Don’t Move Away From the Bible

August 22, 2011August 22, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday may have passed without you noticing the date, but it was the 766th anniversary of the death of Alexander of Hales. I would have missed it too, except for a brief article I read that began like this:

A decisive moment in Medieval scholasticism came when Alexander of Hales substituted Peter Lombard’s Sentences in place of the Bible as the basic text for his teaching.

In his day he was called the king of theology. Alexander (I won’t call him Alex as I can’t pretend to be too close to him), pioneered the dangerous habit of making a summary of Christian theology using Aristotle as the authority. Summarizing the Christian faith in answer to numerous questions sounds safe enough, but when Aristotle is quoted as a reference in almost every question, something unhealthy might just be brewing. In fact, it was Alexander’s fan, a certain Thomas Aquinas, who is best known for blending Aristotle and Christianity.

Now I am not suggesting that you or I are going to have the same long-lasting consequences as can be traced from Alexander of Hales and those he influenced. Nevertheless, we will do damage if we make a move away from the Bible in our ministry. But, you might say, where could we go from the Bible? After all, we are committed to being biblical preachers . . . okay, some tempting avenues away from the Bible, in no particular order:

1. Theology – Don’t get me wrong, I care passionately about good theology, but I also see the temptation to become “sophisticated” and leave the Bible behind. Don’t do it!

2. Philosophy – Speaking of sophistication, it doesn’t get much more tempting than leaving the Bible to become something of a philosopher. Bad move for a preacher to make.

3. Mysticism – Other extreme, but still a speculative pursuit, some choose to leave the Bible behind in order to go after a greater mystical experience. Oops.

4. Revelation – Along similar, but distinct lines, is the temptation to treat the Bible as passe in the pursuit of new revelation from God. Careful!

5. Culture – Here’s a popular pursuit. How about essentially moving beyond the Bible to being a cultural commentator. Pas une bonne idee.

6. Coaching – Listeners, of course, crave relevant instruction for life in a complex world . . . so why not put the Bible aside and offer engaging applied training in “living life, for dummies.” Well, let me give you six reasons that’s bad practice…

7. Entertainment – Let’s face it, we could always just go for numbers of happy people by squeezing out the Bible in order to offer entertaining sets of humour and anecdotal pulpit pithiness. Yes, but did you hear about the preacher who did this and…

There may be some value in some of these pursuits, but keep your feet firmly planted in the Bible and don’t stray off down a dead end.

Phones and Bibles

August 17, 2011August 11, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

“My main word is, as Stephen F. Olford has often said, that ‘we belong in the study not in the office.’ The symbol of our ministry is a Bible, not a telephone. We are ministers of the Word, not administrators, and we need to relearn the question of priority in every generation.”

These words are attributed to John Stott, who recently went home to be with the Lord. How true these words are.

Where the clergyman once held a position of honour in the community, we now find ourselves tempted to grasp for respectability and credibility. So there is a temptation to try to look like the respected folks of the community. They have increasing education, so we are tempted to flaunt ours, or get extra degrees for the wrong reasons. They have manic lives, so we are tempted to run around like mad folks looking for an ulcer (who would respect a preacher who is able to choose serenity over stress?) They have offices, mobile phones and permanent contactability, so we feel we can do no other.

What difference would it make if we stopped playing the busy professional and renewed our commitment to a different calling, to the ministry of the Word and prayer? If our gut reaction to this idea is to fear loss of credibility, or loss of income, or loss of support from those who think they hold us accountable . . . then we are making decisions out of fear rather than faith. What does God want of us? Acts 6:4 is worth pondering in prayer. Let’s ask Him what He thinks.

Listening to Preaching As a Preacher

August 11, 2011August 10, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

We live in a unique time. Never before have people been able to listen to so many sermons in a week. When they leave church on a Sunday morning, they can then take their synced iPods and listen to preaching for the rest of the week. At the supermarket, in the gym, while commuting, at work in some cases, etc. I’ve mentioned before how this can be massively intimidating for a normal preacher (to have their listeners feeding on the world’s finest, or in some cases, the world’s flashiest, for the rest of the week). I’ve mentioned that we shouldn’t be intimidated, or feel hopeless in competition with highly skilled communicators that have been well edited.

But what about our listening? Should we, as preachers, be listening to other preachers? Yes. And no.

Yes. It is good to listen to other preachers. First and foremost, it is important to be fed ourselves. Good preparation does feed us, perhaps more than those we preach to, but we still need to hear from someone else. I have a preacher or two that I listen to so that I can be challenged and encouraged. Secondly, it can be helpful to observe how others are handling texts and preaching opportunities. I don’t like to listen to a sermon on the text I’m about to preach as it is hard not to be overly guided by it, but to observe and learn is a good thing.

