Help! My Listeners Aren’t Satisfied! #2

January 28, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

We need to recognize “over-blurt” and “misdirected fire,” but what else can we do when we have dissatisfied listeners?

3. Remember Your Audience of One. The fact that we answer to God in no way excuses bad preaching, or remaining oblivious to helpful critique, but it may protect us from more sinister attacks. Remember that every sermon you ever preach could have been better, and that God is both understanding and forgiving of human weakness and frailty.

With that critical caveat in place, then we need to ask whether we could stand before God and give an account for the way we prepared, the way we processed earlier input/feedback, etc? Did you walk through the preparation by faith and do your best as a steward of the ministry opportunity? His is the evaluation that we value the most. While we listen to those we serve, we mustn’t live in fear of displeasing unspiritual nitpickers in the pew. Even if they can drive you from “their” church, we must minister ultimately for the evaluation of our Audience of One.

4. Remember to Prayerfully Process. Whether you receive praise or criticism, be sure to process it prayerfully. Our fleshly egos are very powerful perverters of personal processing. Our tendency to self-love and self-concern can elevate praise from others into worship of us, and at the same time turn gentle and helpful critique into a savage personal attack. I don’t trust me with me. You shouldn’t trust you with you.

Independent introspective processing is one of the most dangerous things a Christian can participate in, because it is so close to the fallen realm we were rescued from. So how should we process things? Prayerfully. That is, in conversation with the God who can faithfully and tenderly sift and sort through our motives and affections. Search me and try me, O God! He can be trusted and must always be the lead partner in such an exercise!

More thoughts tomorrow, but please don’t hesitate to comment on here, or on Twitter @petermead (#ListenerSatisfaction).

Help! My Listeners Aren’t Satisfied!

January 27, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Preaching is a complex ministry. Consider the issue of listener satisfaction. If listeners aren’t satisfied, it could be a good sign, or it could be a bad sign. In the same way, happy listeners may mean something is wrong.

So what to do? How can we navigate the issue of listener satisfaction? What should it mean for our preaching? What should it mean for our hearts?

Here are 10 thoughts to ponder:

1. Recognize “over-blurt” – Many folks in churches struggle to express negative thoughts effectively. Perhaps it is because they never do it (unlikely), or perhaps it is because they feel guilty doing it (at least to a preacher). Consequently many will hold back unsuccessfully and then over-blurt what they are trying to say. A gentle critique then comes across as a cataclysmic slap to the face of the preacher (hopefully metaphorically speaking).

Instead of saying “I struggle with his style of delivery,” or “it is difficult to relate to sporting illustrations all the time,” they end up saying things like, “he should never again speak to more than two people at once!,” or “his message was filled with damnable heresy!” Oops. Over-blurt.

It is possible to get microphones that condense sound into a middle range – i.e. toning down the shout and strengthening the whisper. We need to learn this skill as preachers. Over-blurt attacks need to be toned down before they are processed. (But be careful your ego doesn’t remove or ignore any negative elements whatsoever!)

Remember that toning down excessive praise can also be very important too. (“That was the best sermon I ever heard!!!” probably wasn’t.)

2. Recognize “misdirected fire” – that is to say, tension fired your way will often have very little to do with you or your preaching. People will react to the innocent provocation of their pet peeves, or the poking of raw nerves of various kinds. They may also be having a bad week with issues at home, at work, in their personal lives, etc. You may become the focus of the critique, but don’t take all critique at face value. Sadly, being willing to be a leader in the church means choosing to be shot at, primarily by Christians.

There’s more to come, but please comment from your perspective, are these points on target? (Feel free to comment on Twitter, @PeterMead #ListenerSatisfaction)

10 Pointers for Young Preachers

January 26, 2015January 21, 2015 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

This post was offered last week as a guest post on Randal Pelton’s site, www.peltononpreaching.com

I am way too young to be called a sage, but I don’t get called young any more either. So while there is better advice to be found, here are some pointers from me for young preachers:

Get to know God. Never settle for knowing about God. Make it your life’s greatest ambition to really know and love the God who loves you.

Be a Bible person, not an issue person. It is tempting to let certain issues define your ministry, but these will shift over the years. Instead of choosing a pet issue, develop an infectious passion for the Bible.

Determine never to be a glory thief. Decide now that showing-off has no place in your preaching. Always point listeners to Christ and not to yourself. God delights to lovingly give glory, but never steal it.

