Preacher’s Personal Life

For Improvement Just Do This

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

It is easy to feel pressure to preach better. We put the pressure on ourselves. Others put the pressure on us, often unwittingly. Perhaps a lack of apparent response in recent months. Perhaps comments about other preachers. Perhaps the big shots on the radio. Perhaps a renewed passion to preach well that has stirred within.

When the pressure to improve is felt, things can often seem overwhelming. After all, there are so many books, so many ideas, so many aspects of effective preaching to consider, indeed, so many preaching traditions to learn from. Maybe you skim through previous posts on this site, or other sites, or magazines, or podcasts, etc. Perhaps you let your mind go back to seminary and you recall all the instructions you received there. It can all be so overwhelming.

This may sound overly simplistic, but just do this: prayerfully endeavor to do the basics well. Try to study the passage effectively so that you are clear on the structure, the author’s main idea and purpose in writing. Try to think through your sermon purpose in light of both the passage and the congregation. Try to determine a clear main idea (doesn’t have to be an all-time great one), a clear and simple structure, a way to start that will make listeners want to hear the rest of the sermon and a way to finish so that the impact of the text will be felt in a specific area of their life. Do the basics well. You’ll probably find the pressure lifts because your preaching is much closer to what you want it to be!

Texts Only Bend So Far

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Be honest, sometimes you find yourself trying to make a text do something it doesn’t do.  Perhaps you have an illustration you want to use, or a visual aid that would be powerful, or some other motivation.  But when it comes to the text, it doesn’t quite work.  You know the order is backwards, you know you don’t want to admit it, but we’re being honest here.

This happened to me last week.  I’m not one for creative visual aids, but one came to mind.  One that would be perfect and impressive and effective and so on.  But then I went back to the only real text that would work with that visual aid.  It didn’t work.  I was trying to conform the text to the sermon, rather than derive the sermon from the text.  The text wasn’t boss, and I wasn’t happy.

But I felt that the integrity move at that point was to drop the illustration and switch texts.  Let’s be preachers of integrity, people who represent the text well and don’t injure the text trying to fit it into our sermon box.

Tired of Preaching?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

It’s Monday morning.  You have woken to a few moments of contentment before remembering yesterday.  Perhaps your sermon flopped.  Perhaps you were strongly criticized.  Perhaps you just felt totally wiped out and emotionally drained.  So today you are tired of preaching.  Here’s a brief perspective fixer for you:

You’re Not Alone – I’ve no statistics to support this.  Only anecdotal conversations with other preachers.  If you are not feeling great about your last sermon, join the club!  Many preachers struggle through the hours or days after preaching more often than not.

Your Perspective is Incomplete – It may have felt terrible to you, but good to others.  It may have stirred criticism from one person, but what of the other person who slipped away feeling convicted or encouraged, like they had just encountered God through His Word?  Unless you interviewed every listener, you don’t know.  (And if you have to stand at the door and shake hands with everyone, you still don’t know!)

Your Best Move is Prayer – Real prayer.  Real honest prayer.  Don’t give God your best stained glass voice, give him your heart, spill your guts, shoot from the hip, let it all hang out.  He can take it.  Job prayed like that.  David did as well.  Jeremiah too. And maybe you’ll experience the same as me on numerous occasions.  After spilling it all, with no energy left, I sense God’s love for me and that burning is still there in my bones!

Your Worst Move is Sin – Pastors often take Monday off for a reason.  So take some time and use it carefully.  Pray.  Refresh.  Energize.  Relax.  Exercise.  Fellowship.  But don’t sin.  Temptations often hit hard when we are feeling low.  Don’t be easy pickings for the enemy!

(PS I wrote this on Friday, so I have no idea how my Sunday sermon will go.  Pray for me on Monday though, just in case!)

Preaching Tired – Part 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Sometimes we have to preach tired.  Life seems to work that way.  We try to avoid it, but life happens.  So when Sunday morning comes and you’re feeling wiped out, what should you do?  Well, it seems to me that we need to be aware:

Be aware of your attitude – When feeling tired and a little cranky, it is easier to preach with the voice “frowning” than “smiling.”  A gentle nudge of an application can slip into an insensitive poke from the pulpit.  Encouragement can come across as criticism.  Humor in illustrations can take on an unhealthy edge.

