Preacher’s Personal Life

Preaching and the Bible Neighbourhood 4

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

This week I have written about ways to help listeners get to know the Bible neighbourhood.  As we preach we need to point out key landmarks.  We need to help them join the dots to know how it fits together.  We might want to take them on a formal and planned tour for a few weeks.

Before we finish the series of posts, though, there’s one more than needs to be overtly stated.

4. Be sure they are getting experience for themselves.  There is simply nothing to beat personal experience of a place.  When we were first married we lived in England.  This was my wife’s first time living here.  We would have visits from friends and family, and sometimes we’d take them on official tours of places like London and Bath.  The open-top bus tours weren’t cheap, but they were a great way to get a taste of all the key sites.

One day Melanie went out with our neighbour for a tour of the city where we were living.  The neighbour wasn’t a uniformed bus based tour guide.  But did she ever know her stuff!  Simply by being in the city her whole life, she was in a position to give my wife a tour that no professional company could match.  Back doors from one little place to take a short-cut to another key location.  My wife came home tired but amazed at all she had seen.

Our neighbour was not a professional tour guide, but she had gained years of experience.  Here’s the point – we need to do whatever we can to motivate, encourage, invite and help people to be in the Bible for themselves.  Even the best tours on Sunday mornings won’t create local experts, unless they are spending time exploring and learning on their own.

Too many churches have an inconsistent culture – the effort may go in to the Bible teaching on a Sunday, but personal Bible experience is assumed during the week.  Don’t assume.  Train, equip, guide and even more importantly: expect and infect.  Expect folks to be Bible readers, and infect them with a passion for the God that they can meet there.  He is so good that Sunday just can’t be enough!

Who Are You Preaching To?

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Preaching is not just about communicating the message of the Bible, it is about communicating that message to people.  Specifically, certain people.  Today I’d like to share some thoughts on preaching to those who are present, then we can move on to those who aren’t!

1. Know your listeners as much as possible.  Seems almost too obvious to state, but it is important.  We have to know who is listening when we preach.  If we are a visiting speaker, then we need to go into overdrive before the meeting to find out what we can.  If it is our home church, then we should be engaged in the lives of those who are listening.  It will influence how we pitch the message, the vocabulary used, the applications chosen, the background information given, etc.  Not to mention the difference it will make if you love the people to whom you preach!

2. Be as relevant as possible.  This is true on so many levels.  We need to be relevant in our vocabulary, in our illustrative material, in our applications of biblical truth, etc.  Relevance is the natural next step on from knowing the listeners.  Our task is not to make the Bible relevant, but to show how relevant it is to these specific people.

3. But beware of unhelpful target practice.  There is a danger that the first two points can lead to an unhealthy third one – target practice.  That is, you know your listeners, including the issues, including the tensions, including the squabbles and the politics and so on.  And then you want to be relevant.  And without thinking you can find yourself preaching a sermon to a congregation that is pointed right at one person, or one situation, or one clique, or one faction, or whatever.  It is so easy to either bare someone’s dirty laundry, or to take political potshots.  You can do it in your vocabulary, in your illustrations, in your applications, etc.  This is both an abuse of the preaching privilege, and a flawed approach to addressing issues.  Whether it is a situation you are seeking to help, or a skirmish you’ve been dragged into, the pulpit is not the place to address it directly.  Certainly the Word will speak to life’s real issues, but don’t be the filter through which the Bible gets redirected.

Tomorrow we’ll ponder the audience issue some more, specifically in reference to people who are not present.

Holiday Post 4: Have Times Changed?

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Post coming straight from the golden oldie archive of January 2008.  I’m on holiday with the family.  When is your next break, by the way?  I’m finding I need to schedule them further out to make sure they happen!  So, back to the post . . .

Times have changed.  The New Testament was written in a time when the primary form of public entertainment, at least in the Greek context, was the oratory of the travelling rhetoricians.  Today we live in a time of complex and numerous forms of entertainment, a time when oratory is frowned upon by many.  Times have changed.  In those days the “speaker” was one who spoke with a motivation to look good, to make money and to gain the applause of the audience.  Times have changed, or have they?

