Religion

Orient Before Any Journey

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

It’s important to know where you are going before you try to go there.  This is true in travel and it is true in preaching.  Some people mistakenly think that since “deductive” or “punch-line first” approaches to preaching can lack interest, tension and motivation to listen, the alternative is to travel vaguely toward an unknown goal.  Wrong.  It is important to orient the listener to where the message is going, whether or not the punch-line or main idea is given up front.

This is true for the message as a whole. If you decide that an inductive strategy would work best for the message, then plan the orientation phase well.  People don’t like to be led through a forest blind-folded, but this is how some poor inductive sermons feel from the listener’s perspective.  Look for ways to introduce the relevance of the message in the introduction.  Typically an inductive message should have the subject element of the main idea introduced early on, leaving the complement to complete the idea for later in the message.

This is true for smaller phases of the message. For example, don’t launch into background information without giving some orientation to why it is relevant to the message.  As the speaker, you know how relevant the information is to what will follow.  The listeners don’t.  Explain why the background is helpful, then give the background.  Don’t make people wait for the point of what they are already hearing.

There may be some exceptions to this.  However, as a general rule, make sure you orient your listeners so they are motivated to listen to the background information you give, or to the message as a whole.  Highlight relevance early to motivate concentration.  This is not all it takes to keep people with you, but without this, they will drift.

Acts 6 4 2 Priorities

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Everyone involved in ministry understands the challenge of keeping priorities straight.  Life seems to be busier than ever for all of us.  If you have a job description for your ministry, I suspect it lists numerous tasks and fails to list many more.  If your ministry is not formalized on paper, you could probably create your own list of many roles that you are called on to fulfill.  There is crisis counseling, career advisor, family therapist, event manager, numerous pieces of administrative work, social network facilitator, hopefully missions mobilizer, periodically pre-marital counselor, sometimes music selector, youth leader, catering supervisor, perhaps fund raiser, maybe author, and on it goes.

We all need to be drawn back by Acts 6:4.  I know we are not apostles.  I know the historical situation has shifted.  I know the realities of ministry in “small church,” or for that matter, “big church.”  I know the added pressures of instant telecommunications, modern church organizational structures and so on.  But we need to remember Acts 6:4.

We must devote ourselves to prayer.  We must devote ourselves to the ministry of the Word.  Time for some honest and prayerful schedule evaluation?

The Challenge of Introducing a Series

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When you start a new series of messages from a book, the first message is a challenge.  Not just because you want people to be motivated for the series, but because the first message has to stand in its own right.  Simply presenting the background information like the notes in a study Bible is not expository preaching.  But if you give the background and then preach the first section, you may end up with two messages or too little time to really preach that first section.  What to do?

Option 1 – Don’t give any more than brief background awareness and concentrate on the first section.  This keeps you earthed in the text rather than the historical study notes.  It may fall short on giving people awareness of the book as a whole, but if that first section is preached well, people should be motivated to hear more (background information can and should be given throughout the series).  Often the first section serves as a very effective introduction to the themes and issues that will follow in the book.

Option 2 – Give background (author, date, occasion, etc.) and overview of the book’s structure, highlighting the main idea of the book and it’s initial application for the listeners.  The important thing in an overview introduction like this is to make sure you have a main idea that comes from studying the text and make sure it is applied, otherwise you don’t have an expository sermon.

Option 3 – Genuinely preach the whole book.  Obviously with most books it is not feasible to read the whole text.  However, it is possible to preach the flow of thought through the whole book, highlighting and applying the main idea, just as you will with the individual sections later in the series.  Historical background may be only briefly mentioned, but preaching the book can be a powerful introduction to the series.  Again, as with the similar option 2 above, it is critical to have both main idea and application of that idea.  You will need to selectively read verses from the book in order to underscore the biblical authority for your explanation.

Calendar Days Major and Minor

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I presume most of us are sensitive enough to the calendar to know when it is Christmas and Easter.  But what about the rest of the calendar?  Yesterday was All Saints Day.  Friday was Reformation Day.  Next Sunday (in the UK) is Remembrance Sunday (to remember and honour the giving of life in war – almost politically incorrect these days and increasingly ignored, even in churches).

How much does the calendar influence your preaching?  Some pay great attention, others practically none.  Somehow we need to determine when to let a specific day be a major or a minor influence, and when to not be influenced at all by a more obscure day.  How many Sundays are influenced in your calendar?  How much do we consider the feelings of our congregations in this issue?  For some readers, this is a big issue.  For others, this is probably the most irrelevant post ever.  The diversity of the body of Christ!

