Summer Sermon Series

July 17, 2013July 12, 2013 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

If you are in a church that plans its series intentionally throughout the year, then summer is always a funny time. After all, people are missing every week, but different people. And if you happen to have nice weather, then people seem slightly distracted even if they are there. Actually, ignore the weather, when children are out of school and life is not in its normal routine, then somehow everything seems to take on a summer lethargy. I suspect this post is too late for this summer (I wasn’t thinking of this issue six months ago!) Nonetheless, a few thoughts:

1. Preach a series with less interdependence between messages. Don’t build a series that assumes people have heard last week and the week before. That typically means that an epistle is probably not the way to go, or a tight sequence through a narrative (like Ruth or a section of a Gospel). Instead preach so that even in a series, each message really does stand alone with minimal required awareness of other messages.

2. Preach a series with high encouragement factor. If people are potentially coming in mid-series, or were missing last week and next, take the chance to encourage them. Summer is probably not the season for high level calls to radical commitment or significant life change. September may be a different story, but tap into the summer vibe and you may find that what you do try to achieve connects more effectively than a January Resolutions series in balmy August.

3. Preach a series from a section of the Bible you tend to miss. Some churches tend to spend a lot of time in Gospels, or epistles, or even OT narratives. Why not put in a series from the Psalms, perhaps a few of the Songs of Ascent, or a selection from the 50’s, or wherever. Perhaps consider a series from Proverbs, a topic per week (these are unlikely to require awareness of last week’s message).

What are you preaching this summer? What have you found to work, or to fail, in previous years?

Two Ways to Feed 2

April 17, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I suggested that offering a meal is more loving than throwing a shower of vitamin pills at someone. I’m not sure I want to overwork the analogy, but there is infinite variety even in the category of meal. Here are some thoughts on pulpit cooking options. I’ll let you evaluate each one:

1. Fast Food Preaching. It is prepared quickly, in a very standardized process, with standard content, high on application, but almost bereft of nutrition. Some people get addicted to it. Some people grow sick of it.

2. Home Delivered Fast Food. It is the same as number 1, but you didn’t even have to go and get it. It was delivered by the internet delivery moped and saved you a whole load of time.

3. Home Delivered Fast Food Stolen. Once you get it delivered, you hide the box and pretend that you cooked it. There is a sensed lack of integrity, but you think everyone’s nice comments are genuine.

4. Thrown Together Left-Overs. Again, short on time, you pull together scraps from here and there. They don’t necessarily go together, but what you heard from him and what you read over there and what is on your mind once you pause to think about it . . . all served on one sermon plate.

5. Good Food Disconnected. This is better, you have done some cooking. But you haven’t grasped that while all food may be good food, not all good food goes together on the same plate.

6. One Favourite Recipe. You have learned to do a mean chili con carne, so that’s what you cook. Every time. Guests coming? Chili con carne. Sorted. Unless, of course, they come twice. Works better if you are a traveling chef, unless people swap venues and then things get complicated 🙂

7. Good Ingredients Cooked the Wrong Way. You take your chili con carne recipe and just replace the ingredients. Problem is that it doesn’t work with a lamb joint, cooking chocolate or a fruit selection. Forcing every Bible text into the same sermon shape may not be such a great solution!

8. Good Ingredients Cooked the Right Way. Please cook salmon differently to beef. Deal with each text and congregation and situation according to what and who they are.

9. The Fast Feast. Seven good but random courses back to back in half an hour, without either break in delivery or connection in content. Not ideal.

10. Non-gourmet home cooked healthy meal. It isn’t exciting. It won’t win a prize. But it may win hearts as you give of yourself to those you love. And over time, it will generate health like nothing else.

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit) 2

March 27, 2013March 26, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Four gospels do not automatically mean four accounts of everything. In fact, most of the ministry of Jesus is told in less than four gospels (except for the feeding of the 5000). But once you get into passion week, then you have four gospels giving their all to get the story across. This is both a goldmine and a potential distraction for preachers.

After all, we can piece together so many details of that first Easter. At the same time, we can easily lose the theological emphasis of whichever gospel we are wanting to preach.

It is good to check all the gospels for accuracy. You don’t want to preach from John and make an error according to Matthew or Mark. The passion narratives do harmonize, but it is not always immediately easy to see how. So be sure to check and be fresh on the historical harmonization, but . . .

Preach the passage, not the historical harmonization. I am preaching from John this year. I want to make sure that the listeners hear what John intended to communicate. The gospels are not a transcribed video script, they are carefully crafted presentations of the history artistically woven to achieve something specific in the hearer. Our task as preachers is not just to tell the history, but to trust that the Gospel writer knew what he was doing (since the capital “A” Author was fully at work in each of the Gospels), and to preach accordingly.

