Saturday Short Thought: Image of God

March 10, 2012March 9, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I’ve been blogging about the inherent relational connections in the preaching event. I have just finished writing notes for a session on the Life of the Preacher (more than a bit about relationships in that!), and today am looking forward to a reunion of last year’s Cor Deo team, along with this year’s team. There is a theme here!

And yet the preaching ministry is often such a lonely one. While I understand all the dynamics that can make it so, I have to say that it is incredibly inconsistent with the gospel we preach. This week I was in a conversation where the image of God was raised. This is often defined anachronistically by imposing a much later philosophical anthropology onto the notion, resulting in the image of God being seen to mean our unique ability among God’s creatures to think abstractly, choose freely and rule as we see fit in our independence. But is the image of God really and primarily about our cognitive faculty and self-directed will? Is that really what God is like in Himself?

Looking at the text in context, it is clear that a major feature of the image of God must be some aspect of relationality. The “let us” language, the male and female, the unity in diversity, even the dominion elements seem to be more about a loving care than a sharp powerful domination. The Bible, from that point on, from cover to cover seems to support a relational core to what it is to be made as human in God’s image.

Looking at our world today, we see that relationality is so important, even to those who deny it with every fibre of their being and action of their life. People sacrifice family on the altar of career advancement, achieve all their life goals and then drink themselves into oblivion because they have nobody to share the triumph with. Maybe our relationships should feature more on our CV’s than merely a token reference or two at the end.

So as preacher’s of God’s Word, let’s be sure to not impose cultural or philosophical values onto the text of Scripture. More than that, let’s be sure to let the biblical emphasis on relationality mark our lives and ministries. Let us not contradict by our lives the truths we preach with our lips.

The Preaching Triangle of Relationships

March 9, 2012March 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I have introduced the notion of preaching as being the combination of three participants gathered around the Bible. But the key feature of this approach is to see the importance of the relationships. Like an electrical circuit, what matters is the connections. And when there is a full set of connections, then something powerful occurs!

A. God & Preacher. The preacher doesn’t engage the Bible merely to find a message for the listener. Rather the preacher’s primary concern is to engage with God relationally. Out of the overflow of this relationship comes the ministry to the listener. God doesn’t empower the preacher merely for the sake of the listeners, but loves and delights in His child. When this relationship fades from view, the preacher will experience dullness in ministry and potentially burnout. As the preacher engages with God personally, he/she also joins with God to form a community of carers – that is, the preacher starts to look toward the listeners with God’s loving concern.

B. Preacher & Listener. The preacher speaks with the authority of God’s Word, yet does so as one on the same level as the listener, as a fellow responder to God’s Word. The listener will appreciate the knowledge and spirituality of the preacher, but also will appreciate the vulnerability of a fellow believer who clearly recognizes the community of believers. A sermon motivated by love for listeners will be better than one motivated by self-love in the preacher. As the preacher/teacher’s heart connects with the hearts of the listeners, a community of responsiveness toward God is reinforced.

C. Listener & God. The effective preaching of God’s Word enables the listener to relate not only, or primarily, to the preacher, but to God himself. But more than that: in effective biblical preaching God is giving of Himself to the listener, building the connection between them. In this connection both God and the listener become a community of listeners, joining together to delight in each other, and even in the preacher as he/she makes much of the grace of God in His Son. (When preaching offers a non-biblical portrait of God, or leaves Him out altogether, then both God and listener will be grieved or burdened.)

So whatever opportunity you have, be sure to view the teaching opportunity as primarily a relational opportunity – between God and you, then between you and them, for the sake of them and God!

The Preaching Triangle – Omissions 3 and 4

March 8, 2012March 6, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I pondered the possibility of effectively losing God and / or the preacher from the preaching event. Today I’ll complete the scene by pondering the potential omission of the listener, as well as the critical fourth element of the Preaching Triangle.

3. Listener. God speaks through His Word and through the preacher, empowered by the Spirit, making much of Christ, but the heart of the listener is always free to respond or reject Him. It is naïve to assume that the listener is always ready and motivated to hear the message of God’s Word – hence the need for demonstration of relevance in order to salt the thirst of the listener for God’s Word. Well-handled Scripture effectively communicated in dependence on God will transform lives and churches, but the condition of the soil into which the seed falls is always a key factor (i.e. some won’t respond no matter what!)