(By the way, today is All Souls Day – a traditional day for praying for dead relatives in purgatory.  I don’t think that will influence my message today!)

Preach a Meal and Stretch Them

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Just in conversation with a good friend yesterday, two images came out in reference to preaching.  I’m not going to say much, just offer them here for us to reflect on.

When preaching we should be preaching a meal, even a feast of Bible that will nourish, strengthen and build up our listeners.  The alternative that I come across all too often is preaching that seems to throw granules of sugar at people – very little content, very little value, very little lasting change.  Let’s look to preach the Word and not just abuse the Word to preach some nice thoughts of our own.

When preaching we should be both pushing them into the text so that they are stretched in their understanding and theological awareness.  It is too easy to stop short and give people a gentle snack that essentially repeats what they would probably get from the passage in a casual reading of it for themselves.

People can and probably do tend towards snacking for devotions.  But your sermon is an opportunity to go deeper in the Word.  Let’s feed meals, not throw sugar.  Let’s push and stretch, not stop short through lightweight superficiality.

Shining Light in a Dark World

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It is ironic that in the post-enlightenment west, where we “know” that spirits are not real, we naively celebrate Halloween as if it were just fun for the children.  The occultic reality of what goes on in many places remains hidden from many blissful believers in our churches.  Perhaps Cranfield was right in suggesting that the greatest achievement of the powers of evil would be to persuade us that they do not exist.

Halloween and all that goes with it seems to be the last big thing on the schedule before the Christmas hype begins (apologies to Americans who still have Thanksgiving to go yet).  It’s a dark world, but the birth of Jesus breaks in like the light that He is.

Whatever your personal view on Halloween, it is not possible to take the Bible seriously and summarily discount the reality of a spiritual realm.  Perhaps it is time to reflect again on the spiritual nature of ministry.  We preach the gospel to people whose eyes are blinded by the god of this age.  We preach the Word to believers who face ongoing spiritual battles whether they know it or not.  We stand to preach as weak humans in an ongoing conflict that is already won, but will be completed, by the “greater One” who is in us.

Recognize the reality of the spiritual backdrop to all that goes on this Sunday.  Pray accordingly.  Proclaim the truth.  Lean fully on the strength that our Lord supplies.  Jesus took the spiritual battle seriously.  So must we.  After Halloween comes Christmas.  Like shining a light into a dark world.  Whatever our passage this Sunday, let’s preach as if it is Christmas, as if hope has dawned, as if Jesus’ coming changes everything.

Concerning Commentaries

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

Commentaries are an interesting blessing.  Most of us have access to various commentaries, both in print, perhaps in software form and online.  For some they can be a crutch that bears all the weight of their study – they simply look up what their favorite expert says about a passage and preach that (sometimes with all the grace of a person walking with one crutch and no legs!)  For others commentaries provide conversation partners – the opportunity to interact with an expert or two regarding their take on a passage.  For some commentaries can be both conversation partner and source of frustration.

Why frustration?  Well, often the commentaries we look in are too atomistic in their approach to the text.  They move from one word or phrase to the next with relatively little comment on the flow of the text, the flow of thought, the implications of the broader context.  Some commentaries become a source of word study information and grammatical analysis, but fall short of the discourse level awareness that we need in order to more fully understand and preach a passage.

So I am wondering . . . have you used a commentary recently that proved really helpful in your sermon preparation?  Not just in terms of the details, but also in terms of the flow of thought?  It could be a technical commentary from the NIGTC or WBC series, or a literary-driven work like Fokkelman’s voluminous work on Samuel, or it could be a “paperback” like Donald English’s little work on Mark for the BST series. Sometimes the paperbacks are more aware of flow of thought than the heavyweight commentary siblings on the shelf.  Anyway, we’d all be interested to read any recommendations for helpful commentaries – helpful conversation partners in the often lonely work of sermon preparation.

Preach the Preaching Text

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I have written before about staying within a low fence and generally sticking in the passage you are in for the message.  However, there is a similar but slightly different temptation we face as preachers.  It is the temptation to preach the whole book in which the text is found and fail to fully preach the text itself.

Why is this a temptation?  It doesn’t happen every time.  But if you are preaching a single message rather than a whole series (either as part of a series where others are preaching too, or as a stand-alone message), then you are more likely to face this temptation.  It comes from studying the passage in its context, the very thing you should be doing.  It comes from enjoying the study of the whole book, seeing the flow of thought perhaps clearer than you have before.  It comes from an understanding on your part that this text makes so much more sense once the context is fully understood.