Be aware of your body language – The words of the preacher are supremely important, but they can be undermined not only by tone of voice, but also by body language.  If you look tired or disinterested, then your important words are undermined.  I’m not suggesting you fake your energy, but simply give it slightly more attention than normal.

Be aware of apologies – It is always tempting to begin with some apology about your lack of energy or preparation.  After all, people will understand why my message is not up to par this time, right?  Well, it will probably undermine your message and distract your listeners.  Nine times out of ten they won’t know you were tired or distracted.  But once you apologize they are focused on you rather than your message to them.  Often the temptation to apologize is driven by pride since we want people to think highly of our “performance.”  (Also it may cause low-level resentment if their week has been tougher than yours, but you get the sympathy!)

Remember This

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

With the increase in TV, radio and internet, it is easier to hear preaching than ever before.  Along with the blessing this may bring, there is also an added pressure.  Perhaps you sense it, or even hear about it?  People in your pews are listening to the superstars as they drive to work, then when they come to church they get you.  Pressure.

Remember this, even the “great” preachers sometimes preach a weak sermon!  I was just chatting with two friends who travelled many hours to attend a preaching conference.  A great few days of preaching culminated in the last session with the most famous preacher at the conference.  He flopped.  The sermon was as flat as any they had heard anywhere.  They went away encouraged.  Even he preaches poorly sometimes.

I always think back to sitting in the library at seminary and watching a video of a famous preacher, excited to see him in action.  Standing without pulpit or music stand he had his Bible in one hand and one hand free for gesturing.  With that one hand he tried to pull his glasses out of his shirt pocket, then endeavored to open out the arms, in the end resorting to biting one part of the glasses so he could then put them on.  Five minutes.  He preached throughout.  He probably preached well.  But I (and I suspect, the live audience) was distracted.  Distracted and encouraged.  Remember this, no one nails it every time!

Without naming names, what examples do you remember when you feel the pressure of the selected and edited sermons that make it onto the radio or internet?

Preaching Tired

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

A good friend and commenter on this site sent me a list of about twenty lessons he’d noted after preaching a sermon recently.  I am indebted to Tim for the prompts for yesterday’s post, today’s, and probably a few more to come!

Here’s one of those “lessons learnt” – stress and tiredness do affect your preaching.

Sometimes the problem is that we get stressed about being stressed, or stressed about being tired.  Again, if my night was interrupted because of sickness in the family, then God understands and can provide supernatural strength to compensate.   (Thankfully, as well as an awesome God, I also have a wonderful wife who often handles everything the night before I preach!)

However, it is still worth evaluating the sources of stress and tiredness in our schedule.  Perhaps it is worth guarding the evening before we preach – guarding it from late night socializing or hospitality?  Perhaps it is worth adding exercise to increase the stress-threshold and aid in healthy sleep?  Perhaps it is worth taking a holistic approach to scheduling our future preaching – not just making sure we avoid committing to too many sermons, but also thinking about what the sermons will be, and what our other commitments and challenges will be at the time?

Stress and tiredness do affect our preaching, thanks Tim for the prompt!

Last Minute Sermon Preparation

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I have a personal principle on this issue.  If I genuinely have had to prepare at the last minute, then I ask God for help and know that He understands.  But then there is a second part to it too – if I have procrastinated and end up preparing at the last minute, then I confess that, ask for forgiveness and still ask God for help.

The first part of the principle has been forged in the relatively gentle furnace of family life and missions organization participation!  Sometimes life happens and there is no way to prepare as you would like.  God understands this.  Last minute preparation is not ideal, but it is possible and it is still better to prepare as much as you can, rather than not prepare at all.

The second part of the principle is there because I am human.  I admire people with perfect track records in the area of self-discipline (but I also doubt them!)  Rather than make up excuses and try to convince myself that I genuinely could not prepare fully due to life circumstances, I would rather be honest and admit when I have allowed other things, often very good things, to distract me from what was needed as a ministry deadline loomed.  I may have lacked self-discipline, I may even have succumbed to some tempting distraction, but I don’t want to succumb to another temptation and seek to justify my procrastination.  Hence, I sometimes have to repent and ask for forgiveness and then prepare at the last minute.