It is a privilege to have the Bible in our language and to be able to preach one of the accounts. Even if you rotate through the Gospels each Easter, it will be four years until you come back to this year’s Gospel. Be sure folks get to hear it this time around!

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit)

March 26, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Easter is not like Christmas. The latter tends to go unmentioned for most of the year, then people come out with expectations of hearing familiar content and carols. Easter is the real ground zero of the Christian faith. We tend to, or should, return to it week after week. So what do we do when Easter comes around?

Some might try to get clever at Easter . . . excessive creativity, abundant gory description, shocking video clips, etc.

Remember that regular church attendees need to hear the basic Easter story. Jesus left his disciples with a frequent reminder, an acted out parable that would help them remember Him: His body given, His blood shed. So don’t think we have to get clever at Easter. Those who know and love the Lord profoundly appreciate a carefully planned biblical presentation of the passion. They will appreciate a Matthew shaped message, or one in the Mark mold, or Luke’s take, or John’s. They probably won’t even notice a harmonized presentation from multiple gospels. They appreciate Paul’s reflections, or those in Hebrews, or even a glimpse of the Lamb looking as though it had been slain from Revelation. Pick a passage and preach it clearly. No need to be clever. Believers need to hear the ground zero Easter story.

Remember that visitors need to hear the basic Easter story too. Perhaps it is visitor season as families share holidays together. They may be interested, or they may be being polite. Whatever their motivation, what they need is clear and sim

ple. They don’t need obfuscated “modern art” preaching or a creatively nuanced oblique side-reference to the gospel. Pick a passage and preach it clearly. Everyone needs to hear the Easter story.

I am not advocating being boring or predictable. I am not critiquing creativity. Let’s certainly seek to be as effective as we can be in our communication of Easter. And let’s remember that effective can often mean simply preaching the basics: take people to ground zero and help them know the significance of what happened there.

Three Possibilities Preaching Psalms

March 19, 2013 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

As I am reading through the Bible I am currently in the Psalms – what a great book! Sadly, for some, Psalms seems to be preached only as filler material in the summer holidays. There is so much potential for preaching in the book of Psalms. Let me offer three possibilities opened up by preaching from this book:

1. You can introduce new treasure to people. People tend to be familiar with some Psalms. Probably 23. Perhaps 24, 1, 110, 121, 127, 51, 8, 73, 37, 27. But what about Psalm 36? Or 33? There is a whole host of Psalms that tend to get ignored in the annual audition for three filler sermons. And don’t just stick to the filler sermon approach. Why not preach Psalm 34 at the start of a series on 1Peter? It certainly was in the mind of the apostle as he wrote his epistle. Why not preach Psalm 118 in connection with Easter? It might add a new set of thoughts to the Easter considerations since Jesus would very likely have sung that with his disciples at the last supper.

2. You can connect with a different group of people. It may be a stereotype, but some have suggested that engineers enjoy epistles. They like the truth statements, logical flow, direct discourse. So if that is the case, who might appreciate the Psalms? Artists? Sure, and there are more of them than we tend to realise in every congregation. How about the suffering? Certainly. Psalms connects with different people at different times in the complexities of each personal biography.

3. You can offer a more vulnerable sermon. When David wrestles with spiritual realities, why not be more open that we do too? Personal sin struggles, doubting God’s goodness, tendency to trust in ourselves, feelings of extreme fatigue, etc. We don’t preach to preach ourselves, but we ourselves do preach. The Psalms opens up the possibility of greater vulnerability from the preacher, and hopefully stirs vulnerability in the congregation. The Psalm writers didn’t treat God as delicate or fragile, they blasted their prayers at Him. Perhaps we can stir greater prayer in churches that tend to pray religiously, and Psalms would be a worthwhile workshop for that kind of goal.

Biblical Girders 4

January 18, 2013 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Where does each girder go? The Bible has a superstructure that holds it all together. So the thematic element of the promised seed in Genesis 3:15 will work its way through multiple books and become overt in places like Galatians 3 at the other end of the canon. But this poses a challenge. How much should we be preaching Galatians 3 when we are supposed to be preaching Genesis 3?

Many preachers would see no problem with springing from Genesis to Galatians since that is the fulfillment and the clarification of what is first stated in the Garden of Eden. I am certainly not going to criticize the impulse to preach Christ and it would be strange to leave listeners wondering who that seed might be (unless such suspense were part of a bigger teaching strategy).

