Religion

Where is the Call to Repentance?

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So many deeply challenging messages fall short of their intent.  After preaching through a powerful passage, the final few minutes often undermine everything.  All sorts of conviction has been achieved, then at the end all open wounds are smoothed over, rather than following through to excise the growth of ungodly matter in the life of the listener.  The sermonic surgery ends in comfort and the problems persist.  Why?

One reason is that too often preachers are too careful to offer balance and comfort too soon.  In effect, the message finishes flat with something along the lines of, “But what if you haven’t lived up to this?  What if you’ve failed in this area?  Well there is grace, God forgives, etc.”  And people go away having felt convicted, but reassured that all is well.  Whether or not all is well, all is back to normal and lives move on relatively unchanged by the encounter with God’s Word in that message.

When the light of God’s Word shines in all its radicality, in all its power, in all its uncompromising directness, let’s be careful not to undermine the whole thing by merely reassuring people.  This is not a call for extreme holiness preaching without love – a sort of military-style duty-driven drill of responsibility.  It is a call for the scandalous love of God in the gospel to reek havoc in comfortable self-absorbed lives. It’s the pulpit equivalent of a Keith Green concert – calling for deep repentance and response, rather than comforting listeners with the “everything is happy” jingles of some “Christian” music.  God’s overwhelming love calls us to full followership, to radical reality and response, and sometimes to tears, silence, repentance and brokenness.

If we preach the Word, but always sooth the listener, then perhaps we fail to preach the Word.  Perhaps we are tickling ears.  Perhaps we are preaching in fear.  Or perhaps we are preaching out of our own limited spirituality.  Perhaps it’s time for some of us, maybe all of us, to be broken ourselves, to be repenting of comfort-preaching, to get real in response to an oh-so-radical Gospel?  Let’s ask ourselves two questions, one concerning our preaching, and first of all, one concerning our own lives.

Our Posture Before the Bible

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Recently, Tom Lyon wrote an article for The Banner of Truth magazine entitled “Our Posture Before the Word of God.”  As preachers who spend time studying God’s Word, it would be wise to remind ourselves of these principles.  Equally, as preachers who preach to people who also may be spending time in the Bible and may also be tempted to twist its teaching for a personal agenda, it would be wise to convey these attitudes in how we handle Scripture before them.

1.    If I find something with which I cannot agree, I am wrong.

2.    If I find something which I cannot understand, I am wrong to judge it on that account. A quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “You have a very small brain and you have a very poor spirit within you; do not be surprised that you cannot understand.”

3.    If I find something which would contradict the clear teaching of Scripture elsewhere, I cannot be right.

4.    If I find something which would slander the revealed character of God, I am certainly wrong.

5.    If I find something which brings up an apparent contradiction, I am wrong not to face it squarely.

6.    If I find something which leads to a summary principle, I am wrong if I do not follow it to its conclusion.

7.    If I find something which disturbs my settled convictions, I am wrong to dismiss it on that account.

8.    If I find something which calls for decisive action and I remain inert, I am fatally wrong.

9.    If I find something which I dare not follow in its practical drift, I am destructively wrong.

10.    If I find something which others blush to admit or struggle to avoid, I am unwise to follow them at that point. A quote from Calvin: “The delicacy of those who affect an appearance of greater prudence than the Holy Spirit in removing or resolving difficulties, is quite intolerable.”

11.    If I find something upon which popular religion frowns, I may presume I am on the right track. C.H. Spurgeon quote: “Be assured there is nothing new in theology except that which is false.”

12.    If I find something which would tend to humble man and glorify God, I am most probably right.

I quote the list as it is, perhaps wanting to add an extra qualifier here and there (such as #11 – not everything old is right, of course).  But I’ll leave the list as it is.

The Opposite of Church Growth – Really?

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I recently had a discussion about reaching Muslims with the gospel.  The point came out that to many Muslims, we Christians don’t look any different than the world around us.  We watch the same movies, live the same lives, have the same number of divorces, etc.  After all, overt Christians on MTV (they have a big cross hanging round their necks) sing some of the most atrocious lyrics.  So while their religion changes lives, obviously Christianity is pure fluff.