What is the problem?  Well, you have to decide.  Should you preach the whole book, or should you preach the specific preaching text.  If it is part of a series, do not neglect your specific text.  If it is a stand-alone, you have the option of preaching the broader text (but if you do, remember that the message must be evident in the text sitting on listeners’ laps, whichever parts you point them to look at, or your message will apparently lack biblical authority).  The problem comes when you try to preach a specific text, but spend so much time giving the context and flow of the book that you fail to adequately explain the text that is read to the listeners.

So what to do?  Once a decision is made on whether you are preaching the main idea of the whole book, or the specific passage, check your outline/notes/manuscript.  Does the message content reflect your objective?  Be careful not to over-introduce.  It is painful, but cut unnecessary introduction and context.  Give enough to set up the preaching text, but be sure to preach the text itself.

Weighing Interpretation Options

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Yesterday I made passing reference to the process involved in deciding between options when interpreting some aspect of a passage.  Perhaps you can think of two or three ways to take it, to understand what it means.  Perhaps two commentators differ on the interpretation and offer different sets of evidence for their view.  These kind of decisions face us all the time as we are interpreting the Bible.  So how do we evaluate the accuracy and relative weight of the various evidences used to support possible interpretations of a passage?

I still use an approach I was taught in seminary.  It is not a formula that guarantees results.  It is not something that can be put in a spreadsheet and simply crunch the numbers, but as a guideline it is very helpful.  I will list six categories of evidence.  Evidence that sits in category 1 is generally worth more than evidence in category 3.  On the other hand, multiple evidences in different categories may outweigh single evidence in a “better” category, although not always.  This is a guide, not a hard and fast rule.  Here are the categories from most valuable to least:

1. Syntactical Evidence – support found within the passage’s structure or grammar.  This is the internal contextual support for an understanding of the passage.

2. Contextual Evidence – support found in the context of the passage.  The closer the context, the higher the value (immediate context, section context, book context, same writer context, etc.)

3. Lexical Evidence – support found in specific meaning of words used.  Since meaning of a word is determined by the company it keeps, this category actually overlaps with both syntactical and contextual evidence, but a lexical argument lacking in syntactical or contextual support stands here in third place.

4. Correlational Evidence – support found in more distant biblical support where the same word or concept appears.  A different writer may be using the term in a different way.  (Remember that a distance passage that is directly influencing your passage, such as an Old Testament section that is quoted, is much more significant and may be considered as category 2 evidence.)

5. Theological Evidence – support found in theology, rather than elsewhere in the Bible.  This is like correlation, but with a theological creed or system.

6. Verificational Evidence – support found in “experts” (ie.commentators, etc.)  Simply because a big name agrees is of minimal value.  Much better to integrate their arguments into the five categories above, then using the commentary adds much greater value to your study.

Remember, this is a guideline, but I think it is helpful.  It pushes us to look for understanding within the text itself and within the context.  Many people seem to lean heavily on distant unrelated, but familiar, passages.  They tend to rely on their system of theology and having an expert or two on side in an interpretive decision.  Much better to have the better evidence to support an interpretation too!

Make Clear Carefully

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In expository preaching one goal is to make clear the meaning and significance of what is written in the passage.  That sounds relatively easy until you start considering specific passages.  You know the ones I mean.  The passages that you study for hours in order to understand what the author was saying.  In the process you work through numerous possible interpretations with multiple sets of evidence to support each interpretation.  It drives you to evaluate the accuracy and relative weight of these different pieces of evidence as you move toward an understanding of the passage.  In the end, Sunday comes and you sometimes have enough material to teach a seminary course on the passage.

The goal in preaching is to give the fruit of the study labor, not every detail of your behind the scenes work.  Select enough explanatory comments to demonstrate that your understanding is solidly based on the teaching of the text, otherwise your message will lack authority.  When you are not clear on the meaning of every element in the text, find the balance between recognizing the difficulty of the passage, but not undermining confidence in that which is clear.  Be careful that the goal of explaining the meaning does not crowd out presenting the relevance of the passage by means of application.  Don’t let heavy study turn a sermon into a lecture.

When we preach we seek to make clear the meaning and significance of the passage.  That takes prayerful care because it is not easy.  Pray that today’s message will be genuinely expository and pleasing to the Lord.  Pray that the Lord will be at work in the presentation of His Word to His people by you, His servant in the power of His Spirit.  We do our part, but it is not possible to achieve anything lasting with our part alone.