Religion

Who is Listening?

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Ear2Preaching  is a simple concept.  You prayerfully prepare and then communicate the biblical text to a contemporary audience.  God, Bible, Preacher, Listeners.  Voila.  A good preacher will be someone who is close to God, studies the text well, communicates effectively and pastorally targets the listeners.  Simple.

Unless you probe this.  For instance, there are multiple factors when it comes to being close to God.  Studying a biblical text well requires a diversity of skills for a significant variety of textual genre.  Communicating effectively involves consideration of terminology, vocal variety, body language, gesture, facial expression, proxemics, etc.  At least the idea of targeting our listeners is relatively simple.  Or is it?  When you preach, who is listening?

1. Members of God’s family.  In a church setting, hopefully a significant number of listeners will be fellow believers in Christ, co-baptised by the Holy Spirit into Christ, siblings living in the forever family of our perfect Father.  I have one sibling – same DNA, but we are so different!  I have five children – same DNA, but they are so different!  Then there’s the church – same Holy Spirit DNA, but talk about diversity!

Some believers in the church are mature saints who have travelled a long and windy path, experiencing life in all of its complexity, all the while growing closer to their Father and to the Son, by the Spirit.  They know His faithfulness in the depth of their being and their identity is profoundly saturated in His love.  But others are mature in human years, yet have never really matured in their Spiritual lives.  They remain spiritual infants and are profoundly vulnerable, yet often these folks have no awareness of how fragile their Christianity actually is.  They might be worried, or they might be bombastic and difficult to deal with, throwing their weight around and wondering why people don’t seem to respond to them as they do to others.

Some believers are in the process of maturing in a healthy relationship with Christ marked by hearing His heart through the Word and responding in the fellowship of a healthy prayer life.  Their spirituality is relational and personal and responsive.  Other believers are confused by some sort of speculative spirituality that has caused them to chase knowledge through books or conferences, others chase an experiential spirituality through reflective disciplines or different types of conferences.  Other believers are not particularly marked by any spirituality, other than learned behaviour.

Some believers exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.  There is something dynamic about their lives and there is a clear sense that God is at work in them. Other believers evidence primarily the fruit of the flesh.  There is little delight in Christ to be noticed and you can’t help but wonder where they stand before God.

Tomorrow we’ll consider another category of listener . . . believers alone are complex enough though!

Preaching and Paradigms

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

PAradigmWhen we preach, we don’t simply present a truth, make an offer, or demonstrate the relevance of an ancient text.  Every biblical passage is a heavenly assault on the unquestioned assumptions of a fallen world.  That is to say, we don’t really live in a neutral world with some evil “out there” and some good information in the Bible.

The truth is that our entire world is upside-down.  Every cell in this universe is corrupted by the fall.  Yet we love to live in the myth that we are objectively evaluating a normal reality.  Then when extremes come before us, we are the arbiters who can discern what is extreme and what is not.  This results in people listening to the Bible and trying to find something relevant, rather than hearing the absolute revolution it speaks into our fallen, me-first, self-loving, circumstances-determine-mood, world.

So when we preach, what are we doing?  Sure, we are presenting the truth of the passage.  We are inviting people to meet the God who reveals Himself in His Word.  We are showing that the ancient text is more relevant than anything we hold to be truly contemporary.  But we are also bringing a heavenly critique of all that we believe to be normal.

Tomorrow I am preaching Psalm 46.  It is a wonderful Psalm of comfort for people fearing the destabilization brought by human enemies.  The LORD of hosts is with us, He is our fortress.  That changes everything.  He will utter and war will be defeated forever.  Here we are, understandably concerned by what we see going on in the world, perhaps even fearing for our future and our children’s future.  But the Bible challenges assumptions we don’t even recognize, and as we encounter the message of a passage like this one, we find our whole paradigms recalibrated to the reality we can’t see.

Worship and Wonder Break

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WorshipWonderLast time we considered the warning sign of preaching “flat.”  Let’s come at this from a different angle.  Does you sermon preparation cause you to:

1. Pray – I don’t mean the diligent prayer that should be part of every ministry preparation.  Apart from Him we can do nothing.  If we are tempted to preach in a prayerless state then there should be warning lights flashing all over our spiritual dashboard.  What I mean here is when the sermon preparation so stirs you that you have to stop and pray.  All our prayer is technically a response to God’s glorious loving initiative, but I am referring to a soul-stirred immediacy of response.  The wonder of the revelation of God’s character in the text; the relevance of the passage to your own heartfelt fears, doubts, concerns or hopes; the privilege of participation in the ministry that overflows from the dynamic unity of the Trinity . . . how often does this stir you to stop and pray?

