Preacher’s Personal Life

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.5

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Let’s finish the list, but by no means finish the pursuit of effective epistle proclamation!

21. Select the take home goal – Is your goal for people to remember the outline?  Why?  Better to aim at them taking home the main idea with a heart already responsive to it, rather than a commentary outline of a passage.  Let’s not flatter ourselves – people don’t need hooks to hang thoughts on, they need a thought to hang on to.  Better, they need to leave with a changed heart.  If they are changed by an encounter with God in His Word, then looking at the text should bring a sense of the structure back to mind.  However, remembering the outline on its own has very limited value (unless they’re taking a Bible school exam that week).

22. Pre-preach the message – Don’t rely on written preparation.  Most things make sense on paper.  It is important to preach through a message before preaching a message.  Better to discover that it simply doesn’t flow, or a particular transition is actually a roadblock, when you can still fix it.  Pre-preach in a prayerful way – i.e. why not talk out loud to the Lord about the message before and after actually trying it out?

23. Don’t just preach single passages – I am not saying that the only way to plan your preaching is to preach through a book sequentially, but that should probably be the default approach.  Series should not become tedious, but cumulative.  Let each message build on what has gone before, while standing in its own right.  One way to inject variety is to vary the length of passage.  You can cover more ground sometimes, zero in other times, and why not begin and/or end with an effective expository overview of the whole?

24. Converse with the commentaries and other conversation partners – Notice I didn’t put this in at the start.  I believe we should converse with others during the process, but not become beholden to one other voice.  Doesn’t matter if your favourite preacher preached it that way, or a commentator explained it that way, or your friend sees it that way . . . you are the one who has to preach it.  But all of those do matter.  Your goal is not stunning originality.  You want to be faithful to what the text is actually saying, and faithful to your unique opportunity, audience, ability, etc.  So converse with, but don’t ride on any of these partners.

25. Present the passage with engaging clarity and relevance – Here’s the catch-all as we hit number 25.  I’ve hammered the need to be truly biblical, rather than just biblically linked or biblically launched.  But you also need to preach with a relevance to the listeners, and with a clarity that can be easily followed, and all of that with the engaging energy, enthusiasm, warmth, concern, love and delight that is fitting for someone soaked in a passage from God’s Word.  This engaging preaching certainly includes the content, but also the delivery – your expression, your gesture, your movement, your body language, your eye contact . . . it should all be about a heart brimming over with God’s Word to connect with God’s people.  Your heart has encountered His heart, so you want to engage their hearts for the sake of transformed lives and a pleased Lord.

What might you add to the list?

Preaching New Covenant and Fellowship with the Trinity

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

I have been pondering the New Covenant and what might happen if we were to dwell on it as the New Testament writers do.  We’ve thought about the wonder of sins forgiven, the profound work of God in the hearts of believers, and now for the last post . . . God in the hearts of believers.  Or to put it another way, fellowship with the Trinity!

There are many New Testament passages that seem to point to the believer being “in Christ” or “abiding in Him” and the indwelling presence of God, by His Spirit, in the believer, causing us to cry out to our Abba.  This mutual indwelling motif is not uncommon.  Sadly, nor is our tendency to treat these notions as some sort of technical truth, a legal reality, as it were, and then focus our reading or teaching on our self-driven effort to live good lives, as if only marginally connected to God.

If we go back to the promises of the New Covenant, there is plenty to rock the original recipients back on their heels.  Ezekiel 11 looks forward to when “they shall be my people and I shall be their God.”  Good stuff, but what is key to this reality?  “A new spirit I will put within them.”  Later, in chapter 36, after references already in the preceding chapters, God gets more overt on the indwelling Spirit theme; “I will put my Spirit within you” – this is not normal fare in Old Testament times!  Remember that a key theme of Ezekiel is that of God’s special presence (or absence) from the temple.  The stunning hope of the city, is the reality of the New Covenant believer – The LORD is there. (Eze.48:35)

In Jeremiah God looks back to the Old Covenant, which was also marital in nature, but the New Covenant is different.  They will be His people, He will be their God.  Meaning?  Well, they will all know the LORD.  (Jer.31:34)

In Isaiah there is already the marital motif, the indwelling Spirit and the close relationship.  In Joel we read of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh, and a mutual calling – the LORD calling the people, and the people calling on His name.  In Zephaniah there is the hope of the LORD being in the midst of Zion, exulting over her with loud singing, quietening her with his love.  In Malachi we look forward to the coming Lord of the future covenant.

