Preacher’s Personal Life

Not a Rule, But a Commitment to Expository Order

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I split the preparation process into two.  Stages 1-4 focus on the text.  Stages 5-8 are concerned with forming the message.  Before beginning to think about the message, it is a good idea to consider the listeners (audience analysis).  Until this point the focus is on the text.  From this point on the focus is on both the text and listeners.

Obviously it cannot be a rule that no thought should be given to the listeners in the first half of the preparation process.  Our minds will naturally and often wander onto those for whom we care pastorally.  We will see points of application.  We will have illustrative thoughts coming to mind.  We will remember that their questions of the text must be answered if they are to receive a full message.  At times in the process we will mentally jump ahead and make a note for later in the process (an illustration, a helpful nugget of the wordsmith’s craft, etc.)

However, we should have a strong commitment to keeping our focus on the text in the first part of our preparation.  Brief and even frequent thoughts related to our listeners may be acceptable.  Periodic leaps forward in our notes to record a thought for later in the process is fine.  But first and foremost our objective is to understand the passage.  What did the author mean?  What was his purpose?  What is the idea conveyed in the text itself?

We must make a firm commitment to first truly study the Bible, rather than hunting for a sermon in the sacred text.  The study process should lead to application in our own lives, which should naturally then lead on to an applied message for our listeners.  But our first task is not to find a message, but to let the Scripture be master of our lives, then of our message.  A commitment to expository preaching is a commitment to study the text first.  It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it is a commitment.

Real Life Is Raw

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As I write this post I am sitting in a café working away at my laptop.  I can tune out most of what is going on around me.  But not at the moment.  Two parents and a teenage daughter are having a dispute at the next table.  It’s simple really.  The father wants to protect his daughter and she is resisting.  He loves her.  She knows best.  Her friend sleeps with her boyfriend, so why can’t she?  Friends matter more than some old-fashioned morals.  The mother is sitting silently on the sidelines, but the Dad is obviously hurting.  So is the daughter.  He wouldn’t move her from one school to another, would he?  Emotions run high.  I’m starting to feel emotion just sitting here trying not to listen.

Real life is raw.  Real life stirs emotions.  People don’t worry for a moment.  They lie awake fretting.  People don’t solve problems in a vacuum.  The emotions rise and relationships fray.  People don’t live life in three-second statements.  They live it in the raw.  Life is complex.  Life is painful.  Life is real.

As I sit here I am reminded that simply referring to the fact that people have struggles with health, or in marriage, or raising teens, is not enough to guarantee connection.  Empathy requires an emotional engagement with the pain of peoples’ lives.  God sovereignly allows us to experience certain pain to increase our empathy.  But let’s not rely on that, let’s be sure to engage our emotions and try to feel the reality of the life people live.  Maybe then our empathy will be more complete, and our connection to real life in the pulpit more effective.

The Strength is in the Roots

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Back in the 1950’s H. Grady Davis shifted the metaphor for a sermon.  Instead of something constructed by the preacher, a building, it is something grown, akin to a tree.  Here is another quote used in McDill’s book, 12 Essential Skills (I appreciate these quotes at the start of each chapter).

A sermon should be like a tree. . . .
It should have deep roots:
As much unseen as above the surface
Roots spreading as widely as its branches spread
Roots deep underground
In the soil of life’s struggle
In the subsoil of the eternal Word.

The real strength of a sermon is not found in delivery, although that aspect matters much.  It is not found in the structure and content – try stealing a sermon and notice that it feels weaker than when you heard it from its source!  The strength of a sermon has to reside in the roots.  So check the roots of your sermons, of your ministry as a preacher.  Are they deep into the soil of life’s struggle?  Are they deeper still in the subsoil of the eternal Word?  Let’s be sure we are not preaching impressive, but rootless sermons . . . a breeze might just blow them over!

The Generational Dance

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Parker Palmer (in The Courage to Teach) writes about when we as teachers lose heart, and how we might recapture the heart to teach.  He begins by raising the issue of those mentors that first stirred the passion to teach in our lives.  Many make the mistake of trying to clone their mentors, thereby finding their own teaching career a disheartening experience of apparent failure.  Yet when the impact of past mentors is allowed to invigorate us to teach in our own style, then our identity and integrity can be intact, and our vocation can flourish.

Again, what is true for college profs is also true for us as preachers.  We too can lose heart.  We too can find motivation by revisiting the memory of those mentors that shaped our passion to preach in the first place.  We too can make the frustrating mistake of trying to copy the style of that mentor.  And we too can be invigorated to preach in our own style, with identity and integrity intact, our ministry flourishing.

Palmer finishes the section with a paragraph I will share with you here.  This puts the onus back on us, for it speaks of how we now mentor others.  At one level you might say we mentor all that hear our preaching, and perhaps it is best to take it at that level for now (but maybe we should be overtly seeking “apprentices” as we teach):

Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance, and one of teaching’s great rewards is the daily chance it gives us to get back on the dance floor.  It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.

It Can’t Half Touch

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When we preach, our desire is for God’s Word to truly mark the lives of those listening.  We want them to learn, certainly, but more than that, we want them to be changed.  We want them to apply the Scripture in their lives that they will not be hearers only, but doers also.  We want them to be moved not only in their daily lives, but first and foremost in their hearts and faith.  We don’t want them to get half a touch from God’s Word.  We want significant life altering and inner change to occur that will flow out in real and tangible ways.

If we don’t want only half a touch for them, we must not allow ourselves to settle for only half a touch ourselves.