2. Worship – How easily we can get into the “professional” position of minister seeking to stir worship in the listeners.  But we are not in a separate category.  The only thing that separates us from our listeners is the extended exposure to the same biblical text.  So if we anticipate their response of worship, surely we should take the absence of our response to be concerning.  It is a glorious privilege to stop mid-preparation and pour out your praise to God.  Pause the prep, not for an incoming email, but to put on the song stirred in your heart and sing it out to God.  I think He likes that kind of worship service!  With this response comes…

3. Dream – The realities of weekly or regular ministry can wear us all down.  The lack of response.  The sense that eternity changing pearls from God’s Word have been trampled as fodder for a consumeristic evaluation of the church and pastor’s “performance” – this hurts.  But God is able to lift our hearts and invite us to dream of what could be and should be in the lives of those exposed to God’s Word this coming Sunday.

4. Give Thanks – How often do we pray for relief from the stresses and frustrations that come in a preaching ministry, but fail to thank God for the immense privilege of participating in His great work of building the church.  Time with God?  Give thanks.  Joining Jesus in His ministry?  Give thanks.  Receiving God’s gracious work in your own heart?  Give thanks.

5. Weep – I suspect that the most powerful preaching on a Sunday comes out of the study where exegetical notes and the open Bible have been anointed with tears.  I don’t weep enough.

And if, like me, this post doesn’t resonate with the reality week by week anywhere near as much as it should, what to do?  Back to #1.  Pray.

Goodreads Book Giveaway (UK)

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Pleased to Dwell v3If you are in the UK, please click here to enter the book giveaway on Goodreads.  By the way, this is a useful site to engage with if you read books.  The more of us preachers who get on there, the more we can benefit from each other’s mini-reviews, ratings, etc.

If you are in North America, there will be a book giveaway closer to the release date of Pleased to Dwell (slightly later than UK release date).

The Danger of Preaching Flat

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Tired2Sometimes we can’t wait to get the Bible open and preach.  Other times it is a battle to get to the preaching moment.  But one of the most dangerous times is when it just feels flat.

I didn’t preach last Sunday and I am not preaching this Sunday.  So perhaps it is a safe time to write about this danger.  On the dashboard of our ministry life we need to have a light that flashes when we are preaching flat.  What causes it?  What should we do?

Here are some possible causes:

1. Physical Fatigue – driven personalities, parents of young children, stressed church leaders . . . all are in danger of not sleeping enough.

2. Physical Lethargy – bad diet, lack of exercise, high stress levels . . . it is easy to be running on empty, but it is not a good idea.

3. Emotional Drain – perhaps there are issues in the family, or tensions within the church, and be especially wary when you have been on the receiving end of criticism or character assassination . . . a drained emotional tank can lead to preaching flat, or preaching angry – both are dangerous.

4. Relational Strain – if you have a broken relationship with a fellow church leader, a prominent church member, an indiviual in your family, etc., then you may well find your motivation for preaching seeps away.  It is like having a crack in your fuel tank – only addressing the crack will enable you to function properly.  (Remember Romans 12:18 though, you can only do what you can, sometimes people simply refuse to reconcile.)

5. Spiritual Dryness – lack of real communication in prayer, Bible reading has become data-gathering instead of encounter, a lively relationship has drifted into mere disciplines, unconfessed sin has become normal and dulled your spirit, there are many reasons for spiritual dryness.  The problem is that it tends to hide the flashing light on your dashboard.  Your flesh doesn’t want to own a spiritual drift, but your ministry requires that you do.

6. Other – there may always be another reason . . . spiritual attack, medical issue, etc.

So what should you do about it?  Be honest with yourself and recognize when you are preaching flat.  Pray about it honestly.  Ask some trusted friends for anything they sense may be an issue in your life.  And don’t settle for flat as your new normal.  The Gospel, your God and the people in your church need a preacher whose inner fire is being stoked by being with God.  The flat version just won’t do.

