Eco-Preaching: Recycled Sermons Must Be Refreshed

January 31, 2012January 30, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I don’t believe a preacher should pull out an old sermon and just preach it, unless the invitation to preach was five seconds before the sermon slot. Any longer notice and the preacher should be prayerfully refreshing the message.

Undoubtedly, a recycled sermon takes less preparation time than a sermon from scratch on a passage previously never preached. But my suggestion, if you are preparing to re-preach an old sermon, would be to follow a process along these lines:

1. Prayerfully consider the text itself before looking at the old notes or outline. Even if you only have time for a brief engagement with the text, there needs to be a freshness about your approach to it, even if the end result remains the same in terms of message outline and details (since the passage does communicate something specific, and that, at one level, does not change). Be sure to feel the impact of the text on your heart as you pray through it.

2. Prayerfully consider the specifics of this occasion before looking at the old notes or outline. It is good to get a clear image of who the message will be preached to on this occasion. What are their circumstances, what are their needs?

3. Prayerfully walk through the whole passage preparation process as you reconsider the previously preached sermon (or ideally, your old exegetical notes). Why are you selecting this text? What are the pertinent elements of exegesis that should drive your understanding of this text? What do you now think was the author’s purpose in writing this text? Is that main idea still the best summary you can make of this text? You may find that your interim growth and biblical studies have changed your level of understanding so that you start tweaking your old passage or study notes. If you only look at the end product (outline, notes, etc.) then you are preaching without the richness of the exegesis that didn’t make it into the notes, but was fresh on your heart.

4. Prayerfully walk through the message preparation process as you reconsider the old sermon. What is your message purpose this time, this congregation, this occasion? Can you improve the message idea to fit this particular preaching event, or to better reflect the text’s idea? Is your old outline the most effective idea delivery strategy? Do the details of introduction, conclusion and “illustrative materials” fit? You may well find that the message also changes in some ways.

5. If at all possible, prayerfully preach it through out loud. Listeners can spot a stale notes-dependent presentation. Just because it looks ok on paper, does not mean it can be preached with freshness from your heart and mouth. Run through it and prayerfully “own it” again.

This may seem like a lot of work, but actually I could do this process in less than a couple of hours (plus the run through of step 5). This is a lot less time than a full sermon from scratch, and as we’ll see tomorrow, time saving is not the only benefit.

Eco-Preaching: Ever Old, Always New

January 30, 2012January 30, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

This week I’d like to go green and consider the notion of recycling sermons. We’ll touch on different aspects of this broad subject over the next few days (although there may be a quiet day or two as we have a baby imminently joining the family!) To get us started, two fundamental thoughts:

Ever Old – Every sermon we preach is made of recycled materials. All of us are standing on the shoulders of the giants who’ve gone before us (and sadly some are standing on the shoulders of non-giants too). If I stop to think about it, as I prepare a message, I am in the debt of so many people, and I never have new source material.

Ever Old Influences: As I think about yesterday’s two messages, there are too many influences to name. My mind scans over the preachers I have heard over the years, the professors at seminary who taught me how to handle the Bible, who taught through those particular books in survey or exegesis courses, who taught me the languages, who taught me homiletics and theology and pastoral ministry, etc. I think of the conversation partners I turned to in the form of commentaries, and the footnotes attest to some of those that influenced them. I could go on, but you see my point. I’ve preached hundreds of messages, probably into the thousands, and it would be a bit self-aggrandizing to suggest that I have generated more than a few truly original thoughts.

Ever Old Material: While I pulled out a few illustrative elements for yesterday (and didn’t look them up in an anthology of distant impersonal illustrations), the bulk of the material was the Word of God.We must be ever wary of the temptation to think our thoughts, be they original or probably not, are somehow better source material than the ever living Word of God! Yesterday in the course of my preaching I returned to texts that I’ve preached in this church in the past year, and without apology. We need to hear God’s Word.

Always New – Every sermon we preach is new. The text of Scripture doesn’t change, but everything else does. The preacher can never stand still. Either the preacher has grown, or the preacher has stagnated and changed negatively, but life never stands still. Two congregations can never be the same in constituents or their circumstances, even if it is the same church. The situation is always fresh. Different preacher, different listeners, different occasion, different set of needs. I suppose, in theory, I could preach the same text in the same church once a month for the next several years and never preach an identical sermon.

Tomorrow we’ll probe a bit beyond this foundational level as we seek to be good stewards of a preaching ministry.

Saturday Short Thought: Concluding Chronicles and Biblical Theology

January 28, 2012January 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Over the past three weeks I have been preaching a series in 2Chronicles 26-36, which is effectively the end of the Hebrew canon (in the typical Jewish ordering of books), and the conclusion of the backwards looking summary of the Old Testament. Because my wife is expecting any day, I am uncertain of being able to preach tomorrow, and so made sure I finished the series last week. But I now have (potentially) another two messages in the series tomorrow since the baby seems to be comfortable where it is.

