This week I posted on the Cor Deo site with a post focused on the doctrine of sin, and how our view of sin is connected with the rest of our theology. Picking and choosing simply isn’t a coherent option. To go to the post, click here.
Preaching
Paul Tripp on Law and Grace
I am really enjoying Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp. Here’s a paragraph that jumped out at me last night as I read a few pages:
When I hear a sermon that is essentially law-driven, that is, asking the law to do what only the grace of Jesus Christ can accomplish, I am immediately concerned about the preacher. I immediately wonder about his view of himself, because if he had any self-consciousness about his own weakness and sin, he would find little hope and comfort for himself and his hearers in that kind of sermon. You see this dynamic in the Pharisees. Because they thought of themselves as righteous, perfect law givers, they had no problem laying unbearable law burdens on others. Their misuse of the law had its roots not only in bad theology but also in ugly human pride. They saw law keeping as possible, because they thought they were keeping it. And they thought that others should get up and keep it as well as they did. They were the religious leaders of their day, but they were arrogant, insensitive, uncompassionate, and judgmental. They were not part of what God was doing at the moment; no, they were in the way of it.
If you want more, get the book. This paragraph is on page 153.
The Fourth Ingredient
What goes into good preaching? Many point to a mix of three ingredients that are needed:
Biblically Faithful – The message needs to be the message of the text faithfully interpreted and communicated.
Organizationally & Vocally Clear – The listeners need to be able to hear and follow the train of thought.
Contemporarily Relevant – The listeners need to sense that the message is relevant to their life and circumstance.
If preaching could tick these three boxes on a consistent basis, then the church would be healthier by far. But all three can be present and the message can still be painfully dull. Biblical, but dull. Clear, but dull. Relevant, but dull.
So when I evaluate preaching, I always include a fourth necessary ingredient: Interpersonally Engaging. Good preaching needs to be biblical, clear, relevant and engaging.
What goes into engaging?
Engaging content – the content of a message needs to go further than just being biblical and relevant. It engages by being intriguing, or attractive, or gripping, or vivid. The narratives of the biblical text or sermonic illustration need to form images on the screens in listeners’ hearts. The poetry of the text needs to shape images and stirs emotion in the listeners’ hearts. The content needs to captivate listeners so that they can’t help but want to listen.
Engaging delivery – the delivery of a message needs to go further than just being clear. I’ve heard clear preaching that sent me quickly to sleep. Engaging delivery engages through energy – energy appropriate to the situation and personality of the preacher, but energy nonetheless. Energy is not just about hype and volume. It is about facial expression, gesture, movement, vocal variety, eye contact. The delivery, whether big and demonstrative or measured and deliberate, needs to engage the listener in some way.
Motivation to Engage – the key, though, is neither content nor delivery. The key seems to be at the level of the preacher’s motivation. If the preacher is prayerfully prepared to the point that they share God’s heart for the listeners and the situation, then they will want to connect. If they want to connect, then both the content and delivery will tend towards what it should be in order to engage the hearts of those listening. The real issue here is not technique, but motivation for relationship. If the preacher is connected to God and wants to connect with the listener, there is a good chance that they will. And if they do, then there is much greater chance of the preaching being life changing.
Weakening our Legacy by Dangerous Independency
Preachers will always be tempted to function and minister alone. After all, preaching and pastoring are lonely pursuits for several reasons. However, if we give in to that temptation, then we will seriously undermine our potential impact in a community.
Today is the last day of this year’s full-time programme at Cor Deo. It has been such a delight to go shoulder to shoulder with eight other men who are hungry to know God more and love Him together. We have studied the Bible and theology and practical ministry and personal spirituality. We have ministered together, traveled together, laughed together, done life together. And we are all genuinely sad that this rich season is coming to a close.
So will we settle for ministry from a distance? Will we be satisfied with lone ranger ministry? No chance. These men will be looking for others with a heart for God with whom they can pursue Him in the years to come. Here are a few brief thoughts on avoiding independency as a preacher:
1. Never forget Jesus view of the crowds and the few: he was willing to lose the crowds, but he valued leaving a deeper mark on fewer people. The example of Jesus challenges our “bigger is always better” mentality. After feeding thousands and caring for the crowds, Jesus would spend time explaining to and investing in a small group of men.
2. Mentoring must not be an option for someone involved in ministry. Actually, even Jesus’ ministry to the crowds would strategically involve those few men. Don’t view mentoring as a ministry option that may or may not fit you. Ask God to point out people to whom you can give yourself and your ministry.
3. Don’t fall for worldly-wise ideas about necessary distance and avoiding friendship in leadership – The only people who find friends threatening are those precariously perched on top of a power pyramid where someone getting close becomes a threat to their position. Jesus certainly didn’t model ministry from a distance, but he had the twelve, among whom he had the three, among whom he had the one. As Andy Stanley puts it, do for one what you wish you could do for all. You can’t give yourself away evenly, so don’t make the mistake of not giving yourself away at all.