May we all be Holy Spirit disciplined in our preparation for ministry and maximize every opportunity to preach the Word.  But may we also accept the reality of the grace we preach to others when we sometimes fail to prepare as we should.  Not an abuser of grace, nor a rejecter of grace!

Gifted to Preach

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

It’s an important question, but not a simple one.  I hope we would all agree that preaching has much more to do with gift than degree.  But which gift?  Obviously the gift of teaching is the typical one people point out, or perhaps a carefully defined (or re-defined) gift of prophecy.  But what about the gift of evangelist, or a leadership gift, or exhortational / encouragement gifts?  It seems that many of the gifts can help in pulpit ministry.  Nevertheless, not everyone is able to, nor should, preach.

Those that have that something – divine gifting, calling, unction, whatever – they should then be responsible stewards of what they have been given.  That is where the training comes in.  The degree or qualification may not matter, but the training does.  However we get it, we should look to fan into flame whatever gifting we have by a combination of both experience and training.  Certification may not be a big deal, but true education is, however we get it.

Incidentally, perhaps one of the benefits of formal preaching training is that it helps some people learn that they should not be preaching!  What church listeners may be too polite to point out, feedback sheets, wise instructors and video recordings can make clear.

So let us be sure that we never rely on gifting without being responsible stewards of all that God has given us for ministry (this means reading, getting training, being a learner, looking for mentors, etc.)  Equally, let us never rely on education or academic qualification (this means being fervent in prayer, humble in attitude, reliant on God, etc.)  We preach as stewards.  It is His ministry.

Preaching in Saul’s Armor?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Brian McLaren finishes his chapter on leadership in Adventures in Missing the Point with an analogy from David and Goliath.  He feels that too many ministers are trying to do ministry dressed up in Saul’s XXL armor, when in fact they are size M or even size S people.  We need to do our ministry, we need to preach our sermons, as ourselves, not as some supposed spiritual superhero.

I recently wrote about preaching to ordinary people.  It should go without saying that we preach as ordinary people.  But perhaps the legacy of pulpit personas and Sunday morning image presentation makes it necessary to make the point.  We preach as ordinary people.  Perhaps size M, perhaps size S, probably not an XXL.  Strangely enough, we know how the story ended with non-XXL David being himself in the task ahead of him, knowing that God was Himself in that same task.

(Incidentally, McLaren and Campolo either write the chapter or respond to the other’s writing.  While not agreeing with either on every detail, I can’t help but mention how much I have resonated with Campolo’s careful critiques of McLaren’s sometimes cavalier criticisms.)

Professional Preacher?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I am currently reading through Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo’s book, Adventures in Missing the Point.  In his typical style McLaren criticizes the “modern” approach to leadership in the church under 10 headings.  For one of these he uses the term “careerist.”  While I am far less inclined to criticize the church as freely as McLaren does, I agree that this element of Christian leadership is a problem.

He prefers the idea of being amateurs.  By this he means that our motivation for ministry is not quenched by the pressures of seeing ministry as a career.  Leadership and preaching need to be “less like the drudgery of a job and more like the joy of a day golfing or hiking or fishing or playing soccer or whatever … not something we have to do, but somethinig we get to do.”

On one level he is right.  My privilege of being in full-time ministry should not turn it into a drudging climb up a career ladder.  Perhaps you work in the secular world (also a privilege) and get to preach too (again, a privilege).  He is right, ministry is something that we get to do.  But perhaps where he misses the mark is the sweeping generalization that those of us in ministry see it as drudgery.  I for one consider it a privilege to be freed up through financial support to dedicate my time to ministry.  I know many others that see ministry as a get to privilege.

Furthermore, perhaps he misses the mark slightly by a limiting definition of the term amateur (McLaren is not a stranger to re-defining or carefully defining terms).  The term amateur does include the sense of loving (latin root amare) what we do.  It also can indicate low standards and poor quality.  Equally the term professional can suggest the dispassionate use of skill for money, but at the same time it can imply high standards and good quality.

I am an amateur preacher.  I am a professional preacher.  I don’t want to be amateur.  I don’t want to be professional.  It all depends what is meant by each term.  Let’s not be amateurish, nor professionalized, but passionately good stewards of the privilege of ministry.  Hopefully on that we can all agree!