If there is a sphere where the potential dangers of oratorical pride persist, it is in the church.  It is so easy to preach in such a way as to look good before others, to pump up your own hype.  It is a constant danger that money becomes a motivating factor in ministry decisions (both individual invitations as a guest speaker, or moving church for a better pay package).  It is a lurking temptation to preach for applause (not typically the theatrical ovation, but the post-sermon feedback, the cloud of affirmation).  These dangers are before us whether we are guest preachers, or local pastors.  But we must fight every temptation to tickle ears, line our pockets or only ever look good.

Here are some basic starting points:

Honor God’s Word – Preach the Word.  If it might make people uncomfortable, preach the Word.  If people’s ears won’t feel tickled, preach the Word.  Obviously be gracious and careful, but don’t preach always living in fear of offending someone.

Honor God’s People – It is tempting to tickle ears and promote good feelings all round, but people need more than that.  Love them enough to communicate the text relevantly, even if somewhat uncomfortably.  Love them enough to challenge errant thinking, dangerous tendencies, etc.  But don’t take this as an excuse for laying on guilt trips all the time – remember that our people need a lot of encouragement too!

Process Personal Pride Promptings – Pride is a temptation for all of us.  It may manifest in different forms, but we must all be aware of it.  Let’s always process any pride promptings before God.  Take the positive comments, the whispering voice of affirmation, the feelings of accomplishment, and bring them back to Calvary.

Times have changed, but not completely.

Holiday Post 2: Preaching Inside the Fence

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Pulling up some posts from January 2008 since I am on holiday with my family this week . . .

Previously I suggested the image of preparing and preaching within a low fence (click here to see part 1). I’d like to suggest a reason for doing so that may not be immediately obvious. Very simply, you will enjoy the preaching process more. Let me give an example:

Almost four years ago the church I was involved in was working it’s way through Luke. I had Easter Sunday morning. It was tempting to read Luke, but essentially preach Paul. You know how it is, so simple to revert to the terminology, ideas and focus of a passage like 1st Corinthians 15. I resisted the temptation and erected a low fence. I studied within Luke’s writings. I saturated my preparation with Luke and worked to prepare a deliberately Lukan message. I didn’t want to just preach the resurrection, I wanted to preach Luke’s account of the empty tomb and risen Christ. I tried to grasp the significance and focus of the carefully written account in his gospel. I tried to use Luke’s terminology and present his concept of salvation. I wanted to preach in Luke’s language rather than Paul’s or John’s.

The message went well as far as I could tell. One discerning listener commented on the deliberate Luke language. Probably everyone else missed it. That didn’t matter. The big idea was as good as I could get from the text, the relevance was as deliberate and concrete as possible, the big things were what mattered. But for me, as the preacher, the attention to fine detail like choice of terminology made the study both exacting and rewarding. I felt like I’d tasted something of Luke’s great gospel in a way that I could so easily have bypassed.

I got a taste for preaching with a fence that day, and I’ve continued to do so whenever possible. I’d encourage you to try it if you haven’t already. Take the opportunity to push yourself deeper in whatever book you are preaching. It’s easy to revert to default thoughts from elsewhere, but you’ll enjoy it more if you don’t!

Holiday Post 1: Full Meal Deal

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Since I am going on holiday with my family, I am also not writing new material this week.  But here are a few posts from years ago that might be of interest . . .

I still remember the first pulpit advice I received.  I was a teenager and had been asked to lead a meeting.  I wasn’t preaching, but I was chairing the meeting, introducing songs, speaker, doing the reading, praying, etc.  Afterwards my youth leader came to me and encouraged me that I’d done well.  Then he offered this advice; “Don’t ever apologize for what you’re doing.  It doesn’t matter who asked you, or how incapable you may feel, God has allowed you to be there so don’t apologize.”

The ingredients to a pulpit introductory apology tend to include feelings of inadequacy, any lack of preparation, feelings of humility, a desire to appear humble, a lack of planning for opening comments, nervousness, etc.  The ingredients are understandable, but the result is not helpful.  Don’t apologize.  It grossly undermines credibility and can easily transfer your anxiety to your listeners.

If you are humble, it will show.  But if you are nervous, unprepared, unqualified, incapable, etc., people don’t need that pointed out to them.  They may notice, and they will usually be very gracious.  Or more often than you realize, they will not notice at all.  The first time I taught a lecture at seminary I mentioned that time was running low so I had to skip some material.  My prof followed up on that, “Don’t tell them you are cutting stuff out, let them think they’re getting the full meal deal!”

What was the first helpful pulpit advice you received?