And when we fail to emphasize relevance to the listener? Then we have an historical lecture, a pulpit performance to impress God (it doesn’t), or a demonstration of the preacher’s theological acumen, but we do not have transformational Christian biblical ministry.

But there is also the fourth element, the Bible:

Bible. The Bible is the self-revelation of a wonderful communicator. God inspired every word, every choice of genre, etc., and so we should seek to honour His work by doing our best to understand His Word and re-present it to others. The Bible should not be an end in itself, but the means by which we can know the heart of God: His personality, His loveliness, His values, His concerns, His delight.

And when we omit the Bible? Then we have personal opinion, or implied direct revelation (highly questionable), but we do not have authoritative Christian biblical ministry.

Why might the preacher fail to pay attention to the listener in the preaching event? Perhaps too much self-focus, perhaps a lack of understanding that communication needs to be aimed to fully arrive, or perhaps a lack of concern for others. And why might the Bible get lost in the mix? Again, numerous possible reasons: a faulty view of direct revelation, an elevated view of one’s own wisdom or spirituality, an inadequate view of the Bible, or even a lack of care for the listener’s real needs.

Tomorrow I’d like to start considering the relationships implied by this Preaching Triangle.

The Preaching Triangle – Omissions 1 and 2

March 7, 2012March 6, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I suggested that every participant matters in the preaching triangle. What happens when we leave one out?

1. God. The goal of all biblical ministry in the church is to know the God who reveals His heart in His Word. The Spirit who inspired the biblical authors also empowers the biblical communicator to point to the Son, that through Him, the Father might be known. God is at work in both the preacher and the listeners, and both need to be responsive to Him.

And when we somehow leave God out? Then we have an informed presentation, or a human-level exhortation, or a religious performance for a distant deity, but we do not have Christian biblical ministry.

2. Preacher. God has chosen to use inadequate communicators to enable others to hear His Word and respond. We also form a connection with the listeners (either good or bad) and communicate with our lives as well as with our words. Effective communication involves the heart to heart connection of the preacher with the listener, as well as both with God. This means that as well as the verbal content (the words), the preacher must also effectively communicate by means of the vocal and visual elements (use of voice, plus posture, gesture, expression and movement).

And when we downplay the role of the preacher? Then we lose the incarnational nature of God’s self-revelation, we lose the privilege of hearing God’s Word spoken with power. We might be able to affirm a strange view of “reliance on God” (based on a hope that He might work around us and despite us), but we do not have incarnational or effective Christian biblical ministry.

Why would someone leave out either of these participants in their approach to preaching? I suppose a view that God is distant and disconnected, or excessive confidence in one’s own intellectual ability might lead to the first omission. A highly “spiritual” view of God’s work despite the preacher, combined with a potentially confused view of humility might lead to the second omission.

Tomorrow I’ll consider the implications of leaving out the other two…

The Preaching Triangle – Introduction

March 6, 2012March 6, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Preaching is not about performance, nor ritual. It is a communication event. Like most things, how you understand it flows out of how you view God.

If you see God as a distant power broker, a singularity focused exclusively on his own self-absorption, that will influence the way you preach. I suspect you’ll be torn between making much of Him because you should, and making much of self because that is the logical conclusion of being made in His image. The Bible will function as a code of instruction to decipher and disseminate that others might know how to satisfy the distant One.

But if you see God as the eternal fellowship of the trinity who is always others-centred, so that His love has reached out to us to bring us into fellowship with Him by His grace, then that will also influence the way you preach. And it seems to me that preaching will consequently be a much more relationally-charged event.

In the next days I’d like to probe the notion of preaching being essentially about three relationships, between three ‘participants,’ centred around the inspired Word of God. The participants are all required:

1. God. Without whom preaching is an exercise in human performance. I wonder whether we might sometimes tip our hat to the importance of God’s role in our preaching, but then pray and preach as if our dependence is only token? Truly, apart from me, you can do nothing. Surely preaching without God’s involvement is an exercise in abject futility? But what does it mean for God to be involved? Just that we pray to Him? If we pray to Him and then preach about Him, is that enough? What if Christianity is much more participatively relational than we have realized?

2. Listener. Without whom preaching makes no sense, since it is not about us or our desire to impress God with our rituals and performance. Again, I wonder if our preaching is genuinely marked by an awareness of those to whom we preach? More than that, do we really consider the connection between us and those to whom we preach? It is easy to tip our hat to the importance of knowing the listener, but then preach as if they are a generic gathering of folks. But the listeners matter precisely because of the kind of God that we have. He knows, He loves, He cares. Consequently He expects those preaching His Word to also know, love and care.