Learn to discriminate feedback. People will praise a public speaker. You are more likely to lose your way through hyped up praise than through nasty criticism. Learn to pursue and process genuinely helpful feedback.

Don’t let your homiletical skill get ahead of biblical and theological awareness.People will praise a public speaker, but they need a preacher who is biblically and theologically healthy.

Don’t let your ministry profile get ahead of your character. Let your ministry move forward at God’s pace, otherwise you may get a profile too heavy for your character to bear.

Be proactive, but not self-promotional. Look for opportunities to serve, to learn, and to grow, but be wary of leaving God behind as you chase “more strategic ministry.”

Learn to read wisely. Invest time in reading quality rather than quantity, widely rather than just your favorite author, and selectively rather than getting stuck in books you no longer want to finish. Prioritize books over blogs!

Do not journey alone. Preaching is often a lonely ministry. Prayerfully pursue mentors and prayer partners who can speak into your life. Find a string of Bible read-through partners and chase God together in His Word.

Have a lifelong conversation with God. There are too many technically capable and theologically informed preachers that have no meaningful relationship with God.

5 Radars Every Preacher Needs – #5

January 23, 2015January 21, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This is the last of our five radars we should be prayerfully collecting as preachers. They are early warning systems that will make us better preachers. There are probably many more, but hopefully these five will prompt us to pray and help us to grow. So far we’ve thought about an OT radar, a hissing radar, a resistance radar, and an obfuscation radar. How about one more where we are likely to have blind spots?

Radar 5. Rationalizing Radar (in your personal application)

Before we preach to others, we must first be on the receiving end of God’s transformative work ourselves. Starting a sermon on Saturday night does not allow time for personal application, hence we should start sooner. However, we can be preparing a sermon for weeks and still fail to hear the message ourselves. Why? Not because of a lack of time, but because of our fleshly capacity to rationalize our own lack of application. What we might see clearly in others, we often see in a rose-tinted mirror in regards to ourselves. The solution to this is not to try harder, but to engage more with God in the conversation. What I am calling a rationalizing radar is really a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit as He searches and tries our hearts, gently convicting us so that we can first hear, before we also speak.

5 Radars Every Preacher Needs – #4

January 22, 2015January 20, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week we are collecting radar equipment. Better, we are compiling a wishlist to bring before God and ask Him to develop in us as we grow as preachers. Early warning systems that will make us better preachers. So far we’ve thought about an OT radar, a hissing radar, and a resistance radar. How about one regarding our own delivery?

Radar 4. Obfuscation Radar (in your delivery)

“def. to make something confusing or difficult to understand.” Most preachers don’t do this on purpose. In fact, most preachers’ sermons make good sense to the preacher. But good preachers’ sermons make sense to the listeners too.

How can we grow in this area? Chase helpful and specific feedback, listen to the audio of your message, watch a video of your preaching, do whatever you can to develop discernment as to your own obfuscation tendencies. Do you speak too fast? Do you pause too little? Is your energy incessant? Are your transitions too brief? Are your gestures distracting? Is your sermon structure complex? Is your vocabulary too lofty?

Prayerfully and conversationally (i.e. with friends) develop a radar that will beep when your delivery is, in reality, not as clear as your pride tells you it is.

5 Radars Every Preacher Needs – #2

January 20, 2015January 19, 2015 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The second of five radars may well be the most important and the most difficult to develop. Yesterday’s radar considered one aspect of our textual study skills, but this radar is about our underlying assumptions about everything. I think we should all prayerfully ask God to develop in us:

Radar 2. Hissing Radar (in your assumptions)

The most dangerous assumption we can make is that we are neutral and can think clearly. Every one of us has spent our entire life swimming and soaking in the brine of a post-Fall world system that hisses constantly with The Lie of pseudo-godlike autonomy. The serpent introduced skepticism about God’s word, God’s character, and invited humanity to dive into a totally new version of godliness. This new godliness meant that we humans became the image of the god of this age – self-absorbed, autonomous and overly confident in our own independent capacities. We live our lives deafened to the hiss of our serpent-shaped existence.

The Gospel doesn’t save us from one or two sins we have done, but from the absolute self-loving, God-hating, autonomy of our spiritually dead hearts. The problem we have as believers is that we tend to think we are somehow now immune to the subtle influence of The Lie.

