Preacher’s Personal Life

Since a Spoken Message is the Goal

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

If you are a normal preacher then your goal is a spoken message (I know, your goal is really to please God, to see lives transformed, etc., but stay with me for now).  Your goal is probably not to publish your manuscript in a national newspaper, or to collate your manuscript into an anthology for publication, or to edit your manuscript for a preaching journal.  Normal preachers normally just preach the sermon.  (Actually, it is tempting to long for a team of secretaries, personal assistants and editors who will whisk a sermon away and process it into publishable form . . . anyone volunteering time and skill in this area is always welcome, by the way!) So, if normal preachers just preach the sermon, what does this mean?

For one thing, it means that we shouldn’t feel obligated to do all our preparation on paper or word processor.  While we are taught to write and outline and indent and manuscript, perhaps we would benefit from sometimes choosing to speak, record, dictate and map.  Some advocate for a full move over to oral sermon mapping – a move I am not opposed to and may explore more on here in the coming weeks.  But even without abandoning our pens and word processors, we can still benefit from recognizing the potential benefits of greater coherence between preparation and delivery.

There are times in my preparation when I get stuck.  Not confused stuck (although that happens too).  Not uncertain of homiletics stuck (although that also happens).  Stuck, as in, I’m not sure what to do next stuck, I feel like I have a log-jam in my mind stuck.  Maybe your preparations always flow easily and smoothly from beginning to end.  Mine don’t.

I find it very helpful when I do get stuck to step away from the computer (yes, apparently Spurgeon didn’t even have one!), clear my throat, and speak.  Sometimes something that makes sense on paper doesn’t work when spoken.  Equally there are times when things aren’t working on paper, but speaking them through seems to unstick the stuckness.  Sometimes I pray through a message or section of it.  Other times I pray and then preach through as if to human listeners.  Sometimes I will pick up the phone and talk through the logic of the message with someone.  Whether it is in prayer or with prayer, to an imaginary audience or with a responding human, talking seems to help unstick the stuck when preparing a talk.  Funny that.

Hope

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Today I posted over on the Cor Deo site, so I won’t write here.  However, what I wrote has a bearing on our perspective as preachers.  I would really appreciate it if you took a look at the post and perhaps offered a comment or two.  Thank you.  Please click here to go to today’s post…

Supplements and Substitutes

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Back to the diet theme (perhaps I am actually hungry as I type this post!) Last week I referred to vegetables and chocolate.  While in Sri Lanka I scanned my way through an enjoyable book entitled Preach It! by Stuart Briscoe.  In it (page 18), he makes the following point:

“Alternative methods of communicating and participating, which may be perfectly valid and helpful as supplements to preaching, have been installed as substitutes for preaching.  That makes no more sense than exchanging a bottle of dietary supplements for a healthy diet of solid food.”

I have to say that I stand firmly with Stuart on this issue.  There are many supplemental approaches to feed the church with Scripture, and I am a fan of most.  Home group and small group Bible studies can be very helpful.  Seminars and classes can provide valuable input.  Reading programs, personal devotional notes, pastor’s blogs, etc.  All helpful supplements.

But these are not substitutes for preaching.  The healthy church needs a steady diet of well prepared Biblical content delivered by an appropriate form of biblical preaching.  The Christian faith is a faith based on revelation, it is a faith with preaching at its centre.

You may be growing tired at the lack of response to your preaching.  You may be discouraged by the sense that preaching doesn’t do what you pray it will in peoples’ lives.  Don’t give up on preaching.  By all means look to improve it, get training, read helpful material, listen to good role models, but don’t give up on it.  Whether it is obvious or not, your church needs solid and relevant biblical preaching if it is to be healthy.  You don’t see your children grow with every meal, but you will see the difference if you give up on meals altogether!

The Missing Connection

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Sometimes technically solid sermons seem to sputter and struggle.  It’s not unusual for a message to fall flat.  Why is that possible when the pieces are in place?

Content – We know the importance of having good content.  I tend to use the term “Biblical” when I am evaluating a message, others use the term “faithful.”  It’s a matter of content.

Clarity – We probably see it as a self-evident truth that for something to communicate it needs to make sense (although just believing it doesn’t make us automatically clear communicators).  A clear message clearly presented is a blessing to listeners.