3. Preacher. Without whom the conversation would be about something other than preaching, but really, does the preacher matter? I say yes. There is a vital role for the preacher precisely because of the kind of God that we have. He is a communicator, He cares, He incarnates. Consequently He values the human speaker, who also should care, who in some way is an enfleshed presentation of the Word.

All three participants matter greatly in the preaching triangle. Tomorrow I’d like to drill down a bit more on why each one matters, before we then start to probe the relationships in this triangle.

Old is Not Always Better

March 5, 2012March 5, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This morning I have been reflecting on the messages I heard yesterday and post the link here for your interest. I wonder if sometimes we fall back toward the Old Covenant because we haven’t fully grasped the wonder and superiority of the New. Anyway, I’ll just link to the post and let you go there if you choose.

Saturday Short Thought: Luther, Law, Preaching and Popes

March 3, 2012March 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I’ve been writing about the power of our words as preachers. Not only can we re-present the Scriptures as we explain and apply, but we can undo the Scriptures as we carelessly overqualify, say too much, or say that which is unhelpful.

They say driving a car is like having a 1.5 tonne bullet with the trigger under our right foot. What, then, is preaching a sermon?

This week I read through The Freedom of a Christian by Luther. Yesterday I started reading a book that has become an “I don’t want to put this down” kind of book. I won’t tell you what it is yet, I’ll reveal it on the Books page once other commitments allow me time to finish it. But here’s a taster on the this issue of the sermon:

Luther was astonished how many Christian theologies accepted the basic scheme of the law and its morality (opinio legis), but had nothing worthwhile to say about Christ. . . .

Luther is the Great Misunderstood. How could he become so contorted into the form of modern Protestantism? One might reasonably take recourse in Luther’s assumption that the devil was on the prowl ready to pounce on anyone preaching the gospel. The picture of freedom that developed by the nineteenth century has very little to do with Luther’s own theology. On the face of it, Luther’s proposal was not of “reform” nor was it modest, though it was excruciatingly simple: it was to replace the papacy with a sermon: “Christ’s merit is not acquired through our work of pennies, but through faith by grace, without any money and merit – not by the authority of the pope, but rather by preaching a sermon, that is, God’s Word.”

Down comes Christendom, with a word! Preaching is democratized, not in the sense of emerging from the people but of being available to them all equally – in an instant, rich and poor, male and female, circumcised and uncircumcised, German and Italian. With this the pinnacle of power lay not in Rome or with kings, but at the point of the delivery of a sermon.

(pp3, 8, of ?)

Overqualified! Heart, Head.

March 2, 2012March 2, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just one more post to finish off the series. As preachers there are various areas where we can fall into the trap of adding comments or thoughts or meaning or clarification or balance or just plain error to what the Bible says. When we overqualify, we under-preach. There’s one more example I want to highlight.

Preaching through a text we come across a reference to the heart. What is the tendency? “Ah, the word is really mind, not heart, its about thinking, not feeling, ah, uh, next verse…”

If you do this you are not alone. But the Bible shouldn’t be interpreted via a democracy. Many have the tendency to impose a stoic anthropology onto the biblical text that is simply not there, and most do so without knowing they are doing it. That is, any reference to the heart, affections, desires, wants, responses, etc., are filtered out based on the presupposition that such features of humanity are ignoble and untrustworthy. (This also means that negatives like lust tend to get left in, since the negative fruit makes sense to a stoic mindset.)

A pre-commitment to the ideal of our being thinking, choosing individuals overrides what the text might be saying. A slightly more sophisticated fudge comes in the form of, “the word here is not heart, but guts, kidneys, etc.” Implication? Since it isn’t “heart” it cannot have meant what we mean when we refer to the heart. Oops again. We tend to speak of the heart due to its physiological response to external stimuli – to attractive beauty, to fear, to anger, etc. Other cultures might speak of the stomach or guts for the same reason.

This is only scratching the surface of a much deeper issue, no pun intended. But we need to beware lest we talk the text out of speaking of deeply felt inner responsiveness as the driver of human faculties. We might be strongly committed to a notion such as our decisions being determined by a partnership between our thought processes and our will, in alliance against the dangerous and untrustworthy affections. We may believe that with good information and disciplined wills, right decisions will be the outcome. But our commitment and belief, along with that of many others over the past years, may be profoundly wrong.