Our flesh has been pickled in the subtle but sour vinegar of that original Lie. As we seek to grow, let’s pray that God will develop in us a radar that will hiss when our assumptions evidence that serpentine autonomous impulse.

Here are some quick flags to highlight areas this lie often surfaces:

God can be a source of resources for us, but always from a distance.
With suitable resourcing I can do the job myself . . . i.e. sanctification.
I can be a good Christian, but I don’t need any sort of relational closeness to Christ.
I don’t need you (where you is God, or you is other believers).
I make independent and uninfluenced decisions, and therefore I am alive.
If my preaching can offer practical guidance, then individuals can make the decision to apply the teaching and be successful at living their individual and independent lives.
Etc.

May God develop in us an early warning system that hisses whenever our assumptions are dangerously autonomous and self-glorifying.

8 Ways to Become a Warm-Hearted Preacher

January 14, 2015January 11, 2015 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

John Stott wrote that a preacher is a bridge builder. That is, in the act of preaching, the preacher is seeking to build a bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of the listeners. A good biblical message will be solidly earthed in the biblical text, but it must also fully embrace the listeners in their world.

Effective communication requires that we know about those who are listening to our message. However, the preacher is not a politician, nor a salesperson. The preacher is a shepherd of souls. God invites us not only to know the listeners, but to really love them.

Here are eight nudges in that direction:

1. We love, because God first loved us. We cannot self-generate love for God or for other people. Love is a response to the love God has first poured out for us. As we fix our gaze on Him, our hearts will begin to beat with His. He loves our listeners, so we can too.

2. A lack of love for others indicates a problem. We can’t claim to love God, but not love our brother. Let coldness toward others stir you to ask God to search your heart. Take coldness seriously, God does.

3. Loving those we pastor is sometimes challenging. Loving strangers is a challenge for a visiting speaker. Loving people you shepherd can be harder. Vulnerable sheep can bite.

4. We can connect because we are not in a separate category. Maintaining a permanently stoic resolve does not make you a great leader, it makes you a distant one. You experience many of the same challenges and struggles others face. Be honest with yourself about what you do face, and what you don’t.

5. Diligently study your people. Don’t be a master exegete of the text, but oblivious to your people.

6. Before you talk in the pulpit, listen carefully. Most people don’t necessarily want to be seen, but they long to be heard.

7. Sharing life experience helps massively. Remaining distant is easy, but harmful. Have folks over, visit them at home or at work. Share sport, share celebrations, share sorrow, share life.

8. Pray for people. It’s easy to pray a “God please bless all the listeners on Sunday” kind of prayer. I think God can spot the value you place on people by the prayers you pray for them.

7 Ways Preachers Read the Bible

January 13, 2015January 10, 2015 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Preachers tend to read the Bible like preachers. We can’t help it. But this is neither automatically good nor bad, it all depends what we mean.

Here are three wrong ways to read the Bible like a preacher:

1. Always look for a sermon when you read. Some texts are easily preachable, others more challenging for sermon construction. Don’t settle for an outline or struggle for an outline, read the text and look for what it is saying to you about God.

2. Always look for the sake of others, but not hearing the message for you first. Your listeners need you to be hearing and responding to God in your life, not just hunting on their behalf.

3. Always force the text into some sort of sermonic shape – i.e. looking for the “third point” when the passage may not be structured that way.

And here are four right ways to read the Bible like a preacher:

4. Always expect the Bible to communicate because God is a great communicator. Don’t quit trying to make sense of it just because it isn’t immediately obvious. Trust that God knew what He was doing and that studying the text will be worth any effort involved.

5. Always anticipate inherent unity in a passage, rather than chasing down every tangent that the details might bring to light.

6. Always look for order and progression in the text to see how the author develops his thoughts. Is he explaining, proving, applying, or moving onto a new, but connected thought?

7. Always be sensitive to the author’s intent and tone, as well as his content and structure. He was writing for a particular audience and wrote in a loving way for their sake. Don’t treat the Bible as mere data, but as heartfelt communication.

If you are a preacher, then hopefully you read your Bible. When you do, you will read it like a preacher, but be sure to make that a positive thing!

Resolved: No Resolutions

January 2, 2015December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

To finish this week of posts I want to re-visit one I wrote two years ago and develop it slightly.

Resolved: To make no New Year’s Resolutions for me to do, but to cling to the One who is at work in and through me according to His perfect plans for 2015.