We must not fall into the trap of merely looking at the text and building a message for our listeners, without engaging ourselves fully in the process.  Our preparation must be more than a mental planning exercise.  Our time in the Word must be saturated in prayer so that our hearts are changed, our faith is grown, our sin is convicted, our actions shifted, our knowledge increased and so on.  If you don’t want only half a touch for them, don’t settle for half a touch for you.

Process and Forgive First

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At times we get angry.  Perhaps justly so.  But remember the advice you give to others.  I would tell others to prayerfully process their feelings and even forgive someone who had offended them before confronting them.  The same applies in preaching.  You read something or hear something.  It makes you hot with anger or even rage.  It is tempting to unload in the pulpit.  People do respond to a fiery preacher with his heart on his sleeve.  But be careful.

I just read something that really made me angry.  No details here, but it relates to the planned actions of someone vying for a leadership position.  I would be tempted to make reference to this in a forthcoming sermon.  But if I did so, without first processing it before God, I would be making comments with an edge.   I’d be lashing out without preparing my own heart.

It may be appropriate to speak the truth.  It may fit with the message and be highly relevant.  It may even be my role to represent a biblical perspective on contemporary culture.  But it is also my role to represent a biblical perspective in a godly manner.  I must spend time prayerfully processing, and even forgiving, before risking a misrepresentation of my righteous, but gracious God.

Using Statistics

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Some of us may never contemplate using a statistic in our message, others are drawn to them in every introduction they write.  Statistics can be effective, or they can be totally counter-productive.  I was just reading some advice on the use of statistics (not a preaching or Christian source, but helpful nonetheless).  He suggested you decide whether the statistic is being used to add credibility or to be memorable (a statistic will not do both unless it is stated specifically and then restated in relevant terms that can be remembered).  So here is James Humes advice in three points:

1. Reduce the number of statistics. It is better to use one than to use several.  Pick the best one and then communicate it effectively.  To use two or more will only confuse and undermine your goal.

2. Round the numbers in the statistics. Sometimes you will want to stay specific (to add credibility), but for a memorable stat, round the number.  (More than 25,000 is better than saying 26,315.)

3. Relate the statistic to the listeners. Numbers are hard to visualize, so restate your stat in terms they will understand (so many thousands of square miles is better stated as “about the size of …” an area they know, or so many millions of dollars is better stated as “dollar bills placed end to end, this would stretch from Seattle to Miami, or whatever).

Often statistics are of minimal value in preaching, but sometimes an arresting or startling statistic will help in setting up a message or a point in a message.  Be sure to use that stat wisely.  And one piece of advice that should be added for us as preachers of truth – be truthful, don’t twist, don’t falsify, don’t lie.  Integrity matters.

If Leadership Is Influence

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According to John C. Maxwell, leadership is influence.  Now if this is true, then preaching should be leadership.  I hope none of us preach without seeking to influence lives.  While we all may speak to influence, we are not all officially leaders in every situation in which we preach.  You may not be the pastor or an elder.  You may be just a visiting speaker, or a young man being given an opportunity to “try preaching.”  Whether we have an official leadership title or not, let’s be clear that when we preach, we lead.

Consequently, it is important to use that privilege wisely.  What does it mean to be a leader in terms of your own life?  Your lifestyle?  Your conversation?  Your interaction with other folks in the church?  What does it mean in terms of your self-discipline and your work ethic?  What does it mean in terms of your walk with God and your response to the spiritual battle that surrounds leaders?  Being a leader, at any level, has numerous implications.  Take some time to prayerfully evaluate these and related issues.

Sunday Prayer

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Do you have certain things you regularly pray before a day of ministry? I don’t have a set list, but one thing tends to come up a lot. I don’t want to just maintain a routine, or just go through the motions of another week of the same. Somehow church can become something we do, rather than a genuine life changing encounter with God. Now it is fair to say we should recognize the value of regular “normal” church life as well as the “firework” moments. But at the same time we can easily get into a rut of just going through the motions again simply because it is Sunday. My prayer is not to be a part of that. I pray that today lives will be changed by meeting with God through His Word, through worship and through fellowship with other believers. And for that to happen? Well, it has to be God at work. That’s kind of the point of a prayer like this, isn’t it? God, we need you. Amen.

A Shalom Preacher?

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Are you a stressed preacher? Many seem to be. I know I can fall into that too. The weight of forthcoming ministry commitments always linger in the mind. Interruptions of ordinary and extraordinary circumstances add pressure as deadlines loom. There is a weight to bear as you seek to stand with those under your care. Ministry is hard work. The enemy makes it harder. And we become stressed. Add to this the culture in which we live, a fast-paced not-enough-hours-in-the-day culture. In her book, Time Peace: Living Here and Now with a Timeless God, Ellen Vaughn writes, “”If adrenaline flows in response to a chronic state of stress–rather than being on reserve for emergencies–it’s like revving a car engine to a hundred miles per hour, then leaving it to idle at that speed.” (Page 69)

Answers to this phenomena tend to sound trite. Rest more. Exercise some. Spend more time with God. Cast your cares on Him. Commit to less. Guard your schedule. Establish better boundaries. All of these are part of the answer, but none are the whole answer. How would you rate your stress in ministry? What could you do to live out the ordered “shalom” of our God of order, the One Who is not stressed? Stuart Briscoe once preached that when we live our lives according to the orders of the God of order, we will have peace (shalom). Do you preach Shalom? Ok, but do you live it too?