And no. I don’t think it is good to listen to too many other preachers. It can become overwhelming. You can end up wanting to do a bit of that like him, and some of that like him, and then it’s great how he, and oh, when he does that, etc. If you’re not careful you can end up preaching like a medley of other voices and lose your own. Listening to other preaching can be helpful. Listening to too much can make it so you lose your own quiet before God, and end up preaching not out of being with Him, but as a preaching karaoke machine.

Do you listen to others? Why? How much?

Preaching Elsewhere

August 10, 2011August 10, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Here’s a mighty little quote from Walter Brueggemann – “If we are to bring a word from elsewhere, then we have to live, to some extent, elsewhere.”

With the huge demands on church leaders and bi-vocational preachers, we have a real challenge. Too many of us are preparing to preach with the fuel gauge indicating nearly empty. We run around like headless chickens giving ourselves away in therapeutic care and meetings management and budget discussions and endless emails and emergency crises and fire fighting and political church squabbles and more emails and then when we are almost wiped out, we prepare a sermon.

But what people need is the kind of creativity, focus, passion and “word from God” that can only come from a preacher who has resisted distractions and spent time doing what most needs to be done in preparing to preach. Reading. Study. Thinking. Prayer. Time alone. Time with God.

I’m sure you are asked how long it takes to prepare a sermon now and then. What’s the answer? A specific number of hours? I suppose that technically it depends on how well the text is known, etc. But the health of the church will not depend on whether you can crank out an acceptable sermon in fifteen hours, or eight, or three. It is about time in preparation that isn’t rushed and squeezed and forced.

Somehow it is hard to imagine rushing into God’s presence, all frantic and breathless, “Lord, I need help, I need a sermon and I need it fast!” and then to have God get stressed and out of breath as we rush to pull something together. Somehow that image doesn’t seem right, does it?

God does care, and He does gladly get involved when we aren’t ignoring Him. And in a genuine emergency He is more than able to help us when we are absolutely stuck. But God doesn’t seem to live at our frantic pace. He is with us, indeed. But somehow by going to Him, we are enabled to get closer to His pace. And then, after spending time with Him, we can come back to preach. Breathless, perhaps. But for a different reason. Let’s preach a message from elsewhere.

Options in Spirituality

August 8, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I usually link to my post on the Cor Deo website every other week. This week’s post, by my good friend Ron Frost, is so helpful that I am going to link to it. Truth and Spirit . . . and preaching. Check out the post and please comment there. I think this post is so important for us as preachers to think through. Here’s the link, please click!

Second-Person Theology

August 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

For today’s post, prompted by a German theologian you should be aware of, and with a subject so very relevant to preachers of all ages, please click here to go to the Cor Deo site.

Small and Strategic?

July 29, 2011July 28, 2011 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

The pressure in church world is almost always expansive. Bigger buildings, bigger programs, bigger numbers, etc. This is not all bad, of course. If you wouldn’t want another person added to the church then something has broken in your heart, and if that’s true for one more, why not fifty more? Still, not everything about bigger is better.

We need to make sure that in our preaching ministry we are not drawn into thinking purely in a “bigger is better” model. For instance, is it better to speak to fifty or five hundred? It depends what you are speaking about, and even more, who the respective groups are. Five hundred conference hoppers going from one event to the next are not worth ten times more than fifty strategic leaders who will influence thousands.

I served for a year on an ocean-going ship-based ministry, a life changing experience for me. That ministry began back in the 1960’s with a little group of people praying around a world map in a little converted pub in Bolton, England. Today millions around the world have visited the ships and received the gospel in some form.

As an Englishman I am very thankful for the “little” conversations that took place at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge. Cranmer, Latimer, Barnes, Bilney, Gardiner, Coverdale, Tyndale, et al . . . men discussing Lutheran thought, “Little Germany,” . . . a group that changed the history of England and the world.

The Apostle Paul had a massive ministry and a massive impact. But let’s not forget the amount of time he invested in a relatively small group of companions – Timothy, Titus, Silas, Luke, Epaphras, etc. God changed the world through Paul. Paul marked the world through these men and others.

The Lord himself seemed to value a deeper mark on fewer people. He was second-to-none in reaching the masses (although after John 6 some might question that). Yet how much did he do that was “small and strategic” with twelve, with three, with one? He has truly built his church on that foundation.

So here’s the question: as a preacher, what are you doing that is small and strategic? Not the big stuff. Not the big crowds. The small stuff. The strategic. It could be a phone call. It could be a small group praying together. It could be a leisurely dreaming session in a tavern. It could be inviting some into your ministry to value a deeper mark on fewer lives in order to make a greater mark in eternity.