I suspect that if we spent time pondering the New Covenant, both in its predictive descriptions, and with sensitivity to the New Testament texts, we would find ourselves preaching more a message of wonder than a message of pressure.  More a message of delightful description, than a message of demanding duty.  More a message pointing to God, than a message pounding on us.

Perhaps we are just so familiar with the New Testament texts that we miss what they are saying.  Perhaps our theology somehow overrides what our eyes could see if they looked carefully.  The Christian life doesn’t just include fellowship, it is fellowship.  And that isn’t just with each other, it is profoundly with God, through His Christ, by His Spirit.

Preaching, New Covenant and Sin

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

Sometimes we need to be contradicted.  For instance, we assume that if we are going to take the issue of sin seriously, then we need to give some significant attention to it.  Perhaps by implementing some self-controlled, self-disciplined approach to sin control in our lives.

On the contrary.

Hang on, am I suggesting that we shouldn’t take sin seriously?  Am I suggesting that we should go and sin freely?  Of course not!  Why do some people automatically assume that a turn from focusing on virtue is to turn in pursuit of vice?  The opposite of moral effort may not be immoral action.

I would suggest that the New Covenant takes sin more seriously than we do or think we do.  God takes sin seriously, which is why He promised the New Covenant.  Jesus Christ takes sin seriously, which is why He inaugurated the New Covenant with his own blood.  The writers of the New Testament took sin seriously, which is why they pushed the New Covenant so strongly.

And we need to take sin more seriously.  We need to stop thinking it is something we can handle by our own effort, our own discipline, our own practices.  This is true for the not-yet-saved, and it is true for the believer.  The foundation of the New Covenant is sin forgiven.

Sometimes it is hard to realize just how much we don’t grasp something we think we’ve known for so long.  Take grace, for instance.  At the core of God’s dealings with us is this issue of grace – His character, His glory, His self-giving.  Yet we turn grace into a commodity and preach grace-plus, or grace-but, or grace-however.  We don’t need to preach some sort of grace-balanced message.  We need to present to people, believers or not, the wonderful glorious extravagant imbalanced grace of a God who gives himself to deal with our sin.

If our listeners think that grace means license to sin, then we haven’t preached grace clearly enough.  Maybe we’ve offered a halfway house kind of grace, a grace that addresses guilt but doesn’t capture the heart.  A grace-as-thing that pays for guilt, but not a grace-as-person that captivates our hearts.

The solution to a license type of response is not to balance grace with guilt, pressure, codes and laws.  The solution is to do a better job of preaching grace.

At the foundation of the New Covenant is this wonderful truth that God has promised to remember sins no more, and that truth is presented like a vivid 3-d billboard to our hearts in the death of His Son on the cross.  It is there, in shocking shame and agony that we see God’s glorious grace made manifest to us.

Tomorrow let’s push this deeper and recognize the heart of the New Covenant.

Saturday’s Thought: Preaching for Response

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

No preacher would admit to preaching in order to fill time, or to fulfill an obligation, or to fill a pulpit.  We say we preach for response.  After all, what other motivation could we cite?  I know, some will quickly rush to language of glorifying God.  But God isn’t pleased by time filling or untouched listeners.  So what do we mean?

Do we mean that preaching should get more than a polite thank you from the gathered listeners?  Sure.  Do we mean that preaching should get a positive or exuberant statement of reception from the listeners?  I don’t think so.  The Lord’s preaching certainly seemed to polarize rather than please all.  Some will be stirred and drawn, others will be offended and withdraw.

This is where it gets interesting for me, and here’s the thought for the day.  What is the division or polarization created by our preaching?  Simplistically we might assume that it is a sorting of sinners and saints.  You know, those in sin pushed away by how seriously we address sin and the godly encouraged; the culture upset and absent while the churchy folks pleased and present.  But that didn’t seem to be the result of Jesus’ preaching, did it?

