Today’s post is not about the Perspecuity of Scripture. Ok, actually it is, but let’s call it the Clarity of Scripture…a doctrine many preachers need to ponder more… Here is the link to the post.
Preacher’s Personal Life
Beyond Guilt – Part 3
So far we have looked at issues of stance and tone in this series. It is easy to have a minimalist default approach of piling on the pressure and using guilt to twist arms. The biblical preacher needs to get beyond that.
3. The Preacher’s Strategy. Let’s face the real issue head on. What is our strategy in preaching? If the goal is life transformation, then what strategy makes sense? It certainly can’t be a simplistic answer since the human is a complex creature. But here are some pointers on strategy issues.
Transformation involves movement from a negative to a positive. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply critique the negative. We need to help people see what life would look like if the biblical truth were to take hold. Simply making people feel bad is not a solution.
Often people simply cannot conceive of what a faith-filled Christ-like in-step-with-the-Spirit life would look like in terms of a specific issue. In one sense then we have some role as life coaches. But it is more than that.
Transformation involves motivation for applying the message of God’s Word. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply inform, or even pressure, it needs to motivate. We need to understand how people work at the deepest level. If we think that information plus pressure will generate good things then we have been significantly led away from the teaching of the Bible by the thinking of this world.
What is the root issue Paul points to in Ephesians 4:17ff? People act and behave a certain way because of their thinking – so we need to educate! Hang on, yes we do, but he goes further, there’s a deeper issue…the root issue is the hardness of heart. Somehow the heart influences even how the mind will process information. Christian transformation is not really about well-informed minds and well-disciplined wills. It is an issue of the heart, inside to out, a matter of response as opposed to responsibility.
Transformation involves response to more than a vision of better living. It is not about realizing innate potential, but about responding from the core to a compelling love that alone can truly transform a life.
So our strategy includes presentation of application rather than just declaration of guilt. Our strategy includes communicating with people as if they are heart-driven beings and not just informed decision makers. But the ultimate issue has to be the One to whom people should respond, which I’ll leave until tomorrow’s post.
Beyond Guilt
A friend asked me how we can preach to encourage listeners apart from making them feel guilty. He and I would both recognize the need for genuine conviction of sin, a work of the Spirit and a feature of some texts (and therefore some messages). But I understand the need for the question – too much preaching relies too much on guilt as the primary, or even the only, change mechanism.
Guilt is a poor motivator. The Spirit of God certainly does bring conviction to people, to me. An absence of conviction of sin in a life is an indication of a real problem. But there is much more to the Spirit’s work than just conviction of sin. There is much more to life transformation than guilt.
As I read the Bible I find myself convicted, yes, but also stirred, inspired, encouraged, enlightened, intrigued, reassured, enlivened, thrilled, calmed, galvanized, spurred, moved, attracted, delighted, renewed, transformed, changed.
God uses the Bible to change lives, and He changes lives by more than just guilt. So how, as a preacher of God’s Word, can I beneficially engage the lives of listeners with more than just a guilt session?
This week I’d like to offer several elements of an answer to this question.
1. The Preacher’s Stance. Where do we stand? Guilt-only approaches tend to take a domineering and confrontational stance. This comes through sometimes before a word is even spoken. It shows in demeanour, in expression, in attitude. It may be justified in terms of the authority of God’s Word, etc., but it is worth rethinking.
I would suggest a stance that is empathetic rather than confrontational, although there is a place for the latter. I am not suggesting the preacher stands amongst the listeners as a sympathetic fellow-struggler with nothing more than shared struggle. We do stand with God’s Word and so do have something very profound to offer. But we also stand as recipients of that Word.
Sometimes our talk of authority can lead us to authoritarian approaches. Yes, God’s Word has authority and as I preach God’s Word there is a “thus saith the Lord” aspect. But it is right here that some betray their narrow view of God and come right back to a guilt-only approach. That is, they see God as being purely authoritarian and a guilt-approach-only Deity.
Thus saith the Lord. We represent Him. How did God reveal His own character, personality, values, etc.? On Sinai, through the prophets, in Christ? God didn’t just come as a pounding fist.
We should consider the stance we take as one standing and speaking God’s Word, while at the same time being one standing as a recipient of God’s Word. If our stance is simply a “lording it over” stance then we betray a worldly passion for power that reflects a twisted view of God Himself.
Tomorrow I’ll add another element to consider in pursuing how to preach with more than just guilt.
Preaching This Passage or That?
There is another subtle temptation all preachers face, potentially every time they preach. That is to preach a text other than the text they think they are preaching.
I saw this firsthand once when I listened to a series of lectures on the Pastoral Epistles from a lecturer who I could tell wished he had been given the more prestigious Romans class. Every chance he got, he was back to Romans. At the end of that series I didn’t feel like I knew the Pastorals much better than before, but maybe Romans!
