Bible Clarity and Preaching Clarity

April 24, 2012April 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture does not mean that the Bible is instantly clear, or equally clear to all, or fully clear to anyone. What it does mean is that the Bible can be understood.

I’ve often made the passing remark in teaching settings that the authors of the Bible were neither drunk nor wasteful. That is, they were coherent in their thoughts, and efficient in their writing. They didn’t waste words or papyrus, they wrote in order to be understood by their intended audience.

But their is a greater Author involved too. He is the master communicator and He made sure the Bible communicates exactly what He wants communicated, down to the very last word. Praise God that He is a communicating God to the core of His triunity! He is not a glory-hungry despot who communicates with impenetrable complexity in order to make us feel small!

This truth does not negate the necessary work involved in making sense of the Bible. We do have to cross a significant historical, geographical, political, religious, cultural and linguistic divide. It does take effort, and prayer, and time, to make sense of the Bible. But no matter how tough some parts may be, it can be understood!

So what are some implications of the doctrine of biblical clarity for preachers?

1. Preachers have to work at understanding the Bible, there is no excuse for making up our own message (ab)using a passage. When we preach our own message from a passage, we subtly give the impression that the text is not there to be understood, but abused. Don’t be surprised when listeners copy our textual abuse patterns and come up with ideas we don’t like.

2. Preachers don’t have to make every detail instantly understandable to listeners, but we should be breeding confidence that study leads to understanding. The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture does not imply that God is patronizing. We don’t need to be, either. Some parts are very tough, acknowledge this, don’t fudge. There is much more that can be understood than is seemingly impregnable – help people see this.

3. Preachers are representing a God who made His book understandable, we should model a passion for clarity in our communication. We don’t represent Him well when we make our message dense, impregnable or overly complex.

Tomorrow I will add one more aspect that is perhaps the most crucial of all.

Authority and Clarity

April 24, 2012April 23, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Two sibling doctrines. One gets all the attention. The other goes unmentioned. Actually, one is the darling of preachers. The other might well think we are out to get it.

Authority and clarity.

These two doctrines matter. Authority speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how His Word got to us. It speaks of why we must hear it and apply it.

Clarity speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how well His Word got to us. It speaks of how we can grasp it and apply it.

Some speakers overtly present the process by which the Bible got into our hands: how God was involved in revelation, inspiration, transmission, canonization and even in translation. Other speakers don’t get into specifics, but they keep on affirming that this is the Word of God.

Few speakers overtly present the clarity of Scripture: how God has communicated so well that His great book is able to be understood through diligent observation and interpretation, with prayerful reliance on His Spirit for illumination. Many speakers don’t get into clarity at all, if anything, they keep on giving the impression that God’s Word is out of reach to the average person.

That is the issue. While authority gets regular affirmation in the church, clarity is not only oft-ignored, but also oft-undermined. How so?

How easy it is to give the impression that people need the preacher in order to make sense of the Scriptures. How easy to undermine the listeners’ confidence that they have the necessary competence for reading and understanding the Bible.

I’m sorry to suggest this, but we need to ponder this issue: too many of us undermine the confidence of our listeners to take up and read. Tolle lege, if you will. Uh, I just demonstrated one way to do it…there’s nothing like an ancient language quotation to make normal people feel inadequate. But I didn’t mean that. Exactly. That’s how it happens.

Here’s the bottom line for today. The clarity of Scripture and our preaching. It is not about whether our sermons are clear or not (let’s hope they are). The issue is whether our listeners perceive themselves to be competent to pick up their Bibles and read.

That is a big part of our task. That is why I think Clarity deserves a break.

He Has Done This Before

April 23, 2012April 22, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Today’s post is not about the Perspecuity of Scripture. Ok, actually it is, but let’s call it the Clarity of Scripture…a doctrine many preachers need to ponder more… Here is the link to the post.