Contemporaneity – Ok, so if I wasn’t enjoying my alliteration (might as well do it on here since I rarely alliterate in messages), I might prefer to speak of emphasising the relevance of the passage.  That is, helping listeners to hear what God is saying today, to us, through His Word.

Good content, clearly presented, with a contemporary sense of relevance.  What more could you want in a message?  How can messages with all three ingredients in place still fall flat?

I think there is a fourth ingredient that is often overlooked, frequently forgotten in the mix of making a message that ministers well:

Connection – Again if I weren’t in the mood for “C’s” I would probably call this being engaging.  It is something about the persona of the preacher, the energy, the relevance, the eye contact, the warmth, the humour, the manner of delivery, the feel and flow of the whole, the comfort or nerves of the speaker, and so much more.  It may be hard to pin down what makes it, but as a listener you can sense when it’s missing.

Let’s try to preach good content, clearly, with a contemporary focus.  But as well, let’s seek to connect.  After all, we are communicating for a communicating and relational God.  Preaching is a relational exercise.  And when connection is missing, preaching falls flat.

A Thought Experiment About Dictation Software

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Imagine for a moment that they invented software that would take a recording of your voice and transcribe it word for word into an electronic document.  Or imagine that you had a secretary who would transcribe a recording of your sermon.  (Now, if you have either of these, you are very blessed.  If you have both, you have to wonder what God is expecting from someone so privileged!)

So you have your imaginary document, a word for word transcription of your message.  What would you discover if you were to analyse it carefully?

* Would you find sentences and thoughts left incomplete, or open loops left unclosed?  Some of us struggle to complete our thoughts when speaking out loud and our listeners can be left feeling confused or disoriented (or even just plain bored).

* Would you find inane repetition of non-words?  I gave a presentation recently and as I sat down I felt very aware that I had used a couple of words repeatedly and slightly out of place.  I don’t think this example was a recurring pattern, but I’d like to know if it is so I could deal with this.  Perhaps you like to use, you know, lots of, well, you know, filler words.  Transcribed sermons would make those just really obvious wouldn’t they?

* Would you find absolutely no reference to yourself, such that the message could have come from anybody?  Seems like listeners value the connection to the preacher, as long as he doesn’t come across as an idiot or a hero.  Speaking of which…

* Would you find excessive positive references to yourself?  I did this, I said that, I met so and so, I answered, I shared, I witnessed, I preached, my church, my ministry, my opportunities, my anointing.  Painful though it may be, knowing that you come across as full of yourself is better to know than not know!

* Would you find a loss of momentum in the message?  It was going great until 2/3rds of the way through, then it sort of tread water for a page and a half.  Better to know that.

* Would you discover that actually your message didn’t make sense.  That would be hard to take, but actually, if it didn’t make sense, it was hard to take for the listeners, so better to join the club and know that too!

Ah well, good thing they haven’t invented such dictation software, or personal secretaries, or even tape recorders so that we could listen to our own messages, transcribe and analyse.  Might be painful if we did!

Preaching About Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I think you have to be very careful when it comes to preaching about preaching.  It is tempting to do so.  After all, Christianity is a revelation based faith, flowing from a speaking, self-revealing and relational God, with a big emphasis on the importance of preaching (despite the frequent attempts to deny its importance).  But to get side-tracked into preaching about preaching seems to be a precarious ledge with some deep ravines on every side.  For example:

1. Who are the listeners? If you are preaching at a pastors’ conference then it is probably highly appropriate to preach about preaching.  But if the listeners are a normal congregation, then what is your goal?  Are you intending to intimidate those who are scared to death of “preaching” (but may be capable of witnessing under other labels . . .)  Are you hoping to train them to discern (and if so, will they discern well as a result, or just discern in line with your personal preferences?)  Or is your goal not so much what the listeners will do with what is said, but to make a comparison?  If so, then there is the double danger of criticising inappropriately other servants of the Lord, or of becoming self-laudatory.  There are reasons to preach about preaching, but beware of these dangerous traps.