What are you doing that is small and strategic?

Praying for Fellowship

July 23, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This link should have gone on the site on Monday, but here it is now . . .

I Needed That

July 22, 2011July 15, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Following on from yesterday’s post about vicarious conviction, there is a related matter to stir up a bit. It is the appetite in the church for “I needed that” sermons. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when a sermon should sensitively but clearly touch the raw nerve of sin with deep conviction. Sometimes the Bible speaks in such a way that we feel lovingly stung by the disciplining word of God our Father. But I am not writing about that. I am writing about sermons that some church goers seem to appreciate because of the scourging they feel somehow cleansed by.

1. The flesh is drawn to religion.

We see it all over the world. Humans are religious. In the absence of divine revelation they will define religion according to predictable patterns: working to satisfy a distant deity by fulfillment of self-imposed regulations. Strangely though, even in the presence of grace-filled divine revelation, churchgoers are so prone to define their religion in similar terms: working to satisfy a distant deity by fulfilling self-imposed regulations. That’s the tendency of the flesh, isn’t it? The pre-programmed flesh continues to tend toward independence from God, even in the midst of supposedly worshipping Him.

2. The church always veers toward maturation by works.

What Paul was fighting in Galatians, and elsewhere, is still prevalent today. Who is it that bewitches us to think that having begun by faith we will then mature by means of keeping the law, working hard, beating ourselves, etc? Too many in supposedly Bible-believing churches are acting as functional members of another tradition where enduring a beating in a sermon is akin to purging the soul by means of climbing stone steps on our knees, or whatever.

3. The whipping preacher will always receive affirmation.

Here is the piece that always stuns me. If you hang around near a preacher that has just spent the sermon time whipping the congregation, some will come up and affirm the sermon! Is this a spiritual machismo that stands up after a beating and laughs it off with a “is that all you’ve got?” I suspect it is often the same kind of false understanding of salvation described above. Effectively it might be “thanks for the whipping today, I needed that, and now I feel as purged spiritually as I do physically after a hard session in the gym!”

Are you preaching the pseudo-gospel of guilt and pressure? Are you urging people via moralistic tirades to be better Christians? Do you get comments like “We needed that!” and “I like that kind of preaching!”

In the grossly inaccurate Da Vinci Code there is an albino Opus Dei monk hitman. If you saw the film you’ll remember his self-flagellation in his room. Whip in hand, back sliced open. Don’t preach for that effect. Dan Brown’s story may be compelling, but that scene is not an effect your listeners truly need you to give them when you preach!

Token Triumphalism

July 15, 2011July 15, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I think we should beware of token gestures of triumphalism in our preaching. I suppose we could go to the example of Michael in Jude in the Assumption of Moses moment, but I’m thinking slightly lower on the scale than the direct rebuking of Satan (although I have seen it done and don’t see the value of it).

Take, for instance, the direct rebuking of atheists. This can sound especially bizarre when the pointed comments about particular individuals are made in a manner that surely would be different were the individual in the room. I think the people in our churches need to be protected from the false teaching of atheists old and new. Especially when the media seem to fawn at the sight of a new book from Richard Dawkins, et al. But helping people see the problem with the teaching of a man is different than rebuking and attacking the man himself. The same holds for the teaching of extreme liberals like the Jesus seminar or Bart Ehrmann or historically flamboyant writers like Dan Brown. Help people see the error if appropriate, but don’t go celebrating the future demise of a man with fireworks or attacking him as if he is the devil.

Then there is another bizarre twist, when the preacher decides to attack Christians who are engaging with such folks. Whether it be a John Lennox for debating the new atheists, or a Darrell Bock for writing about the Da Vinci Code, or whoever. Somehow a small-minded preacher critiquing brothers who are serving the church by engaging and critiquing such works as The God Delusion or whatever, somehow it just seems a bit pathetic. I have no aspiration to enter the mainstream debate scene or write to uncover the errors in new atheistic argumentation. But I am thankful for those that do. Different parts of the body of Christ at work for the good of us all. If I, as a preacher, decide to ridicule or reject the efforts of men like Lennox and Bock, I don’t show a superior or even a biblical form of Christianity. What I show is small-minded, uninformed and paper-thin Christianity.

We could think about other religions too. Again, it is important for our people to be informed about the uniqueness of Christ and the dangers in the cults or religions vying for their attention. Let’s do so accurately and graciously, rather than sounding off in the safety of our own company.

There’s one more category, but I won’t develop the thought. Some preachers seem very quick to mock, critique, ridicule and put down other churches and denominations. Again, there may be a place for gracious contrasting or critiquing, but cheap shots and token triumphalism somehow tends to undermine a person’s preaching, making them look small and sometimes quite silly.