This leaves me in the nice position of being finished with the series, yet not finished. My plan is to allow an aspect of Biblical theology to put the finishing touches on the series. Let me explain.

One of the big themes in the last chapters of Chronicles is that of the devotion of the kings to the Lord. Some were, some weren’t. And the biggest manifestation in pre-exile Israel lay in the issue of overt idolatry. As the book ends, hope dawns with Cyrus’ decree that the temple should be rebuilt. Perhaps God’s promise to David will be fulfilled after all?

So in the progression of revelation, we move to a post-exilic Israel where overt idolatry was never a feature again. Historically we see this determination for purity in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but canonically, the next step from Chronicles is Matthew. It’s a new world in Israel in Jesus’ day. No physical idols. But no idols?

Jesus addresses the issue of the less tangible idolatry of his day in the Sermon on the Mount. And the beauty of this is that Matthew 6 speaks so directly to our, typically non-physical idol, cultural setting. In post-exilic Israel, as in the modern Western world, money has become the “ba’al” for many. Yet the issue of our devotion to God remains paramount. Who is bigger in our eyes? The false god, indeed the replacement god of financial security, or the true God who really cares?

So maybe I will get to preach Matthew 6 tomorrow to finish the Chronicles series. Maybe I’ll get to push further into the New Testament and consider other areas of covert idolatry facing believers today. Or maybe I won’t!

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Next Week? Eco-Preaching: Recycling Sermons

Be Quick to Look, Slow to Decide

January 27, 2012January 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

This week we began another season of Cor Deo – a small group of people longing to know God more and grow closer to Him. We had some great discussions, studied some wonderful passages and enjoyed getting to know each other. One discussion moment was the highlight of the week for me. A passage was raised and considered. The more we looked at it, the more it opened up for us.

Here’s the thing. If we had looked at just the particular verse, even a good few minutes of studying it wouldn’t have been enough. We had to look at the surrounding context. By the end of our time in that passage, my own view of it had changed significantly. But we could have easily misunderstood the verse, even with our initial reading the context.

As we look at any passage in the Bible, we must be quick to look and slow to decide.

Quick to look at context – This is not the same as looking quickly at context. What is going on before and after the passage? What is the tone of the section? What is the flow of the section? In the case of the verse we were considering, it began an apparently new section in the epistle, but we had to go back and see what came before or we would have misunderstood it.

Quick to look at connectives – The flow of the text depends, in part, on the author’s use of “for” and “therefore” and “so” and “and”, etc. Little words that make a big difference. In this case I continued to ponder the passage after others were off into broader context, and looking at the connectives I started to ponder the structure.

Quick to look at syntax – What was the structure of that paragraph? What is the dominant thought and what is subordinate/supportive? Phrase by phrase, how does it work?

Slow to decide – Without the extra looking and being open to learning about the flow and structure of the immediate context, our target verse would have been essentially misunderstood. Every one of us had an automatic sense about the verse, but careful observation proved that our sense was wrong. I am so glad for that reminder of the importance of being quick to look, but slow to decide. I’d hate to have preached it the way that seemed obvious from first reading, when in fact the whole tone of the text is almost a polar opposite!

Saturday Short Thought: Taught by the Spirit (with Reeves Quote)

January 21, 2012January 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here’s a concern I feel needs to be addressed as the week comes to an end:

“When we just prayerfully look at the Bible text, then the Spirit can direct us and teach us.” (Implication: if you look at “the words of humans,” such as in commentaries, then you will not hear God’s Spirit.)

I stumbled across the same notion in a conversation this week. “You went to Bible school, but I’ve been taught by the Holy Spirit.” But? Just because one claims to only be taught by the Spirit, this does not mean one has received more training from the Spirit.

Whether we are talking about use of commentaries or the privilege of “formal” study, let’s not make this false step of restricting where God’s Spirit can work. This is similar to the nonsensical idea that the Spirit works when we don’t prepare a message, but is absent if we do prepare.

We absolutely need God’s Spirit at work in us as we prepare to preach, both in respect to understanding the Bible text, and in terms of sensitively applying it to those who will listen. As one person put it this week, “Hearing how God has spoken to the community over the ages about the text will only give the Spirit more chance to speak, not less.”