What if we realize that the gospel is not about preaching a message of pressuring responsibility?  That is, what if we preach the glorious loving grace of God that stirs and warms and draws hearts to Christ?  Instead of whipping our listeners with burdens, what if we preach the One who was whipped for them?

This kind of preaching typically offends the religious who feel responsible for their own goodness.  These are the people who don’t see their own efforts and diligence and pride and self-centredness as being at all sin-stained.  This kind of preaching typically draws the broken and hurting and weak.

When we switch from preaching responsibility to actually preaching for a response we may find that the polarization both switches and increases.  When we recognize the difference between responsibility and response, then certainly our preaching will change.  It is so easy to preach to pressure people to be good.  It takes something more to preach how good Christ is, so that listeners might be drawn to Him.  What is the something more?

I suppose it comes down to me on my own with my Bible and my Lord.  Is it all about me?  Or about Him?  Is it about what I must do (responsibility)?  Or about what He is like (response)?

Preaching for response requires clarity on the distinction between response and responsibility.

Preaching to the Heart

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just for a change, I’d like to offer a list of posts relating to this subject.  I think it is so important that we preach to the heart and not just fill the mind or press the will.  So here are some past posts on the subject:

Profound preaching involves profound preparation, profound application, profound presentation, all working toward profound transformation.

10 Biggest Big Ideas of the Bible made much of the central role of the heart, both God’s and ours.  Here are the links – God, Creation, Sin, Grace, Faith, Redemption, Community, Spreading Goodness, Hope, Christ.

Our View of the Bible is critical in respect to the heart.  This post on the clarity of Scripture pointed to the issue of the heart.  We don’t need to add force, we need to feel the force of what is there.

Preaching to the heart goes beyond guilt – four-part series – one, two, three, four.

How often do we hear the terminology of the Bible being overqualified.  Here’s a post from a while back on confusing the heart and the head.

Preaching from the heart?  Here’s a post.  Depends on your motive.  What about when the preacher is passionless?  What if there were a thermal imaging camera?  When should the message touch the preacher’s heart?  One thing I’ve said more than once is that we shouldn’t de-affect the text.

Preaching to touch the heart?  Images matter, especially biblical ones.  And so does vivid description.  How will you touch the heart?  Beware of manipulation though, or troublingly distant preaching, and one more.  Mentoring is critical to truly marking hearts.

Some historical thoughts on preaching and the heart?  How about Wilberforce.  Or Jonathan Edwards.  Even Chrysostom.  And Thielicke on Spurgeon, and more of that gold.

A series on the preacher’s heart.  Part one, two and three.

And an article on heart-centred hermeneutics.  (And a recipe to finish.)

Our Core Vision

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I am travelling and adjusting to a new time zone.  So I thought I’d pull out an oldie from five years ago.  Here’s a good reminder for me:

“We shall never have great preachers until we have great divines.” That was C.H.Spurgeon’s opinion. In the busy world we now inhabit, a world of phone calls, emergencies, emails, travel, financial complexities, family responsibilities and ministerial intricacies, we need to freshly recommit ourselves to the core vision of the preacher. Our core vision is not a philosophy of ministry, a theological stance or sense of calling. Our core vision is God Himself.

We have the privilege of being so captivated by the greatness and grace of our Lord that every moment of our lives is lived in the shadow, no the glory, of that vision. A deep awareness of who God is will continue to drive us back to His Word, diligently pursuing more of Him so that we might respond further.

This is not about discipline and effort, this is about delight and response. We dive into His Word so that we might see Him more clearly, be captured more fully, and be stirred more deeply. Then we will preach more effectively.

Our preaching should flow from a personal intimacy with God and a personal commitment to His Word. That is what our people need.

Growing as a Preacher

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Many have made the point that the day you stop learning is the day you stop teaching.  The day you stop growing is the day you stop truly leading.  So let me ask the simple question, are you growing as a preacher?  What does that mean?

I suppose there are basically two areas to be considered, as well as two paths to pursue growth.

Preachers need to grow in their preaching, but not as much as they need to grow in their relationship with Christ.