At one level we see massive misunderstanding.  Just because someone wears a cross on a chain doesn’t mean they are actually followers of Christ.  After all, you wouldn’t watch Friends, see the Christmas tree and therefore assume they are typical Christians, would you?  Many do.  But at another level, it is true that churches tend not to be filled with people living a sold out radical faith.  We don’t see many living totally abandoned lives, in a sort of Christlike Jihad where the weapons are not violent, but stunningly loving, where the armor is God’s armor and the clash with spiritual forces is continual and real, demanding the deepest of devotion to our master and commander.

Perhaps if the church was more uncompromising in its spirituality it would stand a greater chance of communicating the gospel’s power to Muslims?

But then the fear kicks in.  As preachers, if we preached for this kind of radical spirituality, surely we’d offend people and lose people and empty the pews.  It would be the opposite of church growth.  We’d be single-handedly responsible for emptying the church!  Would it?  Would we?  Perhaps the gospel doesn’t need us to excuse it’s strength.  Perhaps the Bible doesn’t need us to undermine it’s powerful call on lives.

Perhaps . . . perhaps if we lived and preached a radical sold-out all-for-Jesus come-live-die uncompromisingly clear biblical message, perhaps we would see the church thinned out.  Perhaps we would see some leave, their desire for sanctified entertainment unmet and their worldliness made to feel uncomfortable.  And perhaps we’d stand a chance of reaching Muslims with the gospel.  More than that, perhaps there would be something attractive about such a message that the hunger for reality in our culture of mind-numbing entertainment would kick in and our apparent attempts to purge the church might result in genuine church growth?  Perhaps.

If the offense is the messenger, we will merely do damage.  But if the offense is the gospel, watch out!

Something to ponder.

Things I Wish I Had Known

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I’m scanning through Preach the Word, edited by Greg Haslam.  There is an interesting chapter entitled “Thirteen Things I wished I had known about preaching” by Jeff Lucas.  Let me share a few of the thirteen:

1.    The pulpit is a highly dangerous zone.  By “highly dangerous” Lucas is referring to the complications of microphones that may be off when you think they are on, and on when you think they are off.  He is referring to knowing when you preach in the program of the meeting (ie. What comes before the message – will your opening story work after that moving solo?)  Basically, if something goes wrong, everyone notices.  Not exactly what I’d call “dangerous,” but true nonetheless.

2.    At least 25% of the preparation time should be spent on the first three minutes and the last three minutes of the sermon.  (Note that 97.1% of statistics are made up on the spot.)

4.    The voice is designed for variety.  Shouting is not the same as anointing.  Pace, pitch, punch, pause, etc.  Simple, but important to remember.

13. Where the setting is appropriate, always leave time for questions.  Something to consider, even in a formal traditional church setting – can we create a venue for questions?

If you want to know the rest, you’ll have to buy the book.  What do you wish you had known when you started preaching?  I think I would say this, “I wish I’d known that the goal in preparation is not to get a good message as soon as possible, but to really make the most of the spiritual study journey of preparation.”  You?

Preach to Them, But Be You

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

When we preach, we seek to bring the message of the text to the listeners.  This involves being at home in the world of the Bible and in the world of our listeners.  The latter part of this process does involve knowing the people to whom you preach.  Know their culture, know their life experience, know their struggles, know their vocabulary, know them.  However, don’t fall into the mistake of preaching as them if that is not you.  Where might this occur?

Preaching to youth. If you are preaching to the younger generation, great, preach to them.  Be aware of their subculture, their life issues, their needs.  They will appreciate it if you know what they are talking about, what films they are watching, what issues they are facing.  However, don’t try to be 18 if you are 48.  Be yourself, dude.  Oops.

Preaching across cultures. If you are preaching in another culture, great, preach the Word!  Know as much as you can about that culture, their language, their life experiences.  They will appreciate you not coming in as a foreigner who thinks you know better.  But, don’t overdo the incarnational approaches in your preaching.  Over time you may become more “that culture” than your own.  But don’t pretend.  Don’t preach in their accent when you normally speak in yours (in fact, they will probably listen better if you speak in your own!)  This is not just true in foreign lands, it is true in different church cultures too.  Don’t try to “speak common” if you are from a “linguistically refined” background, and vice versa – make sure you are communicating, but be you.