There are several dangers in doing this sub-conscious leap from your passage to your preferred passage:
1. You will lack variety and richness in your ministry. That is, every passage will sound like the handful of your favourites that always trump the text before you. This does not make for a healthy and balanced diet for your church.
2. You will teach listeners that the Bible is very limited. They will start to copy you and soon be reading one thing and seeing their pet passages instead. Your people need the whole Bible for spiritual health.
3. You will lose integrity as a biblical interpreter. Your listeners will sub-consciously, if not consciously, start to recognize an inability to let the preaching passage mark your life and ministry. People typically have less respect for a pet passage preacher, or if not, they should.
4. You will miss out on the richness of the Bible. You will flatten it out into a 2-dimensional line drawing when actually there is a depth and richness throughout the canon. Even though you’re tempted to go elsewhere, study and preach the passage in front of you – it will be profitable!
Easter Saturday Convictions
This week I have been reworking posts from previous years on the subject of Easter. Here is a post on the power of God for us to ponder on this Easter Saturday:
Let us be sure to preach the truth this Easter as preachers committed to preaching the crucified and risen Christ. We won’t tickle ears. We won’t manipulate responses. We won’t generate numbers. We won’t entertain. We won’t preach to please people who are not passionate about pleasing God. We won’t preach in the power of our own gifting, or enthusiasm, or natural abilities. We won’t preach to impress. We won’t preach to earn money. We won’t preach to fill time. We won’t preach because we feel we should, we will preach because we know we must.
We won’t preach to affirm people in their independence from God, nor to give hints for successful living, nor to recite historical fact alone. We won’t preach myth, or helpful tales with gentle morals, or strongly worded messages of morality. We won’t preach watered down niceties, nor implore people to try harder, nor settle for human level transformation.
We will preach the Word of God, we will preach fact. We will preach as those who know how little we bring to the salvation question, as those who know what an honour it is to represent God’s Word inspired and incarnate, as those who live in the shadow of the cross, and as those who live transformed by the Risen Christ.
We are not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for everyone who believes. So we bow before a God who would give everything on a horrifying Roman cross, and rise empowered by the Risen Christ to preach Him: Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ alone.
Easter Musings
Today I have posted some reflections from yesterday’s sermon. Naturally with this week being Easter it is even more appropriate to focus on Christ crucified. So today I’ll link to the Cor Deo post, then the rest of the week I am going to re-work some Easter posts from previous years. What are your particular thoughts concerning Easter this year?
Saturday Short Thought: Profound Trust
This week I’ve been pondering the factors involved in preaching profoundly. That is, how do we pursue the kind of substantially transformative messages that are fitting for Christian pulpit ministry. I suspect we’ve barely scratched the surface. I’d like to add one more thought today.
Yesterday I enjoyed lunch with a good friend and we were talking about preaching among other things. We were thinking about how preaching can be part of how we define ourselves as a movement – for instance, in the past it might have been in reaction to Catholic theology, or more recently in reaction to Liberal theology. Consequently our preaching can carry a subtle desire to demonstrate that we take the Bible seriously. But then a mis-step can occur.
In our attempt to demonstrate a commitment to the Bible, we can create sermons that are actually an artificial structure placed on the passage. That is, we seek to show our approach to the Bible and end up transmitting our own cleverness in serious sermon construction. The Bible can almost become an exhibit for our trustworthy theology, or for our view of the Bible. There is a danger in this.
The danger is that we preach our own message from a passage, rather than preaching the message of the passage.
I am convinced that life-changingly profound preaching is not about a deep trust in a specific sermonic form, or even in conveying our system of theology, but rather in a profound trust in the Word of God. When we do everything we can to present the text God has given us, to re-present it to our listeners so that our message not only says what the text says, but does what the text was intended to do, then I think we are getting closer to profound preaching.
Its a good question to ask ourselves before we preach tomorrow: am I trusting in my system of theology, in the sermonic form I believe reflects “true preaching,” or even in the compelling illustrative material I’ve come up with? Or am I really trusting in the biblical passage to work deeply in our lives as we ponder the passage together?
Profound Presentation
It is obvious that profundity should be sought in preparation and matters of explanation and application. But what about presentation and delivery? Here are a few suggestions:
13. There is nothing profound in being dull, discouraging, distant or disconnected – cut that out. Some may assume that profound is the opposite of entertaining and therefore seek to be deliberately dour and detached. Apparently then the glory goes to God and not to the preacher. Apparently this path guarantees no manipulation. I disagree on both counts. I don’t think God is glorified by poor incarnational presentation of His Word. And I do think it is possible to manipulate by a detached intellectualism. We need to see preaching as an act of communication and recognize that communication is always more than content alone.