Christocentric, Christiconic, … part 2

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

img_privilege_3d_02Yesterday I started a list of five alternative labels to ponder for the preacher.  Rather than the Christiconic model espoused in Abraham Kuruvilla’s, Privilege the Text, why not consider these labels for the goal of our preaching?  Are we representing individual facets of Christlike morality in each pericope that we preach, or is something greater going on?  Yesterday we thought about Christotelic and Christodoxological preaching.  Here are three more labels, this time ones I have never heard used elsewhere (you will understand why!)

3. Christopisteuic (Preaching that aims for faith in Christ) – Faith is the gaze of our heart and soul on the provision of God in Christ.  So let’s preach each passage in such a way that the text is honoured, but the listener is not pointed to themselves, their effort, their application, their duty.  Instead point them to Christ that they might believe in Him.  It is a life captivated by Christ that will manifest a self-giving and therefore genuinely Christlike morality that may shock onlookers.  (People are used to seeing self-focused morality that is profoundly unattractive.)

4. Christ0-agapic (even Christofileic) (Aiming for the love of Christ, or brotherly love of Christ) – I am getting closer to the title I really like.  The greatest commandment is to love God and love neighbour.  If anyone does not love Christ, he is accursed (1Cor.16:22).  Let’s make the love of Christ our saviour, our friend, our groom, our brother . . . let’s make that our goal.

5. Trinitari-koinonic  – I think this is my favourite label describing the goal of preaching.  Fellowship with the Trinity.  What an honour!  So as we preach the revelation of God’s heart in the Scriptures, let’s be sure to recognize how each text is revealing God, pointing to his values, recognizing his provision in both Christ and the Spirit, and delighting in his goal to bring us into the embrace of the Godhead by union with the Son through the Spirit.  It is in union with Christ that we discover true life change, because it is only in union with Christ that we can know life itself.  By our union with Christ we can share in the fellowship of the Trinity and thus see radical life transformation.  Anything less, and looking anywhere else, will always disappoint.

Any other suggestions welcome.  Preaching Christ in His Word is such a privilege, and Kuruvilla is right that we have to think carefully how we do that.

Christocentric, Christiconic, …?

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img_privilege_3d_02Abraham Kuruvilla’s book, Privilege the Text, offers a theological hermeneutic for preaching.  I have surveyed the book here and offered some review here.  Today I would like to nudge our thinking in respect to AK’s suggestion that we replace a Christocentric approach with a Christiconic approach.  That is, rather than trying to see Christ in every text of Scripture, we should see a facet of Christ’s perfect morality in every text, and as we present that theologically derived “divine demand,” the hope is that our listeners will be moved to align themselves with it and thus become progressively sanctified into the image of Christ (hence, “christ-iconic”).

What I took too many words to state last time is that I find this goal entirely too restricted.  The goal of preaching is not my individual, nor even our corporate, conformity to a perfect Christlike morality.  I believe Christian preaching should be looking for a greater transformation than I believe will result from the “Christiconic” model.  Let me suggest some five alternative models, with a few comments.  Please note that the morality desired in the “Christiconic” model is surpassed, rather than dismissed, in these suggestions:

1. Christotelic (Seeing Christ as the goal of Scripture) – Perhaps we should be aiming to preach individual texts in such a way that the goal of all Scripture (Christ) is not superimposed on and forced into a text, but is honoured as the goal of the whole?  I know that this can fall foul of some warnings included in Kuruvilla’s book relating to Christocentric models that don’t privilege and honour the preaching text.  I agree that there is a risk of the specifics in a pericope being “swallowed up in the capacious canvas of [Redemptive-Historical] interpretation.” (p240)  Fair point, but again, John 5 should sound sufficient warning at the danger of interpreting a text with a goal of self-improvement, while missing the person of Christ.  Let me push on to more explicit labels for our ponderings.

2. Christodoxological (Preaching that aims at the worship of Christ) – Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.  Let’s preach Bible texts in such a way that rather than pointing to ourselves and emphasizing our need to apply them, we are pointing to a Christ so captivating and wonderful that he is worshipped.  And what about if it is not obvious how to preach Christ in the text at hand?  Feel free to preach Theodoxologically, showing how the text reveals God.  (And if you make sure you are preaching the “person” rather than just truthful assertions, then in many ways you are “preaching Christ” even while avoiding forcing the text into a mold it did not sign up to be in.)

Tomorrow I’ll offer three more suggestions for our thoughts.