On the other hand, I do wonder if we can collapse themes forward too easily and lose some of the strength of the steel at that point in the biblical story? If the Bible were a building, then Genesis would be the foundation. Steel starting there does go through the whole structure and holds the whole together. Themes of creation, of relationship, of fellowship lost, of divine grace and rescue, of divine promise, etc. all work their way from Genesis on through the Bible. That steel girder seen in Genesis 3:15 later on turns out to be the spire at the top of the whole structure, the pinnacle of it all. It makes sense to let folks know the significance of that, but at the same time it makes sense to help people see the importance of the foundation.

That is to say, instead of immediately looking up to the spire that caps off the whole building, when we are preaching in Genesis lets be sure to help people see how the foundation fits together, how the hope offered by God’s grace in the seed of the woman is such a striking promise in the context of a spurned relationship in that first senseless human rebellion. That passage is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training, etc. So let’s preach Genesis 3, not just bounce off it to go straight to the spire. At the same time let’s not get our noses in the foundations and let people miss the grandeur of the whole.

It isn’t either/or, it surely needs to be both/and. And with that both/and, I think it needs to be honouring to the earlier text in its own right, not just a token glance.

Biblical Girders 3

January 17, 2013January 17, 2013 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I have been writing about Biblical Girders: those superstructure passages that form the skeleton that holds the Bible together. As well as key passages, we could well add a list of key themes that weave through the canon like ribbons. I did this earlier last year with the 10 Biggest Big Ideas series (click here to go to the first of those posts).

So what do we do if we recognize that people in our churches are foggy on the biblical superstructure? How can we help folk without turning the church into a lecture hall and losing the devotional and spiritual emphasis in our preaching? Some ideas:

1. Periodically Be Overtly Educational – Perhaps a seminar or evening class or group session where you trace through the superstructure. You will find that there are people in every church that have a genuine appetite to know the Bible better and will want to attend this kind of training if it is done well. You will also find that a false dichotomy between education and devotional spirituality need not be imposed. Take every opportunity, even in a “lecture” to woo people by the gracious work of God in biblical history.

2. Be Alert to the Girders – If you are preaching Genesis 22, Abraham offering up Isaac, be alert to the place of that story in the flow of the narrative. Take the opportunity to help people see it not as a stand-alone incident, but as the culmination of a journey over many decades for Abraham. Include and highlight the importance of Genesis 15 as you preach Genesis 22. When you preach about David and Bathsheba, don’t just look ahead to the fallout in his family life, but also look back to 2Samuel 7 and the amazing covenant God had made with him – highlight the importance of that to your listeners.

3. Preach the Girders – Take a miniseries and help people see the big picture of the Bible. Too many Christians make too many “surprised and helped” comments when they hear a Bible overview. This implies that it is not being offered enough.

4. Preach through Books Without Being “Flat” – When we preach through a book, it is easy to flatten it out into so many segments of equal length and apparently equal value. Instead, look for ways to point toward and back to passages in the book that have a “superstructure status” for the book and the Bible as a whole. Preaching through Habakkuk, don’t let 2:4 get lost in the mix.

Biblical Girders 2

January 16, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last time I wrote about biblical girders, the superstructure of the Bible that folks in churches tend to hear very little about. While not seeking to diminish the well-known passages, let’s consider whether we can help people know their Bibles better by bringing to their attention the existence and importance of some of the biblical girder passages.

Biblical Covenant Passages – A strong case can be made for seeing the biblical covenants as a skeleton on which the Bible is built. God’s promise and subsequent covenant with Abram/Abraham in Genesis 12, then 13, 15, 17 is critical. Then there’s the Mosaic content in Deuteronomy 27-30 (how often do we stumble across “who will ascend?” or “who has descended?” allusions in the New Testament?) Then God’s covenant with David in 2Samuel 7 and 1Chronicles 17. And, of course, the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36 and the latter part of Isaiah. Being unaware of these covenants is crippling if someone is wanting to grasp the Old Testament, or the development in the New Testament.

Biblically Quoted Passages – Some passages are quoted with a significant frequency. Sometimes the quote is actually just an allusion, but that doesn’t diminish its significance. Sometimes it proves the writer assumed hearers would spot it more easily. God’s spoken self-revelation in Exodus 34 runs like a refrain through the Old Testament. Psalms 2, 69 and 110 get their fair share of airtime once you get to the New Testament, as does Psalm 118 in reference to Jesus and Psalm 8 plays a key role in Hebrews. Genesis 15:6 comes out three significant times, as does Habakkuk 2:4. The lesser known part of Isaiah 6 does some heavy lifting, as does the allusion to Daniel 7. And in the passion of Christ, where you might expect lots of references to Genesis 22 (Abraham & Isaac), instead you find lots of Davidic Psalms and Zechariah quotes.