Preaching across personality types. Huh?  Well, if your personality is gentle and tender, and you are preaching to a church that has a loud and boisterous personality, be you.  Just because someone else can bounce all over the platform and burn 100 calories per minute in their preaching, it doesn’t mean you have to.  And vice versa.  A preacher who is very different from the gathered group of listeners can communicate incredibly effectively – but it takes wisdom to know in what ways to adapt to them, and in what ways to simply be different.

Whenever we preach we need to be as aware of our listeners as possible.  Whenever we preach we need to connect with our listeners.  Yet that does not mean simply pretending to be the same as the listeners when we are not.  Connect.  But be you.

Don’t Disregard Distractions

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Don’t ignore the power of distractions.  I’m not referring to the things that distract you, but the things you do that distract your listeners.  Don’t just shrug and say, “that’s just me.”  It’s not.  If you know about a distraction and don’t do something about it, then really you are saying, “that’s just me being too lazy or proud to address the issue.”  If you don’t know about your distracting mannerisms and habits, perhaps it’s time to ask someone who will be honest with you?  What might they point out?

Distracting Gestures – These tend to be the first thing people will mention because their power to distract is so great.  Basically any gesture you use too frequently will distract.  Especially any gesture you use rhythmically.

Distracting Gaze – It is distracting to listen to a speaker who won’t look at you, but instead seems to be looking over your head, or at some apparition only he can see on the wall over by the clock.  Eye contact matters to people, whether they know it or not.

Distracting Words or Non-Words – Hmmm, you know, like, I mean, just really, uhhhh, and what not.  Non-words, filler words, mispronounced words and repeatedly tacked on words are all distractions.  Find out what you use and graciously assassinate it.

Distracting Attire – Do most people really appreciate that loud shirt you were given on the ministry trip to wherever-land, or only the one or two ebullient people who react with joy to anything that breaks the monotony of normal life?  Equally, do the right clothes fit wrong, or the patterns create hallucinations for people watching your image projected on the screen (most of us don’t have this problem).

Your goal in communicating is to communicate.  It makes no sense to tolerate distractions.  Funnily enough, distracted listeners are, well, distracted.  Find out if you are causing distraction in any way, the don’t disregard what you discover.

What Should You Be Delegating?

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In calling for pastors and preachers to take up their apologetic mantle as theologians for the church, Loscalzo makes a passing comment that I agree with wholeheartedly.  Let me quote first, comment second.

Whether by intentional design or by default we pastors have relegated our task of being a theologian to some unknown entity while we spend our energy on matters that someone else in the church could better handle.  In other words, too many pastors spend their time organizing vacation Bible school while neglecting Karl Barth [ed. insert your theologians of choice here].  Too many ministers aspire to be better managers of church programs.  Many pastors have their hands in every administrative pot in the church.  Every committee action must have their stamp of approval.  These pastors micromanage everything from the church’s budget to Wednesday night suppers to the selection of wallpaper for the nursery.  No wonder churches languish from theological malnutrition.  The one charged with feeding them persists in obsessing over matters that they could delegate to abler hands.

What is true in terms of theological reading, reflection and output is equally and overlappingly true of Bible study, reflection and output.  I remember one pastor I was influenced by encouraging me to always break what I do into four categories, and then delegate one of them.  Probably sound advice.  What do you do?  Whether or not you’re a pastor, or in full-time ministry, or in secular employment . . .  considering the work you do in the church, what do you do?  Four categories?  Which one can go?  What can and should you delegate?  Squeezing bible, theology, apologetics, etc., is too great a price to pay to keep your finger in all those pies.

Preaching Apologetically

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Is it possible to preach mystery in an age of information, hope in an era of skepticism, confidence in a time of doubt, truth in a climate of relativism?  The ultimate question becomes, can we preach Christ in a postmodern world?  My answer, of course, is yes.  My suggestion is that it’s time to apologize for God.