Delighted by God: Glorious Gospel – London, next Saturday

April 21, 2012April 21, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Next Saturday I will be one of the speakers at the Delighted By God conference in London. More importantly, Ron Frost and Glen Scrivener will also be speaking. If you are within reach of London, it would be great to see you. There is no charge for attending the event, although donations will be accepted to help with costs.

We will be considering the glorious nature of the gospel we proclaim – a great subject for preachers and non-preachers alike! Please help spread the word – the facebook event can be found by click here.

Saturday Short Thought: Reinforcing Every Time

April 21, 2012April 21, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been pondering how to preach with a more developed set of motivational tools than just the pressure of guilt. I’m convinced this is an important issue, and not just a homiletical detail. It gets to the heart of our faith.

Is Christianity really and primarily about our responsibility to function in our own strength? Is Christianity about how, thanks to Christ, I can now become a good person? Is Christianity about creating good independent citizens, or is there the hiss of Genesis 3 in this version of the faith?

What if Christianity is much more about our response to Christ and His work in our lives? What if Christianity is about transformation from the inside out, born of a family relationship that changes our hearts and consequently, our behaviour? What if Christianity is not at all about independence, but dependence and inter-dependence?

The tension of duty versus delight is present in every sermon. Do I pressure people to perform, or do I offer the vision of Him who transforms?

Responsibility preaching throttles the life out of the gospel. Response preaching offers true life. Our preaching subtly reinforces one view of the gospel or the other, every time.

Don’t Burn Up Your Creativity Too Soon

April 20, 2012April 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching is both art and science. It involves a certain amount of creative artistry. But most of us have a limited tank of energy when it comes to creative flair. Don’t waste it.

Don’t waste your creative energies when you are studying the passage. This is the time for your adventurous explorer energy to come out as you travel in foreign, ancient and sometimes dangerous lands. This is where you need the determination of an archeologist, digging into the historical documentation of the text. This is where you live out your suppressed inner-detective, following clues, asking probing questions, persisting until you get to the truth.

Passage study is not the time for creativity, it is the time for persistence, for diligence, for probing, inquiring, questioning, for travel through time, for cultural encounters of the ancient kind, for passionate prayer that God will do a work in you as you work in His Word.

Creativity in the passage study phase of your preparation may lead you astray. Even though some in your congregation may marvel at your creative new interpretations of Bible texts, what they actually need is the true interpretation of the text. If you are the first to come up with something in a passage, maybe its time for alarm bells to ring, rather than a time for celebration.

Save your creative energies for the message formation phase of the process. This is where many a preacher has collapsed, fatigued from their creative expending of energy in the interpretation phase, desperate to pull a message together from the study notes in time for Sunday morning. What tends to follow is a re-hash of the same old sermon form, shape, structure and strategy. It feels tired, and what’s worse, the content isn’t great either because of energies expended on “new” interpretation!

As you collapse into your favourite armchair after the adventure of studying, digging, travelling, interrogating and praying your way through the text, you will be both tired and thrilled at the journey you’ve been on. Tired because it is hard work to exegete well, but thrilled because of the God who has travelled with you, revealed Himself to you, and worked already in you.

And a change is as good as a rest, so as you sit back in your armchair before the fire let your prayers and thoughts meander through the possibilities available as you plot your message strategy. Pray for the people, consider the possibilities, get creative. You’ve got a message worth preaching from the text, now’s the time to pour out your energy into making it a sermon worth hearing. Be a shame to waste that energy too soon!

Beyond Guilt – Part 4

April 19, 2012April 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Some preachers rely exclusively on the pressure tactic of guilt in their preaching. Surely there must be a more biblically rounded approach? This week I’ve suggested we need to consider our stance, our tone and yesterday, our strategy. Let me offer the fourth factor today:

4. The Preacher’s Vision. Essentially, when we boil it down, what are we offering when we preach? Ok, the message of the text. So there will be an individuality to each message since every text is unique. But what does the Bible offer – even allowing for each text to be its own unique entity in the tapestry of the whole?