Not only does the Spirit want to work in our biblical study, and in our ministry, but in light of yesterday’s book review, he most certainly wants to work in our hearts too. What does he want to do there? Let me finish with a quote from Reeves’ new book (p73):

My new life began when the Spirit first opened my eyes and won my heart to Christ. Then, for the first time, I began to enjoy and love Christ as the Father has always done. And through Christ, for the first time, I began to enjoy and love the Father as the Son has always done. That was how it started, and that is how the new life goes on: by revealing the beauty, love, glory and kindness of Christ to me, the Spirit kindles in me an ever deeper and more sincere love for God. And as he stirs me to think ever more on Christ, he makes me more and more God-like: less self-obsessed and more Christ-obsessed.

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Next week: Two-Person Preaching?

The Preacher & Commentaries: Gathering Conversation Partners

January 19, 2012January 19, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Commentaries are conversation partners. They are not gurus who must be silently listened to and obeyed. They are not an equal panel of experts who deserve equal time at the microphone. And they are certainly not fools to be left unheard. They are conversation partners.

Conversation partners can be so valuable, but its worth picking them wisely. Conversation partners can be so helpful, but conversation requires both sides to speak. Thus it is important that we engage the text first in order to have an opinion to bring to the conversation. Then, when we get there, we can interact with the others at the table. Some of them we’ll find stimulating and helpful, others we might find inconsistent or agenda driven. We may tune some out. We may listen at length to others. But the key is conversation.

Don’t come to a commentary as a dumb animal ready to carry away whatever is offered. Converse. Let’s say I’ve been working in Romans and I am ready for some conversation. Who do I invite to the table? What do I bring to the table? The more I bring, the better the conversation will be. “Doug, I see it this way, what about you?” “Tom, what’s your take on that?” “And James(Jimmy)? Oh, I see where you’re coming from! But what about these verses?” “Leon, anything to add?”

Now a conversation with Douglas Moo, Thomas Schreiner, James Dunn and Leon Morris – that would be worth having! Let’s bring in Cranfield, Murray and Calvin for good measure. This is the table to sit at in the biblical studies conference dining hall!

A few quick thoughts on buying commentaries (gathering the conversation partners):

1. If you can, try before you buy (library, google books, friend, etc.) If not, at least get good recommendations (such as on bestcommentaries.com).

2. Let your ministry provoke your purchases. I take a sermon series as a good excuse to buy a commentary or two if my library is lacking in that area. 2nd Chronicles now, Acts next.

3. Build a quality library slowly, rather than a junk collection fast. The personal library is a vital tool of the preacher. Even if it is only five books, if they are five good books, then it is worth having! Don’t rush, don’t get into debt, and don’t buy books with more hype on the cover than content in the pages.

4. Building an electronic library may save you money, but it may not. Last week we looked at software options – here’s the link.

Radio Interview: The Leadership File

January 18, 2012January 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

A few weeks ago I was invited to head into London for an interview on Premier Christian Radio, with Andy Peck on The Leadership File. The show was broadcast on the 18th December, and is now available on demand in two 12-minute segments:

Part 1 is here

Part 2 is here

(I can’t get the media player to work on Safari, but it will on Firefox. I know others have had issues. I had to install Quicktime plugin on Firefox on a PC. Anyway, hopefully you can get it to work, here’s the page for the show.)

The Preacher & Commentaries: Don’t Preach Them

January 18, 2012January 16, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

Commentaries are resources for preachers, not sources for sermons. They are tools that help us in the passage study phase of our preparation. They are not a sermon bank of material waiting to be pilfered and preached.

If you read the introductory preface to a commentary (which would be unusual behaviour, I suspect!) you will see that the commentary or series is targeted toward a specific audience. Perhaps it is aimed at non-Greek trained lay people, or at seminarians, pastors and Bible teachers with some Greek, or whatever. In reality, these categories are so broad that I would prefer to view them not as targeted communication, but as descriptions of a range within which the writer offers his or her explanation.

Preaching is different. When you preach your goal is not just explanation to a broad audience, but targeted transformation in a specific audience. You can be much more specific in knowing who your listeners are and what they need to hear – not only by way of explanation, but also with an emphasis on application.

Here are three more related comments on preaching and commentaries:

1. Watch out for atomisation. The vast majority of commentaries are highly atomistic. While a good commentator will be aware of the discourse level unity of the passage, it is hard to find commentaries that are overtly aware of the macro level flow within a book. It seems to me that often the commentator is so engrossed in the phrase-by-phrase explanation, that a stretch and coffee break before proceeding with the writing can lead to a sense of atomisation in the end product. The preacher is not offering a book where the listener can go back and review the section introduction, or re-read complex sentences. The preacher is offering an aural exposure to both explanation and application of a text. Different.