4. Pray for a Bible read through partner – could well be the best thing you’ve done in ministry. The heartbeat of Cor Deo’s success in the lives of the participants this year has again been the Bible read through partnerships. Simple idea: find someone who will share your ambition to know God more by reading through the Bible boldly and relationally. Set an end goal (perhaps 3 or 4 months), go for it. Underline your highlights and meet up once a week to share a few minutes of highlights and pray for each other. Watch lives get transformed (including your own). Click here for a better explanation.
5. See through your own busy excuse. Of course we are all too busy for any of this, but we all find time for what we consider truly valuable.
Losing our Youth by Dangerous Superficiality
Last night I was chatting with my eldest about her maths homework. As I looked at her workbook I recognized that eventually she will be doing things I can no longer do. For a child there is a progression from basic numeracy, through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, long division, etc. I expect most parents can cope with these (except long division!) But once the child is working through algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus, there is typically the crossing of a threshold in respect to what the parent can readily understand.
So what should the parent do at that point? Hopefully you will start to see the relevance to this site here . . .
1. Become suspicious of the questions and insist that the child go back to basic numeracy.
2. Warn the child of the dangers of sophisticated mathematics and reassert that basic numeracy is all anyone ever needs.
Imagine the child decides they like the subject and wants to chase mathematics to degree level? Uh oh.
Hang on, this makes no sense. No parent that I know would function this way. They would at least cheer the child on, and possibly put some effort in to understanding the subject again or for the first time.
So what do we do in church? Let’s change the subject from mathematics to Christianity. There is a progression. Typically the progression is simple . . . (1) before age 11 tell lots of disconnected stories with a moral sting in the tail, (2) during teenage years speak about issues and hope the youth connect the issues to the disconnected stories, (3) watch them drift away in the sophisticated and heady world of university (if not before).
If a child is progressing to calculus in mathematics, won’t they also be asking very heavy questions in respect to life and faith and eternity? Too often parents, youth leaders and even preachers, are scared by the good questions. Too easily church people retreat into such nonsense as, “you shouldn’t ask questions like that, you will offend God!” or “be careful with your questioning, it could lead you astray!” And these unhelpful comments are sometimes topped off with thoughts like, “the Bible says it, that settles it, we don’t question it, blindly believe it!” Throwing the same few proof texts at good questions will not achieve anything good.
Let’s prayerfully question the children’s and youth ministry in our churches. Let’s prayerfully ponder the preaching in our churches. Are we losing our younger folk by never engaging them properly? Simplistic faith formulae may have worked for you, but they probably won’t for the next generation coming through. If all they see is simplistic “blind faith” and never meet Christians willing to think, to study, to learn, to question, to ponder, to wrestle and to take God seriously, why shouldn’t they be drawn away when they meet a thinking, studying, learning, questioning, pondering, wrestling sophisticated atheist?
Unity
I wonder if we may be selling our churches short. That is, by buying into the idea that Christian unity is built around assent to a statement of fundamental truths and then pouring energy into not falling out over non-essentials. Perhaps there is something more, someone better, that we are missing out on through this kind of thinking. Click here to go to my post on the Cor Deo site.
Listener Levels: 7 Ways to Add Steak to the Diet
What if your biblical explanation is typically at a level lower than many of your listeners? What are some suggestions for adding steak to the diet of listeners that are needing it?
1. Pray – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.
2. Get feedback – It would be better to know what people think than assume they are needing weightier content. For instance, just because there are seminary professors in your congregation doesn’t mean they want to be “stretched” by your preaching. Good, solid, biblical and faithful preaching that is clear and applicable may be the highlight of their week!
3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at biblical exposition. What is it about their preaching that makes it effective? (You may find they are simpler than you at first imagined . . . our tendency is to think more info, higher vocab and greater complexity is the key to steaky preaching – not so.)
4. Make connections carefully – It doesn’t take any skill to string biblical proof-texts together. There is no licensing for tour guides in the “concordance safari” industry. It does take great biblical awareness to be able to make the links that are appropriate to a message. For instance, learn to look back in the canon and see what is feeding in to the passage (Kaiser’s “Informing Theology”). Learn to value other writing by the same author slightly higher than other writings. This is not as simple as a set of rules, it is an art form.
5. Devour your Bible as if God is worth knowing – To be able to help people make sense of biblical texts, there is no substitute for personal biblical saturation. I’d rather be fed by someone who really knows their Bible than someone who has crammed higher level commentary content in the last days of preparation. (This is not to deny the value of good commentary conversations.)
6. Well-cooked steak is seldom complex – I remember hearing radio ads for a steakhouse in Portland. I was in seminary so could never afford to go there, but it did sound good. What did I expect of a $75 steak? Not lots of extra ingredients and spice overload combined with complex cooking processes. I expected better quality content prepared simply. Same with preaching. When we think about preaching more steaky messages, we tend to crank up the jargon and lose sight of our message purpose. Don’t. Take the time to have better content, but don’t complicate, in fact, simplify sermon structure, etc.