If you think the Bible offers instructions for living, your preaching will reflect that. If you think the Bible offers engaging ancient stories with helpful morals, then your preaching will reflect that. But if you think the Bible offers a vision of the heart and character and grace and personality of God, then your preaching will reflect that.

To put this another way, what is the good news offered in the Word? Is it the good news of a way in which a sinful humanity can now be empowered to live a more righteous life – that is, a gospel that somehow misses God out? Or is it the good news of who God is, offering a sinful humanity the privilege of relationship with Him who to know is life, and who to know will transform a life?

I wish this were so obvious that I didn’t see the need to write the post, but I have heard sermons where God is essentially, or even actually, omitted and absent. These are the kind of messages I might see as party political speeches, or “if only people would be good society would be better” messages, etc. There are many types of speeches in the world today, but the ones where God is at most a bit-part player are not the kind of speeches we need in the church.

If the vision captivating the preacher’s heart is the Law, then the message will likely be a guilt focused message. If the vision captivating the preacher’s heart is the grace and love of a loving God, then the message is likely to be more compelling, more transformative. After all, the gospel involves the transformation of lives from the inside out, not by the pressure of responsibility, but by the attractive invitation to respond to the goodness of our so very good God.

The vision captivating you will show in your preaching, and if it is the vision of the God who reveals Himself throughout His Word, then I suspect you will offer that same vision in your preaching – a vision that alone can truly transform lives.

Beyond Guilt – Part 3

April 18, 2012April 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So far we have looked at issues of stance and tone in this series. It is easy to have a minimalist default approach of piling on the pressure and using guilt to twist arms. The biblical preacher needs to get beyond that.

3. The Preacher’s Strategy. Let’s face the real issue head on. What is our strategy in preaching? If the goal is life transformation, then what strategy makes sense? It certainly can’t be a simplistic answer since the human is a complex creature. But here are some pointers on strategy issues.

Transformation involves movement from a negative to a positive. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply critique the negative. We need to help people see what life would look like if the biblical truth were to take hold. Simply making people feel bad is not a solution.

Often people simply cannot conceive of what a faith-filled Christ-like in-step-with-the-Spirit life would look like in terms of a specific issue. In one sense then we have some role as life coaches. But it is more than that.

Transformation involves motivation for applying the message of God’s Word. Preaching for that transformation cannot simply inform, or even pressure, it needs to motivate. We need to understand how people work at the deepest level. If we think that information plus pressure will generate good things then we have been significantly led away from the teaching of the Bible by the thinking of this world.

What is the root issue Paul points to in Ephesians 4:17ff? People act and behave a certain way because of their thinking – so we need to educate! Hang on, yes we do, but he goes further, there’s a deeper issue…the root issue is the hardness of heart. Somehow the heart influences even how the mind will process information. Christian transformation is not really about well-informed minds and well-disciplined wills. It is an issue of the heart, inside to out, a matter of response as opposed to responsibility.

Transformation involves response to more than a vision of better living. It is not about realizing innate potential, but about responding from the core to a compelling love that alone can truly transform a life.

So our strategy includes presentation of application rather than just declaration of guilt. Our strategy includes communicating with people as if they are heart-driven beings and not just informed decision makers. But the ultimate issue has to be the One to whom people should respond, which I’ll leave until tomorrow’s post.

Beyond Guilt – Part 2

April 17, 2012April 17, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I am pondering how to preach with a more nuanced approach than mere guilt pressure. As I’ve written already, there is a place for genuine conviction of sin, and I am not hiding from that. But equally, I am not just hiding in that, nor avoiding the danger hiding in a non-nuanced guilt approach.

How can we hide in a guilt approach? I suspect some see no other way to help lives change than to pile on the pressure. Every passage is turned into a guilt trip. Doesn’t matter what tone the passage takes, the message will have been filtered into a guilt and pressure tone.