This is Craig Loscalzo in his Apologetic Preaching, page 22.  Strong stuff.  In case you are worried by that last line, let me quote a bit more:

Far too many pulpits have been, for too long, apologizing – that is, making excuses – for God.  Timid sermons that dismiss the sticky issues of Christian faith, sermons that water down the demands of the gospel, pabulum preaching pleasing to people’s ears but unable to offer transformed lives will be transparent to the skeptical lenses of postmodernity. . . . Apologizing for God means apologizing for God, not making apologies for God.  In other words, it means making a case for the gospel in all its scandalous reality.  Apologizing for God means rightfully reclaiming the apologetic role of the pulpit for the cause of Christian faith.

I agree with this.  But I am also wary as I write this.  I’m wary because too often it seems that a move toward apologetics is somehow a move toward theology, philosophy, academia, but somehow also a move away from the Bible.  By no means!  The Bible is inherently apologetic.  Our apologetics are our attempts to speak for God into this world, but the Bible is God’s Word spoken into this world.  Let us not feel stirred to our apologetic role and thereby drift even slightly from expository preaching.  Preach the Word, God’s Word, preach it with an emphasis on its relevance to your listeners – so that the scandalous reality of the gospel can shine into darkness of the contemporary milieu!

Looking Back on Modernity

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Craig Loscalzo, in his chapter on postmodernity and preaching (in Apologetic Preaching), looks back on preaching under modernity and describes it in this way:

The modern pulpit was steeped in a reasoned homiletic, marked by point-making sermons, alliterated outlines and a third-person descriptive logic.  Sermons of the modern era often talked about God, about the Bible, about life, viewing these matters like specimens under a microscope.  This pulpit philosophy, saturated with rationalism, focused on factual knowledge as the sole medium for communicating religious truth. . . . For modern pulpits, faith often became unwittingly a synonym for rationalism.  In Tom Long’s estimation we thought we were the children of Abraham but discovered we were merely the children of Descartes.

Quite a description!  Some of us are blissfully unaware of postmodernity (neither every preacher, nor every local community is yet thoroughly beyond modernism).  However, whether your community is showing signs of the shift or still stuck in the 1950’s, it’s important to hear Loscalzo’s description.  What is abundantly clear here, wherever we may stand on the issues of postmodernity and its impact on our listeners, this description of preaching under modernity is anything but an ideal to which we should long to return.

You could probably list concerns about postmodernity, most Christian readers can.  Hopefully you could also list opportunities that it presents to us as the church.  But lest any of us simply dig in to fight against postmodernity, let’s not hold a rose-tinted view of what has gone before.  As well as recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of what is coming, let’s also recognize strengths and weaknesses of what we may be leaving behind.  It was not a golden age to which we must seek a return.  The Bible, of course, is not anti-rational, incoherent or unthinking.  Yet it is not merely rational.  It goes much deeper.  So must our preaching.  While some may seem to check their rationality at the door, let’s not fight for rationality at the expense of every other aspect of the human soul’s functioning.

Fearful Preaching?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I just started Apologetic Preaching (Proclaiming Christ to a Postmodern World) by Craig Loscalzo (do you pronounce that the way it looks – anyone know?)  In the first chapter Loscalzo enters the arena of defining and engaging with the broad issues of postmodernity.  In the process he writes of the fear of many contemporary preachers.

This fear comes from seeing other churches successfully growing, while seeing apathy, lethargy, and empty pews up close.  It is a fear of pushing too hard or demanding too much.  It is a fear of being labeled as narrow-minded by colleagues, by the media, by academics they have studied under, or by intellectuals in their church.  Their ecclesiastical vocabulary, in its progressive state, is now purged of terms like sin, judgment, immoral, evil, righteousness, faith and commitment.  They fear offending sensibilities or being stereotyped on either the religious right or left.  He writes, “we have become so hypercautious that our sermons at best offend no one and at worst merely bore.” (p12)  What’s more, a fear of being irrelevant leads to nothing more than mundane chatter.

Obviously he’s writing about other preachers and not us, obviously.  Of course.  Clearly.  Without any doubt.  But rather than get defensive, why not ask God to show us if any fear has crept into our preaching ministry?