2. Only quote a commentary if the quote is exceptionally valuable. You don’t need to prove you read commentaries (or checked in with Calvin, or whoever). You don’t need to feel inadequate to be the preacher (though we all are) – they invited you to preach, not Doug Moo or Tom Schreiner. Study and prepare to the point that you can effectively explain and apply the text. Only quote a sentence or two from a commentary if it really is uniquely pithy, arresting, compelling and gripping, not to mention helpful!

3. Don’t feel obligated to cite your sources. If you do quote, no need to cite sources every time. Preaching is not an academic essay. Sometimes the reference to an unknown name can be unhelpful, sometimes (depending on the name), downright distracting or humourous! If who it was makes a difference, cite them (i.e.Churchill), but if not, just say “one writer put it like this…” (anyone who cares can always ask you afterwards).

Tomorrow we’ll think about gathering good conversation partners around us.

The Preacher and Commentaries: They Shouldn’t Be Out Alone

January 17, 2012January 17, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Commentaries should not be out alone. It’s much safer if they travel in groups of at least two.

Let’s say that I have done my work in the text and want to interact with a commentary. I turn my chair and reach toward the shelf. I tend to always grab at least two. (Sometimes they are on the computer, but same principle applies.) Why? There are a couple of reasons:

1. Because different commentaries offer different strengths. So I might choose to look at a single-volume commentary that will give me quick access to background matters and quick flowing summary of the passage. But I also would benefit from looking closely at a key section in the passage, which I would get from a more technical exegetical commentary. And I might go somewhere else again for slightly expanded applicational nudges.

So for a slightly overworked example, if I were working on a passage like Hebrews 11:13-16, I might find it helpful to get the overview of a single volume commentary like the Bible Knowledge Commentary or New Bible Commentary. I might get slightly more coverage, but still not probing the text technically, from Expositors Bible Commentary or the Bible Speaks Today volume. Then for technical wrestling with the text, I might grab for Ellingworth’s NIGTC, or Lane’s WBC, or Bruce in the NICNT series. (Actually with Hebrews, I’d also be checking Koester’s ABC and maybe Attridge’s Hermeneia volume.) Then there is Guthrie’s very good NIV Application Commentary too. That’s quite the gang of scholars! And I haven’t mentioned older ones like Owen or Calvin.

2. Because one voice tends to be more compelling than two in dialogue. Ok, it is a bit unrealistic for most of us to have access to a library selection like that one, but we must be careful not to rely on a single voice. Some people love MacArthur, or McGee, or Tom Wright, etc. Even without raising concerns about single voice complete Bible series, I do want to raise concerns about just listening to one voice in a single book. If you only read one, then they will probably seem compelling to you (or easily dismissed by your superior knowledge). That is the main reason I always grab two from the shelf. Compare and contrast, and you will reap more than double the benefit (as long as your collection isn’t completely mono-vocal in that it is all from the same theological camp).

Tomorrow I want to point out that commentary and preaching are not the same!

The Preacher & Commentaries: Don’t Lump Them All Together

January 16, 2012January 16, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the use of commentaries. There are some extreme views around in Christian circles. For instance, some seem to suggest that commentaries should be avoided at all costs, as if they have a sinister agenda. Others will quote an interpretation and treat it as sacrosanct because it was in a commentary.

Two views, both with their unique issues, both making the same error. The first view seems strangely oblivious to the unique privilege we have in our time of the accessibility of some very high quality resources, both in print and online. They may prepare on an up to date computer and drive to church in a modern car, but be positively pre-modern in their non-use of scholarship.

The second view seems to be caught in the glare of flashbulbs as the wonder of publication seems to blind their discernment faculties. Just because something is in print, doesn’t make it right. We all know that with certain newspapers, but some lose that awareness when the book has a hard cover on it.

Both views are making the same mistake though – they both lump all commentaries together. But, not all commentaries are created equal. Some are devotional, others are technical; some are written for the preacher, others for the scholar; some take interpretation seriously, others seem to use the Scripture as a launch point for doctrinal or precious thoughts; some believe God inspired the Bible, others don’t; some are written by Reformed, others by Arminian, others by Dispensational, others by Roman Catholics, others by … you get the point.

Some don’t lump them all together. More than once I’ve come across people who will quote Matthew Henry’s commentary as if it were second only to the Bible, yet express deep distrust of contemporary evangelical commentators. Perhaps this is the power of the familiar, and therefore, perceived to be trustworthy?

So let’s be careful not to subconsciously treat all commentaries as equal – either by dismissing all, or automatically trusting all. Even in a specific series, there will be stronger and weaker commentaries. So when buying paper commentaries it makes most sense to pick and mix to get the best from different series (although with software options, it may make sense to buy complete series due to cost).

There are so many commentaries, but whatever we do, let’s not just lump them all together. Some are worth their weight in gold, some quite simply aren’t. Tomorrow I will offer a safety warning for commentaries.