Solutions

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This week I am on holiday with my family.  This means that I am preloading old posts rather than presenting new material.  I suppose if I hadn’t told you then nobody would have noticed, but maybe there are some preachers reading who need the nudge to take a break, get refreshed, be with your family.

Anyway, this post is new.  It is my bi-weekly offering on the Cor Deo site.  It is longer than my normal length on this site, but it might be worth a look.  What happens when we only present one-fifth of the New Covenant?  What happens when we fall back into a default Old Covenant approach to life?  Why does this happen?  Click here, or the picture, to go to the post.

The Two Keys in the Simplicity Struggle

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I’ve been writing about struggling to simplify messages.  There are numerous potential issues, but I want to keep this post really simple.  I think that when all is said and done, there are two key things to keep in mind:

1. Big idea preaching promotes unity, order and progress.  The big idea school of preaching is not about having a pithy grabber at some point in the message.  It is about recognizing the inherent unity in a unit of Scripture and letting that be the boss of the message.  That means that you will let it determine whether a detail makes it into the message.  And it will determine the best order of the details included.  And it will determine the best way to convey forward movement in the flow of the message.  The main idea is like the arrow, the sermon purpose is like the target, and the shape of the message is like the strategy for accurately planting that arrow deep in its intended target.

S0 an illustration may be a good one, but if it doesn’t help communicate the main idea, bye for now.  An exegetical insight may be impressive, powerful, moving, or whatever, but if it doesn’t help in the strategy for delivering the main idea, save for another time.  Every detail, every statement, every explanation, every proof, every application, every word in the message has to be there because the main idea is helped by its presence.  Like a commanding team captain, the main idea determines who gets to play on a given Sunday and who doesn’t.

2. Pray about it.  Simplifying your message in order to communicate more effectively is not a selfish pursuit.  You aren’t trying to be clear for your sake.  It is for the sake of the listeners.  It is that they might be gripped by the passage, transformed by the truth and marked by an encounter with the God who reveals himself in the Word.  Consequently, don’t be bashful about praying for your next message, and for your preaching in general, to become more consistently clear.  Ask for wisdom in terms of what to cut out.  Ask for a mentor.  Ask for understanding.  Ask for your preaching to be clear because your passion is for God’s Word to be heard and followed and felt and applied.

The Struggle for Reference Simplicity

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Yesterday I was sharing about the issue of complexity in explanation.  Another aspect of complexity is that of over-cross-referencing.  I have addressed this issue before, but it is worth another take.  The danger is two-fold.  First, that too many cross-references will mean the preaching text is lost.  Second, that too many cross-references will mean the listeners are lost.

1. Lose the motivation to overwhelm.  That might seem strange, but some preachers really do seem to love cross-referencing.  For some, the practice was learned by observation and they have never seen any different.  For others, the practice is the fruit of a yearning to impress people (after all, more verses referenced means more kudos for me as a Bible person, right?)  But if asked outright, I suspect none would affirm the desire to overwhelm listeners, so for that reason alone, it is worth diminishing this desire.

2. Gain the motivation to preach your passage.  This is the other side of it.  We don’t want to negatively overwhelm folks, but do we really want to preach our passage?  Some preachers will cross-reference liberally to fill time since they feel like they have so little to say on the actual preaching text.  It is really hard to know what you don’t know, but take my word for it, it is possible to understand a passage better.  As a result, it is possible to preach without filler material.  More than that, it is possible to be in a text and the text to get into you in such a way as you can’t wait to preach this particular passage to the listeners.  Once your motivation is positively stirred by the passage, you’ll be less desirous of canonically wandering eyes.

3. As a default, stay put.  I suppose it is like saying that when you are riding a bike, as a default, look in front of you.  There will be times to do something else, but make it a standard practice to be where you are in the Bible.  Once you are more settled there, then you’ll be less likely to stray into safari mode without good reason.  Speaking of which…

4. Select cross-references hesitantly and carefully.  There are some good reasons to cross-reference, but not too many.  If your passage is relying on an earlier text either by quotation or by thematic development or by theological reliance, then maybe it is worth going there.  If your passage sets up a later development in the canon, then you might choose to take a sneak peak.  Or if your passage yields an idea that seems to be anti-biblical, then it might be time to wheel out the proof that other writers are saying the same thing.  Otherwise, more or less, stay where you are.

I believe these four steps would bring a helpful simplification to some sermons.  More than that, it would allow for some genuine profundity to flourish in place of the Bible sword drill!