Religion

Let Agony Reassure You

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Preaching is agonizing.  Giving birth to a sermon is a regular pain.  The effect is felt in our emotional, spiritual, mental and physical selves.  Rarely does a sermon fall together with ease, get delivered with nothing but joy and result in tangible spiritual fruit for all.  Typically the preaching experience is unlike any other.  It hurts.  It raises huge question marks on a regular rhythm.  It takes something out of you that leaves you vulnerable and broken.  You can shrug off a bad round of golf, or a poor session at the gym before your peers, or even am uncomfortable evening of hospitality that didn’t quite go to plan.  But a sermon is different.  You don’t shrug it off.  Even a good one leaves lingering doubts, feelings of failure and the gentle scars of sermonic ministry.

These things can be discouraging.  The interrupted preparation.  The blind side critique.  The barbed feedback.  The polite feedback.  The excessive hand-shaking response coupled with the pathetic life response.  It can all be discouraging, but let it encourage you today.  If it was easy, if there were no struggles, no emotions, no sense of inner turmoil and personal agony, then perhaps it would be nothing more than a hobby, a personal venture.  Preaching the Word of God is a spiritual battle of the first order.  Just like evangelism.  Just like missions.  It’s not meant to be easy.  It’s meant to be real.  Let the agony reassure you.  It’s real.  God is real.  So is the enemy.  So is the battle.  So will be the lasting fruit wrought through it all.

Don’t Blame the Wrong Thing

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I regularly hear that contemporary audiences, or postmodern audiences, don’t appreciate or engage with traditional expositional approaches to preaching.  It is easy to blame the change in culture, or the shift in lifestyle, or the influence of MTV or video games.  People blame the diminishing attention spans, or the reduced openness to propositional truth, or the need for increased use of visual media.  There’s a whole lot of blaming going on.

I want to suggest a different target for our finger pointing.  Us.  People who tell me they don’t appreciate expository preaching are essentially telling me they haven’t heard any worthy of the label.  People who supposedly cannot concentrate for more than thirty seconds are somehow able to stick with good preaching for well over a snippet or micro-message.  People who are so resistant to propositional truth seem very willing to buy into presentations of truth that are carefully designed and effectively communicated.  Let’s not blame postmodernity, MTV, Nintendo Wii, or whatever.  Culture is culture and culture shifts.

We need to point the finger at ourselves.  People typically react against a caricature of expository preaching.  They react against unnecessarily dull monologues.  The solution is not to be found in gimicks, gross shrinkage of sermon length, or the random spraying of video clips.  The solution is, at least in part, better preaching.  Creative preaching.  Biblical preaching.

The finger is pointed our way.  Let’s respond well.

Why Was the Text Written?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In a general sense everything written in the Bible was written for our instruction (Rom.15:4).  Yet as preachers we can fall into the trap of looking for a sermon in a text, rather than fully pursuing the process of allowing the text to be boss of the sermon.

Yesterday I was discussing Genesis 3 with a friend.  I’ve heard sermons that essentially ignore everything after verse 7 in order to give a how-to guide to resisting temptation.  Was that why the chapter was written?  This was not merely an example of temptation, it was the Fall.  While there may be a place for noting the steps Eve took that led to disaster, surely this cannot dominate the message to the extent that the passage becomes a mere instructional piece.

Why was it written?  There is instruction about a one-off event with lasting implications that face us all everyday.  There may be passing lessons to learn about the way the enemy works in our response to God’s instruction.  There also is significant space given to explanation of the consequences of the Fall.  There is also hope interwoven with judgment in the seed of the woman to come.

When we pause and ponder enough to recognize that the passage is not an instructional anecdote, but one of the most significant events of history, and that the reverberations of that event are wobbling our world moment by moment right until this moment, and that the solution is not in our ability to implement lessons from Eve’s conversation, but in the hope of the seed of the woman who would come and crush the serpent’s head.  When we spend enough time in the text and see why it was written, then we are in a better place to preach the Word.  After all, it was written for our instruction, so that through the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope!  (Rom.15:4)

Preaching To Few

/ Peter Mead / 7 Comments

I’m just finishing RT Kendall’s book on his 25 years at Westminster Chapel.  He reflects several times on the low numbers he had at the chapel.  It seems that in a church that would hold 2000, his congregation was typically 150-300.  The only time the place was full was for his farewell.  He wrote candidly of his discouragement due to low numbers.

I preach in a variety of settings to crowds of all different sizes.  Since people are not attending due to my presence, it tends not to bother me at all.  However, to be pastor of a famous church, in a large building, but never to see numbers increase as you would desire, that has to be disheartening.

I remember reading of one man who preached with his eyes shut so that he would not be discouraged.  I wouldn’t encourage that for several reasons relating to the nature of expository preaching and also pulpit safety.  But what should you do?  If the circumstances conspire to make numbers an issue, then how should one respond?

I would be interested in any experiences of discouragement by numbers, or anecdotes from other preachers.

The Pressure of Infinite Resources

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We live in a time when we have potential access to more study resources than ever before.  There are countless commentaries on every book of the Bible, including exegetical, technical, semi-technical, expositional, applicational, background, socio-cultural, devotional.  Then there are the Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, literary guides, and so on.  And I shouldn’t forget the preaching helps – outlines, illustrations, series ideas, and so on.  All of this is in print, most of it is available as software, and then there is the bottomless pit of online material, ranging from helpful to truly pathetic.

What an incredible time to live in, but what a pressure it puts on us as preachers!  What if there is a resource that will unlock this passage for me and I haven’t got it or read it yet?  What if I am failing to preach as I should because I have failed to access the right preparation resource?