14. Profound impact usually requires genuine connection, so know that interpersonal aspects matter. I often mention that I wouldn’t buy a car from someone who won’t look at me, so surely that matters even more with something important like the truth of God’s Word. Eye contact, personal warmth, open gestures, facial expression, vocal variety, etc. These are all part of the package when a communicator connects effectively with a listener.
15. Profound impact often comes when there is an appropriate level of personal vulnerability and heartfelt conviction. When a passage is preached at arms length, with both the text and the message being an exhibit offered to the listeners, there will be a significant reduction in impact. When a passage has worked in and through a preacher, then the message can come through and from the preacher, and the communication can be both vulnerable and heartfelt.
16. Conviction, passion, enthusiasm, and so on, cannot be effectively faked. A stunning message learned verbatim and copied down to the last detail of delivery will not be the same as the original. Why? Because the copycat communicator cannot copy genuine conviction, and they cannot offer genuine personal passion through the mask of someone else’s message.
Tomorrow I’ll finish the series with a consideration of profound transformation – the goal in all of this. What would you add to this list?
Profound Preparation
This week I’d like to ponder what it might look like to pursue a more profound preaching ministry. While most would acknowledge that preaching should neither be dense nor inaccessible, this does not mean that shallowness and dumbing down are the order of the day.
Profound preaching must surely start with profound preparation. Four suggestions to get a week-long list going:
1. Begin with humble recognition that you yourself need to be changed by God. It is too easy to think of preaching preparation as being about you the preacher pursuing a message to preach to them, the needy recipients. At this point in the process you stand very much in their shoes, needing to hear from God. You need to encounter His heart in His Word. You need to be marked deeply and changed by a God who communicates, who cares, who challenges and who changes. It makes no sense to have profound faith for the sake of others, but not an openness and humility in yourself. The preparation of a sermon will be a privilege, an opportunity for God to mark your life profoundly.
2. Study the passage to know God, not just the facts. It is easy to treat Bible study as a pursuit of non-trivial trivia. Don’t. Study the passage in order to know God better. What is His self-revelation saying of Him? How are the characters responding to Him? Wherever you are in the canon, the passage is theocentric, so make sure that your heart is too.
3. Don’t mix your message preparation with your Bible study. As a preacher who cares about the congregation, or as a preacher desperate to be ready on time, it is tempting to blend passage study with message formation. Keep the stages separate. You have the privilege of doing some in-depth Bible study, take advantage of that! You may not be able to help thinking of who you will be preaching to, but try to keep those thoughts until you’ve really gotten to grips with the passage (or better, until God has gotten to grips with you through the passage).
4. Saturate your preparation in prayer. This should go without saying, but it can’t, so it won’t. The entire preparation process should be absolutely pickled in prayer. Prayer in passage study, prayer in personal response, prayer in “audience analysis,” prayer in message formation, prayer for delivery, prayer for life change, prayer for immediate impact, prayer for long-term fruit, etc.
Tomorrow I’ll offer a few more thoughts, this time on profound explanation in preaching. Feel free to comment any time.
Saturday Short Thought: Year on Year
This evening I have the privilege of speaking at the 80th Anniversary celebration of a church in Surrey. As preachers it is tempting to think that the next message we preach is the only one that matters. But a chance to look back with friends at God’s work over eighty years will be a great chance to celebrate the long-term impact of God’s Word.
The building work of preaching – week after week, the Word of God faithfully preached to a gathering of believers will shape them. This could be in a good direction or not, which is why it is so vital that we watch carefully the diet that the flock are being fed. One poor message here and there may not produce tangible trouble, but diet does matter. I am convinced that if the churches in this country received a steady diet of just plain well-handled Bible sermons – nothing spectacular, just plain, accurate, faithful and lovingly served biblical truth, then the church would be in a very healthy place!
The shaking work of preaching – some messages, or series, will shake a church. This is good. Just as our personal reading should shake up our theological convictions and how we live, so the Word should shake a church. Some preachers want to create a visible shake every week, which may not prove so sustainable or helpful in the long-haul. But looking back over the years, I suspect healthy churches can see seasons where God’s Word brought about change (usually with discomfort and tension in the process).
The cumulative work of preaching – the steady weeks and the firework weeks, the series that seemed to hit home, and those that passed by, interspersed with the messages that brought instant fruit, and perhaps a few that brought critical feedback . . . over time the diet of God’s Word does something to people, to a church, to a community.
Your sermon this Sunday may not be the talking point of this Monday, but it is part of the history of your church being written over the decades. Preach the Word.
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Next Week: Pursuing Profound Preaching
Biblical Preaching 