And what danger is hiding in such an approach? There is an implicit danger with guilt focused messages. I say you should feel guilty. If I convince you, then you feel that you must change. Guilt alone will not drive people to God. It will drive them to despair or to efforts of the flesh. Neither result is good. Guilt has to come in a package with hope, with grace, with access to life transformation that has to come from God, not from self.

So, yesterday we looked at the issue of stance. Here’s another element, perhaps an obvious one, but still important nonetheless.

2. The Preacher’s Tone. Too many people think too simplistically. As if communication is about information transfer. But the truth is that communication involves a complex of signals, some of which can override others. So my body language can contradict, and overwhelm my words. So too can my vocal presentation. Voice and body language combine in regards to the tone of my communication.

If my tone is close to that of an angry prophet, that will override the most gracious of poetic content. If my tone is akin to that of a Victorian school master, then my words, my message, will take on a whole new meaning.

Children know this. If a parent says their name with a certain tone, they know they’re supposed to feel guilty. It’s voice, expression, posture, etc. But it boils down to tone.

Do you have a default tone that is guilt inducing? Can you make the most encouraging passage into a pressure text? Can you turn Psalm 23 into a rebuke for not being a good sheep? Can you take Jesus’ yoke and burden, which are easy and light, and make them tricky to put on properly if your listeners aren’t living just right?

Let’s be sure that when we preach, it is not just our words that reflect the meaning of the text, but that our tone also reflects the tone of the text, and the tone of the God who is speaking to these people on this occasion.

Stance and tone can be adjusted to avoid a guilt-only approach. They can be factors in a better motivational methodology. But tomorrow we’ll zero in on a key factor in preaching to encourage and motivate.

Beyond Guilt

April 16, 2012April 16, 2012 / Peter Mead / 10 Comments

A friend asked me how we can preach to encourage listeners apart from making them feel guilty. He and I would both recognize the need for genuine conviction of sin, a work of the Spirit and a feature of some texts (and therefore some messages). But I understand the need for the question – too much preaching relies too much on guilt as the primary, or even the only, change mechanism.

Guilt is a poor motivator. The Spirit of God certainly does bring conviction to people, to me. An absence of conviction of sin in a life is an indication of a real problem. But there is much more to the Spirit’s work than just conviction of sin. There is much more to life transformation than guilt.

As I read the Bible I find myself convicted, yes, but also stirred, inspired, encouraged, enlightened, intrigued, reassured, enlivened, thrilled, calmed, galvanized, spurred, moved, attracted, delighted, renewed, transformed, changed.

God uses the Bible to change lives, and He changes lives by more than just guilt. So how, as a preacher of God’s Word, can I beneficially engage the lives of listeners with more than just a guilt session?

This week I’d like to offer several elements of an answer to this question.

1. The Preacher’s Stance. Where do we stand? Guilt-only approaches tend to take a domineering and confrontational stance. This comes through sometimes before a word is even spoken. It shows in demeanour, in expression, in attitude. It may be justified in terms of the authority of God’s Word, etc., but it is worth rethinking.

I would suggest a stance that is empathetic rather than confrontational, although there is a place for the latter. I am not suggesting the preacher stands amongst the listeners as a sympathetic fellow-struggler with nothing more than shared struggle. We do stand with God’s Word and so do have something very profound to offer. But we also stand as recipients of that Word.

Sometimes our talk of authority can lead us to authoritarian approaches. Yes, God’s Word has authority and as I preach God’s Word there is a “thus saith the Lord” aspect. But it is right here that some betray their narrow view of God and come right back to a guilt-only approach. That is, they see God as being purely authoritarian and a guilt-approach-only Deity.

Thus saith the Lord. We represent Him. How did God reveal His own character, personality, values, etc.? On Sinai, through the prophets, in Christ? God didn’t just come as a pounding fist.

We should consider the stance we take as one standing and speaking God’s Word, while at the same time being one standing as a recipient of God’s Word. If our stance is simply a “lording it over” stance then we betray a worldly passion for power that reflects a twisted view of God Himself.

Tomorrow I’ll add another element to consider in pursuing how to preach with more than just guilt.