7. The best “theology” is not on the cutting edge of speculation, it is pushing into the big and core questions – Don’t think that steaky biblical explanation comes from speculative originality, whether that be in sensational eschatology, or obscure theological novelty (save that for your PhD). The best steaky biblical explanation comes from showing how the biblical text drives us back to the core questions: who is God and what is He like? What does it mean to be human and made in His image? What is sin and how deep is the problem? What is grace and how does God solve the problem of sin in salvation and Christian growth? God, man, sin, grace and growth. Simple stuff, but if you can let the Bible probe these issues, your steak will be truly life changing.
Listener Levels: 7 Suggestions to Improve Accessibility
How can we improve at offering explanation that will help people at the lower range of understanding? Perhaps your preaching goes over peoples’ heads, but you want to explain the Bible in a way that is accessible to younger Christians or less biblically literate folk? Some suggestions:
1. Pray about it – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.
2. Get feedback – Try to find out from people what is lacking. It could be that your vocabulary is obfuscatory, or your content is too dense, or your delivery is unengaging, or your words are indistinct and hard to catch, etc.
3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at explaining and describing the biblical content and action. What are they doing well?
4. Vary the elevation of your helicopter – If everything is explained from 100ft, then your messages will be deadening. You need to be able to lift up to 5000ft for a brief overview of the Bible, and you need to be able to land the chopper when you are settling for a while in a verse. Too much content where you need to be flying higher will lose listeners in overwhelming detail.
5. Surrender prideful vocabulary – To put it simply: your mission is not to impress, but to communicate. Relegate your original language vocabulary, your technical grammatical vocabulary, your systematic theological terminology and any other impressive jargon to your study. Know it, understand it, and sometimes, if necessary, explain it, but generally speaking it is best to leave it behind when you go to preach.
6. Achieve more by preaching less and driving it in more – Speaking of leaving things in the study, try leaving more of your message there. Often we confuse people by trying to achieve too much education in a single sermon. Andy Stanley says that many sermons would make great series. Try to cover less and you will have time for clearer explanation.
7. Improve your outlining – A lot of messages are complex because the preacher hasn’t thought themselves through to a point of clarity. I typically point to the main idea at this point, since a clear main idea will create clarity throughout the message. So true. But also give some time to evaluating the outline. Is it as simple and clear as can be? Is each part of the message doing something specific? If at a certain point in your message you don’t even know that you are trying to explain, nor will your listeners!
What else would you add?
Listener Levels
Preaching involves explanation. That is, when we preach, we need to offer some explanation of the passage’s meaning. But it needs to be more than that. We need to offer explanation of the passage’s meaning at a level appropriate to those who are listening.
Imagine a scale of zero to one hundred representing the level of complexity. A class of three-year olds might need an explanation in the zero to five range, and would not do well with a doctoral seminar in the 80’s and 90’s. This range difference may seem obvious. However, it seems that sometimes we forget the range within a normal church service.
In a normal church service, there will be a range that must be considered for effective preaching. If we don’t consider to whom we are preaching, then we will probably settle into a range. Some of us may be naturally 30-40 explainers, while others of us may be 60-70 explainers. Which is the right range? Whichever range is before us.
We need to assume that there may be unsaved listeners present. Then the range of explanation needed by the believers may be 10-40 or 30-70.
A little exercise for us. Why not take a couple of minutes and pray for wisdom in evaluating the following:
1. Which range will I naturally settle into if I don’t consider my listeners?
2. What is the approximate explanation range of my usual congregation?
3. Where do the first two answers differ? That is to say, do I need to put some prayer and work into offering more accessible explanation, or into offering some richer meat?
Why God Still Works Through Poor Preaching
Last time we noted how Paul preached Christ and Him crucified. Paul understood that people are fully subject to their heart-level desires. They will only ever “choose” what they want to choose, but cannot choose what it is they want. The heart is the issue and the gospel preached must offer a love so compelling that people will be drawn out of the deathly prison of their self-love.
However, a lot of preaching looks like this:
The preacher feels the need to twist the arm and will of the listener into conformity to some set of Christian values. After all, if only people and society were more responsible, then we’d be in a better place! The emphasis on duty and morality and law all add up to a big dose of pressure. If you’ve really tasted of the gospel, this has a very empty feel to it. Yet many of us are so used to this kind of preaching that we assume this is proper Christian preaching. Bible texts become launch points for moralistic tirades.
Somewhere in the mix, however, the preacher inserts a “Jesus bit” . . . typically with some reference to the cross. In terms of the biblical portrayal of the triune God and His mission in sending His Son, it is sometimes paper thin and desperately under-developed.
So let’s say that a life is marked by this kind of preaching…what happened? Actually, many lives will be marked by this kind of preaching. They will be marked by confusion over the gospel, external conformity to legalistic pressure, and there will be significant inoculation against the transformative power of grace. Yet there will be genuine fruit. Why? Because of the pressure and arm-twisting and guilt trips? No. Because “Christ and Him crucified” was preached. God works despite us and our preaching (and we need to be thankful for that!)
But surely this should make us want to undilute our preaching? Why mix the good stuff in with a poisonous and distracting set of added ingredients? Why play into the hands of the fallen condition by promoting self-reliance and self-righteousness? Wouldn’t it be better to preach Christ and Him crucified, spelling out the implications by way of invitation to those changed by the transformative grip of God’s grace?
Biblical Preaching 