Structurally Significant Passages – Some passages seem to serve a key purpose in the structure of a book or a section. Joshua 1 serves a key transitional function between the Torah and the Kethubim. Psalm 73 seems to provide the hinge for the turn in the flow of the whole collection. John 11-12 offer a significant transition in John’s Gospel.

There are many more that could be listed. The point is that many of these are less familiar to most people in the church than David’s slaying Goliath, or Naaman dipping in the Jordan, or Daniel in the den of lions, or Jesus calming the storm, or Paul in prison in Philippi. All important, but in terms of grasping the flow and message of the whole Bible, perhaps there are too many gaps at critical points.

Biblical Girders

January 14, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I started a three-week series where I am trying to give folks a sense of how accessible and thrilling the Old Testament is. I am using three mornings for a landmark highlight tour to get a sense of the flow of the history. And in the evenings I am wanting to give a more in-depth look at some of the critical passages that are so easily overlooked.

Why are some critical passages overlooked? Let’s start with identifying the reasons before considering some of the girders in the architecture of the Bible.

1. Sunday School teaching. Naturally Sunday School teachers tend to focus on narratives that are accessible to children. Perhaps less wisely, they can also tend toward narratives that offer moralistic “lessons” (this can serve to obscure the gospel, but that is a post for another day). So for those growing up going to Sunday school, there will be a bank of familiar stories.

2. Preacher Passage Picks. Whether it is selection of passages for preaching, or choice of biblical allusions and illustrations, preachers also can do the same as Sunday school teachers (perhaps justifiably so in many cases – no point referring to something people don’t know). So for an example, the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in Genesis 22 will be reinforced repeatedly, while the Genesis 15 account of the covenant ceremony remains largely unknown.

3. Devotional Reading. Whether people use guiding notes or read the Bible for themselves, they will tend to be directed toward the familiar passages. So there is a reinforcing of passages that may or may not be as “load-bearing” as others. Isaiah 6:1-8 is well known, the rest of the chapter is often overlooked. But which part functions as a girder for the building of the biblical macro-structure?

I’m sure there are other reasons to add to this list, but hopefully this gives a sense of the situation. People are more familiar with Psalm 23 than Psalms 2 or 110, even though the biblical reliance on the latter examples is greater than the more familiar 23rd Psalm. This is not about diminishing the wonderful passages that are more familiar. A large part of why they are taught and preached and read and known is because they have made such a difference in peoples’ lives. But perhaps we do need to think about helping folks know some other critical passages more than they typically do.

Space: Dreaming and Planning

October 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week I’ve been pondering space, which seems to be increasingly hard to find. Our world seems to be getting noisier and busier, but also ministry demands tend to increase over time for preachers too (presumably demand drops off eventually!) In the midst of the busy schedule of the immediate, we need to get time to dream and to plan.

1. Planning future preaching. Somewhere in the schedule it is worth making time to think through ideas for preaching beyond the present series or preferred sections. It is easy to get repetitive, or even stuck, when there is no space to pull back, look up and look ahead. Some preachers take a week out each year and sketch out a rough plan for a year’s worth of preaching. For others it might not be so organised, but there is still benefit to thinking through where you might do well to go in your preaching. Obviously circumstances change, the needs of the church change, there has to be room for change. But it isn’t good leadership to always be in a purely reactive mode. What sections of the canon have you not touched for a while, or ever? What types of preaching have you not used in a while, or ever? What subjects would stretch you, and others?

2. Planning future ministry. There is more to ministry than preaching. But if we live in the cycle of deadlines, we can easily fall into just preaching. But what about training others? That doesn’t happen accidentally. You won’t mentor and launch others, or mentor to replace yourself, if you don’t put some planning into it. What about writing? Some should stop trying. Others should create time to make it happen. What about training I should be getting now for ministry in the future? That could be as informal as reading on a subject, or as formal as pursuing a degree in an area. None of this happens by accident.

3. Dreaming future ministry. Somehow planning isn’t enough. God is able to do abundantly more than we ask or even imagine. Do we dare to dream? For some of us, God doesn’t have much to do to surpass our imaginations! We need to create space to dream of what could be, what should be, what might be. I know this seems crazy, but imagine if . . . and if God would . . . then maybe . . . It is hard to quantify what might happen if we all took time to pray and dream, chasing the desires of our hearts with a God who delights to give in line with the yearning He has birthed in us.