A while back I really enjoyed reading the masterful biography of Jonathan Edwards by George Marsden. It is fascinating to see the early resolutions of Edwards give way to a mature spirituality that was delighted in and by Christ later in his life.

Let’s face it, there are so many good resolutions that we could make as we head into another New Year. Bible reading commitments, wider reading plans, personal prayer schedules, pursuit of ministry training ideas, grow theologically intentions, find a mentor strategies, evaluation and feedback gathering plans, sermonic self-improvement schemes, pastoral ministry visitation goals, personal fitness/diet/exercise/rest regimes, family scheduling tactics, and on the list goes.

All of these would be good ideas. But making these determined and resolute teeth-clenched-and-muscles-flexed kind of personal commitments may well not be the best way to go. That is, if we aren’t the autonomous self-made individualists that our culture and our fallen world like to convince us that we are.

Our life and ministry is much more about response to God’s Spirit at work in our lives than it is about our responsibility to act like the god of our own lives. We are not the captain of our own destiny. We are not sheriff of Me-ville. We are lovers defined by who and what we love. And as those who know and love the Triune God, we are in the best possible place to face a new year of uncertainties, trials, complexities and challenges.

My loving response to God’s love for me will result in some determined lifestyle choices and evidences of personal discipline. This will also be true in my married life too – my loving response to my wife will look disciplined and diligent. But I won’t talk about it in those terms. At one level there is no real sacrifice involved in responding to the God we have. Yes, it may look costly at times, but from the perspective of a captured heart?

As we head into 2015, let’s hold all our resolutions with a very loose grip, but squeeze tightly on the hand of Him who holds us, our families, our ministries and our year ahead in the palm of His hand.

Can we even begin to imagine what our Lord might do in us and through us in 2015? Exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we ask or even imagine . . . and certainly more than we can achieve by our own self-determined productivity and improvement plans!

Resolved: Read God’s Heart

January 1, 2015December 30, 2014 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Three years ago I wrote a post that really polarized readers. I wrote a critique of a famous Bible reading plan. If you want to see that post, click here. As we start a new year, many of us, and many in our churches, will be making the determination to read through the Bible. For some it will be the first time. For many it will be a repeat attempt. Sadly, for many, they will have failed more than they succeeded.

Here’s the bottom line for me – I want people to be reading their Bibles. Whatever else goes into the mix of a personal devotional life, being exposed to the Scriptures is a critical ingredient (really it is the “without this, nothing” ingredient in the recipe for relationship with God). Now it may be that someone you know is not a confident reader for whatever reason . . . know the audio options and be ready to promote them (even good readers would benefit from listening to the Bible too!)

Motivation Issues – I know the motivation of reading plans is to help give some structure and sense of progress to readers. That is great. My concern is that the plan can easily become both the focus and a taskmaster. We should be concerned when there is a lack of motivation for God’s Word – both in our own lives, and those we care about. A lack of motivation is not an irrelevant emotional blip that can be overcome by our great diligence, determination and accountability.

Motivation Matters – Let’s treat a lack of motivation as a flashing light on the dashboard of our lives. When the oil light flashes I don’t “obey” it and choose not to drive the car. Equally I don’t disregard it and press on. I address the issue. It is the same with a lack of motivation for Bible time . . . don’t simply obey it, nor ignore it, but address it.

Addressing Motivation – The best way I have found to address this motivation issue is to talk to God about it. Be honest. Out loud. Tell him what is more attractive to you than His self-revelation. That will typically be convicting and bring us back in humility with brokenness and renewed, albeit weak, hunger to hear from Him.

Best Motivation – The best motivation for Bible reading is a hunger to know God more. Therefore the best motivator for stirring others to read their Bibles is to know God more and be infectious with it. When you are captured by a person, others will want to know Him too. This is a far cry from language of diligence, duty, discipline and so on.

Marital Accountability? – I don’t ask my friends to hold me accountable to pretend to love my wife and listen to her. I may ask them to point out if they see me rationalizing a drift from healthy relationships though. It is the same with the Bible reading. I don’t need someone to crack the whip to make me do it, but I am wide open to hearing from a friend that I seem touchy or less excited about God than is normal.

I would love our churches to be filled with people eager to hear God’s heart as they chase Him in His Word. I know that for our churches to be filled with this kind of people we will need our pulpits filled with this kind of preacher.