2. Be careful to honour the form as well as the content. Why chop it up and preach it as discourse when God made it a story? This means that the bulk of your message should involve the best retelling of the story that you can manage. Speaking of which, two critical elements of powerful story preaching:

3. Put your energy into effective description. Study hard so you can describe well. Build your sensory descriptive vocabulary so you can describe effectively. Read C.S.Lewis or another great fiction writer to get a taste of compelling description. Turn on your imagination again, because if you can see it, they will see it. Take enough time for your descriptions to form on the screens in the listeners’ minds. And pour similar energy into describing the application of your message too. Speaking of energy…

4. Present with energy through engaging dynamism. To be blunt, people don’t listen to dull stories. To be honest, we rarely tell dull stories in normal life. Ask me about my littlest girl’s birth last week and I’ll be engagingly dynamic. I need to let that version of me show when I preach a Bible story. When you preach a Bible story, remember that if you really care so it shows, they will care too.

I think these four suggestions are the very essence of powerfully preaching a Bible story. What would you add?

The Bible Story – Plots in Plot

February 9, 2012February 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

We tend to be trained, both by Sunday school instruction and by NIV section headings, to separate out each individual story and treat it as a stand alone. But the Bible always presents plots in the context of larger plots.

I’ve been trying to get hold of a commentary series on the books of Samuel that does a stunning job of demonstrating the interconnectedness of the individual stories (a rarity in commentaries on narrative books!)

I’ve been pondering how the gospel writers wove together events and parables in a way that honoured their historicity, yet communicated their own theological emphases under the inspiration of God. The gospels are not simply four perspectives on a car accident, it’s much richer than that!

So as we engage a story, we must break open the blinkers of the section headings and get a sense of what is going on around our focus text. The context almost always sheds light on the point of our focus.

What is true on a local level, is also true on a macro level. To be effective preachers, we need to be whole Bible people. That is, we need to have a sense of how the whole fits together, not just historically, but as a greater plot.

The tension underlying every narrative is the fall of Genesis 3. The characters in every plot are people responding to God as they hear His Word. The resolution to the problem of Genesis 3 can never be the moral successes of particular characters, but rather the amazing intervention of God’s grace incarnated.

While we don’t need to always finish the macro story, we must always be aware of how our particular text fits into that larger narrative. Only then can we be sure to avoid the simplistic little niceties of sharing tips for successful living through ancient tales with moral morals. For whether we realize it or not, how we live this Thursday is part of the great narrative of God’s grace being spurned or celebrated in the epic of history and the annals of eternity.

So on a book by book level, on a canon-wide level, and on a history as a whole level, we must see individual plots as part of the bigger plot of God’s great story. As preachers we have the privilege of shining light both in narrow focus, and in broad illumination.

Saturday Short Thought: Concluding Chronicles and Biblical Theology

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Over the past three weeks I have been preaching a series in 2Chronicles 26-36, which is effectively the end of the Hebrew canon (in the typical Jewish ordering of books), and the conclusion of the backwards looking summary of the Old Testament. Because my wife is expecting any day, I am uncertain of being able to preach tomorrow, and so made sure I finished the series last week. But I now have (potentially) another two messages in the series tomorrow since the baby seems to be comfortable where it is.

This leaves me in the nice position of being finished with the series, yet not finished. My plan is to allow an aspect of Biblical theology to put the finishing touches on the series. Let me explain.

One of the big themes in the last chapters of Chronicles is that of the devotion of the kings to the Lord. Some were, some weren’t. And the biggest manifestation in pre-exile Israel lay in the issue of overt idolatry. As the book ends, hope dawns with Cyrus’ decree that the temple should be rebuilt. Perhaps God’s promise to David will be fulfilled after all?

So in the progression of revelation, we move to a post-exilic Israel where overt idolatry was never a feature again. Historically we see this determination for purity in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but canonically, the next step from Chronicles is Matthew. It’s a new world in Israel in Jesus’ day. No physical idols. But no idols?

Jesus addresses the issue of the less tangible idolatry of his day in the Sermon on the Mount. And the beauty of this is that Matthew 6 speaks so directly to our, typically non-physical idol, cultural setting. In post-exilic Israel, as in the modern Western world, money has become the “ba’al” for many. Yet the issue of our devotion to God remains paramount. Who is bigger in our eyes? The false god, indeed the replacement god of financial security, or the true God who really cares?

So maybe I will get to preach Matthew 6 tomorrow to finish the Chronicles series. Maybe I’ll get to push further into the New Testament and consider other areas of covert idolatry facing believers today. Or maybe I won’t!

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Next Week? Eco-Preaching: Recycling Sermons

Saturday Short Thought – The Power of the Word

December 17, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been thinking about the power of words. Actually, even the power of few words. I’ve been blogging about Proverbs – those powerful little dynamos of biblical wisdom. I’ve been preparing to preach at two carol services where message length has to be kept tighter. I’ve also been thinking too about the death of a man whose life was known for the absence of small talk, Christopher Hitchens. I’ve blogged about his death and a strong lesson that I feel we need to learn as Christians, and especially as preachers, over on the Cor Deo site – please click here to go there.

So on one extreme there are those that seek to wax eloquent to show their own so-called wisdom. At the other extreme we have Biblical wisdom, such as that in Proverbs. Then in the middle are preachers trying to share a word in season, especially in this season when so many make their annual pilgrimage to a place of worship. And in the midst of it all, I can’t help but wonder at the Word of God who became flesh and pitched his tent among us. Even before he learned to speak words on Mary and Joseph’s laps, he was the Word incarnate – so small, so tiny, yet the most powerful message the world has ever known.

Allow me to repeat the words of Richard Sibbes that I shared here a few weeks ago:

“We cannot too often meditate of these things. It is the life and soul of a Christian. It is the marrow of the gospel. It is the wonder of wonders. We need not wonder at anything after this.” (Sibbes, Works 5:485)

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Next Week –

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