Learn to Discern. Discern which resources are worth owning on whatever budget you have.  Discern which ones duplicate other or earlier works.  Discern which are helpful for preaching and which are actually quagmires.  Discern how to use the web with skill rather than endless bunny trailing through cyber-space.

Remember this is God’s work and He knows. He knows what resources you actually have access to and time for.  He knows what level of training you’ve had.  He knows how pressured your preparation has been.  He knows.

In my case, I typically consult between four and ten (well-chosen and well-trusted) resources on a typical sermon.  We are blessed with more available, in more formats, than ever before.  But remember that our task is not to endlessly trawl through it all. Our task is to study God’s Word with His help, using only a small percentage of the available resources, according to our means and training, in order to preach the Word accurately and effectively to our listeners.

Big Words, Big Warnings

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

I recently listened to a few sessions from the last Evangelical Theological Society meetings. I’m a member and was planning to be there, but decided I’d rather teach a preaching course than attend the meetings. I have enjoyed the sessions I’ve listened to so far, but one thing stood out to me. In each of the papers that I listened to, it felt like the presenters were trying to pack the first few sentences with big words. Peer pressure, the desire to impress, the atmosphere of an intellectual atmosphere. Now as an academic I can relate to the word choices made, but as a preacher/communicator I felt very uncomfortable.

As preachers we can fall into the same trap. It is easy to choose big words when little ones would do the job. There may be the odd occasion where a big word is worth the extra effort and explanation required (such as key theological terms like justification). But often there is no real benefit to going big on the word front, and there may be real reasons not to:

Intellectual pride easily creeps in. The best sportsmen make their skill look easy, why don’t we take the same approach? Often the use of big words is partially driven by the desire to look intellectual and educated.

Communication is about communicating, not impressing. So what if people affirm the message after you’re done? So what if they take comfort from knowing that you know lots of theological stuff? The goal in preaching is not to indicate what you know, but to help them know and live out the Bible. If they don’t get the words, they won’t live the Word.

Big words can divide the church. What if some people understand the big words, while others do not? Surely a church divided along educational or class lines would undermine the very essence of the church as the New Testament presents it.

Generally speaking, when we’re tempted to use big words, let’s not.

Preacher Under Fire

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

People joke about having roast preacher for Sunday lunch.  In reality many of us face worse than sermonic critique from our listeners.  The experience of criticism, accusation, distrust and outright opposition is well known to many of us.  It is important to prayerfully consider things that are said against us since these difficult times are great times to learn and grow.

However, it is important not to fire back.  As a preacher it is tempting to use pulpit time to vindicate ourselves before our listeners.  As a preacher it is tempting to preach at our opposition.  Don’t and don’t.  Pulpit ministry is a sacred trust.  Preach the Word and leave any vindication to the One to whom it belongs.

Road to Damascus

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I felt like I was on the road to Damascus.  Preaching into a spotlight.  Thankfully I was preaching on just two verses (a unit of thought in Proverbs), and didn’t need to read anything.  But not being able to see the listeners was tough.  Eye contact was all an illusion if people felt like there was any since I could see only the burning light before me.

Sometimes it is worth tolerating this kind of lighting.  Always it is worth thinking through these practical details to make sure nothing is hindering the communication of God’s Word.  Do the lights where you preach help or hinder you?  Do they throw shadows on your face so that you look like a skeleton?  Do people have to strain to see you seeing them?

On the other hand, no matter what lighting you have, there is another thing to consider.  No lighting can help your eye contact if your head is in your notes.  Communication requires connection, location of lights and numbers of notes can hinder or help your preaching.

What Makes Teaching or Preaching Effective?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Crossing disciplines can often be helpful.  For example, I’m reading a book on teaching entitled The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer.  It is excellent.  While it is aimed toward the teacher or lecturer, it is hitting home in respect to my ministry as a preacher too.

Early on Palmer is describing what makes a good teacher or a bad teacher.  He quotes one student who could not describe her good teachers because they were all so different, but she could describe her bad ones because they were all the same.  “Their words float somewhere in front of their faces, like the balloon speech in cartoons.” Parker notes that bad teachers distance themselves from the subject they are teaching, and therefore from their students also.  But good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

How true this is for preachers too.  We preach poorly when we distance ourselves from our message, but we preach well we make sure the message is coming from inside us and going directly to our listeners.  True preaching, by definition, is the delivery of a text’s message “which the Holy Spirit first applies to the life of the preacher, then through the preacher, to the listeners.” (Robinson’s classic definition).

Remember the simple, yet profound formula in Palmer’s book – effective teaching is much more about identity and integrity than mere technique.

Preacher Autobiographies

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I’ll be honest, I don’t read too many autobiographies.  But this week I picked up Dr R.T. Kendall’s In Pursuit of His Glory: My 25 Years at Westminster Chapel.  Unable to sleep last night, I read maybe a fourth of this book.  1977-2002 was a fascinating and often highly controversial chunk of history at this famous London church.

Reading of Dr.Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ mentoring of Kendall is very stimulating and encouraging.  Reading of Kendall’s personal insecurities and mistakes is helpful.  Reading of the influence of Arthur Blessitt through three key changes is enlightening.  As I read on I will get to read of one of the most stunning modern-day shifts in a church’s preaching, theology and practice.

This kind of humble and honest personal reflection is surely of value to us all as preachers, wherever we may stand on the specific issues involved.

What preacher autobiographies have you appreciated and why?