2. How is your ego? Anytime we talk about what we give a large chunk of our life to doing, there is a danger that the ego might run free and leave a bitter taste of self-congratulation and arrogance.  There are different preachers, different approaches to preaching, different theologies propagated through preaching and different schools of thought in respect to every aspect of preaching.  It is important to think through any inherent critique before you make it.  It may be very appropriate to graciously critique some aspects of preaching (i.e. those who do not preach what the text is saying), but very dangerous to critique secondary matters (such as certain styles . . . that preacher who sits on a bar stool and uses humour at times may actually be a far more biblical and Christ-honouring preacher than a more traditional style individual who seems to fit a particular mold you may be comfortable with).

It is sometimes appropriate to preach about preaching (not least when the preaching text is about preaching, although even then, we sometimes need to abstract slightly in order to apply to non-preachers).  But we need to be careful not to let our egos creep in and turn an opportunity to serve others into a self-patting exercise.  We often get more ego stroking after preaching than we deserve already, let’s not waste our preaching in doing the same for ourselves.

Extended Gestation

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Somebody has likened (with all the necessary caveats and apologies) preaching to pregnancy.  You know the elements of the analogy: something growing within, the building excitement, that something has to come out at a specific point in time, with the resulting post-delivery tiredness and even sometimes the post-partum blues.

Among other elements where the analogy breaks down, there is one that I’d like us to ponder today.  The length of gestation.  Real pregnancy has a consistency of length, preaching preparation doesn’t.  It is easy to fall into a cycle of preaching preparation, from start to finish, taking only five to six days.  This fits between Sundays, but it creates issues.

Is the message able to fully grow, and specifically, is it able to fully grow and work its way into your life if you’ve only been working on it for five days?  “I’ve been studying this passage for the past few days.  I’ve lived with it since Tuesday, and have been applying it consistently since yesterday morning.  Listen to my powerful message from 24 hours of experience . . . ” We don’t say this when we preach, but sometimes we say it by our lives.

Haddon Robinson suggested using a ten-day preparation cycle.  This means doing some preparatory exegetical work on the Thursday of the previous week.  This give it time to stir in the heart and mind before launching into preparation in the week before preaching.

Some preachers suggest planning a preaching calendar a year in advance, allowing for time to do initial study, ongoing research/collection of information, and personal application.  Some advocate taking a week to do preliminary work on all messages to be preached as part of this process.

What do you do?  How long do you take to allow the message to grow, and to make sure it has time to make a mark on your life, before you commend it to others?

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Points of Pride

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I suspect that if we’re honest, we’d all admit that preaching leads to numerous battles with pride.  Perhaps not every time, perhaps not in the same way as each other, but there is an inherent danger that points of pride will peek through when we preach.  Much of this may be an internal battle unseen by others except the Lord.  But sometimes in our preaching we do things that can reveal, or be perceived to be, pride peeking through.  A few examples:

1. References to “scholastic matters” – You know what I mean, the extra reference to a dispute among commentators, an unnecessary quotation from the Greek/Hebrew, a technical term (punctiliar aorist, genitive absolute, etc.), an unnecessary excursus into matters of textual criticism, unnecessary citation details showing how much you’ve read, etc.

2. Allusions to “hidden stores of knowledge” – This is more subtle, but some of us fall into it.  It’s where you open the door to a subject, only to immediately close it with some passing reference to “that is for another time” or “so much we could say about that…”  Sometimes it helps to let people know you’re aware that more could be said about a matter, but sometimes it can come across as prideful parading of unrevealed knowledge.

3. Demonstrations of “foreign language competence” – I remember reading a theology book and getting very annoyed by the author quoting in Dutch and Norwegian (as well as Latin, French, German, Spanish, etc.), all without English translation.  Ostentatious to say the least.  But actually in our preaching it can be tempting to throw in a foreign phrase or quote.  Depending on the audience this may connect very effectively, or it may just look prideful.

4. Narratives of “personal illustration” – Haddon Robinson always said that an illustration shouldn’t make you look like a jerk or a hero.  Tempting though.  A story in which you gave a stunning response in the moment, or where others acclaimed your skill, or yet another reference to your prize winning exploits in the county fair vegetable competition, or “when I met Billy Graham…”  Maybe it is a good illustration, maybe it does help the message, but think carefully how it comes across, because if it smacks of pride, it will leave a sour taste.

So I readily hold my hands up as guilty of all four charges.  Perhaps you do too.  Let’s think through the next message and try to eradicate any hint of pride so that nothing will detract from the God of whom we preach, who is worthy of all honour!

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