How do we pursue spiritual growth?  Two options.  One is to pursue growth in our own strength – the self-moved effort to mature and learn, etc.  The other is to pursue growth in our responsiveness to Christ’s work in our lives.

I’ll keep this short and nudge you toward my Cor Deo co-mentor’s post on Growing . . . please click here to go there.

Word Studies 4 – Using the Fruit

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week we have been pondering the importance of word studies.  It is vital that we take the words of Scripture seriously, and thereby make our preaching as accurate and effective as possible.  So let’s say we’ve identified key words in a passage, pivotal terms on which the passage turns, and we’ve studied them to get a good sense of what the author meant by choosing those particular terms.  How do we use the fruit of the study in our preaching?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Default to smooth integration.  The majority of word study work that you do in your study need not show in your preaching.  By show, I mean overt reference to it.  The default should be that the study you’ve done is hidden, but the explanation you give is accurate.  Sometimes I would even go for smooth integration when I think the translation isn’t the best.  So I will read it as is, and then subtly state a preferred translation.  No fuss, no critique, just staying on track for effective explanation.  I think this is a good default.

2. Underline word studies sparingly and strategically.  There are advantages to sometimes letting some of the word study show overtly.  Perhaps you go to a couple of familiar or enlightening uses of the term, to give a taste of the process and help people see why you explain it as you do.  If this is done too much it will lose its impact.  Choose to show the word study more overtly in strategic moments – perhaps when the term is critical to the passage as a whole, or at least to a major point in the passage.

3. Avoid original language flaunting.  I know it is tempting to let your Hebrew or Greek hang out.  And if you haven’t studied it, it may be even more tempting to show you’ve read heavy commentaries.  I also know that some people will shake your hand and thank you for the wonderful insight into the original language.  What neither of us know is how many in your congregation are sitting there feeling linguistically inadequate, assuming that you can find things in the Word they never could, and therefore feeling less motivated to read the Bible between now and when you preach again.  Typically there is no need to refer to the actual term, just say “in the original” or “the word Paul uses here . . . ”

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with three more suggestions on using the fruit of Word Studies.

 

Heartfelt Explanation – Preaching to the Heart (2)

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I gave three thoughts on preaching to the heart.  The heart of the author of the biblical text matters, the hearts of the listeners with whom the text communicates matter, and God’s heart is revealed in the text.  Three more thoughts to conclude the list:

4. Dispassionate presentation is not honest, be sure to incarnate it.  Some are committed to being as dispassionate as possible in presentation.  “If I let my own heart response show, then I might distract listeners from the information in the text.”  The text is therefore offered at arms length, and typically received as such.  It should make us stop and wonder why we see no support for dispassionate preaching in the biblical record.  Some preaching is more like 1980’s washing powder advertising than biblical preaching.

5. When we add “affect” to the text, we are in danger of manipulation or emotionalism.  Why do we assume the text is dull and that our job is to add a stirring or rousing challenge?  Why do we think the text is dull, but we can add windows to the building by fascinating little illustrations?  I’m not against effective challenge, nor helpful “illustration”, but I am bothered by the assumption that the Bible is sterile and flat.  If we would reflect the affect of the text better, perhaps we’d see more listeners genuinely stirred by it.  When we simply add our own impact, we shouldn’t be surprised when people seem superficially stirred, or uncomfortably annoyed.

6. When we remove “affect” from the text, we are in danger of dulling hearts.  Some preachers don’t preach to the heart.  They take a vibrant and living Word and turn it into dull lecture material for the heads of their listeners.  Do we really want churches full of well-informed heads with dulled, or hardened, hearts?  If our theology and view of ministry leads us in that direction, please let’s respond to the warning flag and evaluate where we might have gone slightly off target.  Or to put it another way, if you think preaching is simply about informing people in a dull manner, please stop preaching for the sake of your listeners. Take a sabbatical and prayerfully chase God’s heart on the issue through the Bible.

Preaching to the heart matters, because the heart matters.  And preaching to the heart is not primarily an issue of application or challenge, it is at the very centre of our explanation.  God’s heart revealed, in heartfelt inspired texts, should be felt by the hearts of those hearing it properly presented.

 

There is more to be said, some of which I’ve probably addressed previously.  What would you add to this list?