What if the Bible is right in pushing us to a more profound issue, namely, that the heart is the source, the wellspring, the chief inner faculty? What if it isn’t out of the overflow of my education and discipline that my mouth speaks? What if my reflection of the image of God is not determined by my efforts to suppress affection in order to think and choose freely? What if love determines everything? And what if love isn’t really an act of a free will?

I’ve run out of words, but if you’d like to hear more on this subject, click here.

Overqualified! Says, Means.

March 1, 2012February 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

From a more specific, to a more general post. Preachers have a tendency to overqualify some things. For instance, going beyond the plain meaning of the text is a common, but often unhelpful strategy.

The text says this, but it actually means that. There are many variations on this, some speculative and bizarre, others that appear thoroughly orthodox and sound. Yet we must always think twice before going beyond the plain meaning of a text.

By all means show how the text fits in the larger flow of progressive revelation. By all means show how God’s plans are worked out in the fullness of the canon. But beware of making a leap from what it says to what it means so that listeners are left staring at the text in confusion, or at the preacher in awe.

Typically this doesn’t happen out of some sinister motivation to twist the text and promote heresy (some certainly do this, but I suspect they won’t be allowed to read this site). Typically this error occurs out of good motivation.

Perhaps the preacher fears that the plain meaning is just too, well, plain. Their job is to add some fizz to the water of God’s Word?

Perhaps the preacher wants to give a more complete biblical message, but fails to show the linkages to the “greater” content offered. This leaves the listener without clear sense of where the meaning is supposed to be found in a text.

Perhaps the preacher feels the text at hand is just a little too basic, too obvious, too simple to count as a rich feast of biblical truth, and so unpacks the text to reveal rich truths never before discovered in that corner of the canon. Oops. Trust God’s intent in the Bible – maybe the people need to hear that passage clearly explained and applied, rather than the whole canon squeezed in for good measure.

I am not suggesting there is no complexity in Scripture, there certainly is. But as we preach, let’s try to make it so that listeners looking at the text will see where we are coming from. What benefit is there in leaving them staring at the text in confusion, or at the preacher in awe?

Overqualified! Go, Stay.

February 29, 2012February 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Ok, I can’t help throwing this one into the mix. How often do we drain the impact of a text by immediate overqualification? For example, in the area of response to the great commission.

God is a missionary God. What if the Son had responded to the Father as many preachers respond to texts that assume and expect missionary momentum from lives transformed by the gospel? What if the Son had insisted that He could be a missionary-messiah right there, in heaven? What if the Son had pulled out Acts 1:8 and spoken of the need to minister in “His Jerusalem” first? This does seem bizarre.

But I have to say that as a speaker sometimes asked to preach on “missionary” type texts and at “missions” events, it can get frustrating to see others overqualify and undercut the thrust of a message. Let’s say I preach a text and in the preaching suggest that it would be a natural response for some of us to respond by seeking to take the message of God’s love to other cultures and lands. What happens? The service leader or worship leader then stands up and thanks me for my message, then prays about how “we can all be missionaries right here in our own neighbourhood!”

That’s nice, very inclusive, now everyone can feel involved. Or, to put it another way, now the potential impact of the message is dissipated and any self-focused listeners can remain comfortably, well, comfortable.

I’ve heard preachers do it too. They preach on the giving and going and sacrificing nature of God. Then they preach a passage where the followers of Christ are urged to give and go and sacrifice. Then they immediately qualify so that all can feel included, and none need feel too stirred.

“Go isn’t an imperative in Matthew 28, it is just ‘as you are going’ – that is, wherever you find yourself.” (Uh, maybe…or perhaps more accurately, go isn’t in itself an imperative verb, but as an attendant circumstance participle it does carry the force of the verb it goes with – in this case an imperatival force. Ok, don’t quote the Greek grammar, but be right if you’re going to use Greek to support your explanation. Jesus is assuming and urging a “go” in this passage!)

“Remember that Acts 1:8 starts with Jerusalem, that’s where we have to start!” (Uh, ok, but the momentum in that verse is leaning towards the ends of the earth, and if you keep reading you’ll see how God used persecution to get them moving!)

I could go on, but my point applies in lots of areas. We have a tendency to read one thing, then by unthinking qualification end up preaching something else. We do it with grace, we do it with Trinity, we do it with missions passages. Any others you’d add?