Stage 3 – Passage Purpose

Pseudo-Expository Preaching

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

If you have a commitment to expository Biblical preaching as it is understood on this site, then some versions of preaching obviously stand out as poor.  The anecdotal platitudinal rambling with a verse attached won’t fool many of us.  The non-expository topical sermon where verses aren’t handled with care and the Bible isn’t in authority over the message, we can usually spot those too (note that it is possible to preach an expository-topical message, so not all topical is bad!)  But the category I label as pseudo-expository can be much harder to spot.

Pseudo-Expository Preaching defined – Pseudo-exp preaching is where the preacher appears to be preaching the text, but falls short of any of the four elements in an expository preaching definition.  The four elements are (1) the work of the Holy Spirit in preparation and delivery, (2) the true meaning of the passage understood, (3) then effectively communicated through the preacher, (4) emphasizing the relevance of the passage to the listeners present.

1 – The Holy Spirit. True preaching cannot be simply the application of a mechanistic preparation process, or simply the fruit of good learning.  True preaching has to be a work of God.  This is very difficult to genuinely discern in others.  Sometimes you can tell from a preacher’s attitude or lifestyle.  But these can be faked.  Yet if we turn the focus onto ourselves, it becomes a searching question – is your preaching done in your own power, or in prayerful and humble reliance on the empowering of the Spirit of God?

2 – The Bible text rightly understood. Some people will be fooled by preaching that bounces off words in a text to say whatever the preacher wants to say.  But true preaching reflects genuine study and understanding of the text. Genuine study and understanding will not be equally profound in every preacher.  If you feel inadequate in this area, don’t be intimidated and give up.  Keep growing in your study skills and your Bible knowledge.  In respect to the next message, try to stick in your passage and grasp it as effectively as you can.  The basics done well will be a blessing to all.  But if you short-cut by bouncing off words, or using the text to give your own message, then that’s pseudo-expository.

Tomorrow I’ll deal with the other two elements and note how they can be missed to create a pseudo-exp sermon.

Application: Specific Not Facile

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When it comes to the application of a message, there are many options.  One is to ignore it completely and leave it up to the Holy Spirit (not a good option since it’s part of our job as preachers . . . by this logic why do we preach at all?)  Another is to be vague and ethereal in application, positing plain platitudes (not a good option since people will affirm any attempt at application, but that doesn’t mean it made any difference in their lives).  Another approach, popular in some circles, is to always give a very specific action step in every message (again, this is open to question since some texts don’t lend themselves to facile or purely practical action steps, and listeners can grow burdened by the pressure of ever growing action lists).

So how do we make sure application is specific, without making the grandeur of God’s Word look puny by pathetic pedantry?  I would suggest that we make sure we are really understanding a passage as intended by the author, in all it’s beauty and power, before we start trying to come up with applications.  We have a tendency to leap to applications and then somehow make every passage into a “witness more” or “live better” kind of passage. Once you’ve come to a decent level of grasping the meaning of the passage, then you have a hope of good application.

It is always worth starting with the original recipients. What was the author trying to do in them by this act of communication?  If we can grasp that, then we are halfway to applying it today.  If the original intent was to motivate a specific action step, then ours might well follow suit.  If the original intent was to convince of a theological truth, then perhaps we should aim for the same.

Still, how do we earth the message in the lives of today’s listener?  How do we apply, whether it is to the heart, to the mind, and/or to the actions of the listener?  Remember that vague application will float around nicely in the vaulted roof, but it won’t change lives.  Think about yourself.  What is this passage specifically doing to me as I study it?  Think about specific individuals in the church.  What is the message of this passage looking to do in the life of Sarah the tired young mother?  What is it straining to do in the life of Harry, the retired retailer with financial worries?  What will it do if let loose in the life of Josh the recent graduate with no employment but a fiancee to make the future look bright?  For specific and helpful application, earth it in the lives of specific people.

Why Why Matters

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The question “why?” is critical for good preaching.

Why did the author write the passage? Wrestling with the intent of the author is critical if the goal is to understand the passage.  This means not only asking “what does the passage say?” – that is, content.  But also asking “why did the author write it?” – that is, intent.  Many people don’t consider the author at all, which is a big mistake.  Others consider the content carefully, but fail to ask “why?” This results in incomplete exegesis of the passage, which dooms the message to inherent weakness.

Why are you preaching this message? If this question is not asked, then we may fall into the trap of merely fulfilling routine, filling time, or even “doing our job.”  But really, it is important to ask why you are preaching the message.  This implies another “why?” question.  Why do these people need to hear this passage?  Prayerfully considering the needs of the listeners in light of the message of the passage will drive the preacher toward clarity in message purpose.  If my goal is to fill time, I am surely a master of that (who among us is not highly skilled in the rhetorical art of waffling?)  However, if my goal is driven by the text and the spiritual needs of those who will listen, then this will drive me to my knees in prayer and dependence on God.  The “why?” question matters because it forces clarity in purpose and reliance on God.

Why is that there? Not only does “why?” help in the big macro issues of understanding the text and determining the message purpose, it is also helpful in the micro issues of message detail.  Why is that illustration there?  Why use that quote?  Why am I planning to mention that historical detail?  Why does that exegetical note need to be stated?  Why do I take so long explaining that verse?  Why am I not explaining this term?  Every detail in the message should pass through the x-ray machine of the “why?” question.  Extraneous detail, whether in explanation or illustration, is not neutral, it is harmful.  Unnecessary stuffing, pieces without purpose, undermines the bigger “why?” of message purpose.

I’m not sure if it is possible to ask “why?” too many times in sermon preparation. “Why?” matters!

U.O.P. – Onus On Us

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Unity.  Order.  Progress.  Three essentials in effective communication of a message.  Yet it strikes me that we can sometimes take these for granted when we are preaching on a single passage.  Unity?  One passage.  Order?  Moving through the passage.  Progress?  Getting closer to the end.  If this is all we have, then I suspect our preaching may be bordering on boring, among other things.

Unity.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. After all, the content of a message “united” by a single passage can be totally random in examples, references, illustrations, etc.  If we work at grasping the distilled single sentence main idea of the passage, then there is hope of unity in the preaching.  But if we simply bounce off the text and go where our thoughts lead us, then there is no limit to the disunity that can result in our preaching.  How often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage that seem to feel compelled to refer to fifteen others?

Order.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. For example, if you are preaching a ten-verse chunk of text, simply moving from the first to the last does not guarantee a sense of order.  If we fail to wrestle with the text and grasp the essential flow of thought in the passage, then we may simply jump off apparently disconnected thoughts in each successive mini-chunk, resulting in an apparently disordered collection of thoughts.  Surely the biblical writers were not presenting disconnected mini-thoughts?  Yet how often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage, yet at the end we as listeners have little grasp on the flow of thought in the text, little sense that the passage itself actually makes sense?

Progress.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. As we preach, listeners should be moving with us through the combined explanation and application of the text in the experience we call a sermon.  There should be a start.  Then there should be the sense that we’re heading toward a finish.  If we fail to wrestle with the text enough to grasp the movement and purpose of the passage, if we fail to craft the message into a plot or journey that goes somewhere, then what happens?  We end up with a pedantic and plodding presentation.  How often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage, yet all around we sense that others are looking at the text, as we are, to see how much more of the message there is still to come?  These things ought not to be!

Unity, order and progress.  These are evident in each unit of biblical text.  But the onus is on us as preachers to make sure they are clearly present in our message on that text – the text alone will not guarantee it!

Preach for Faith

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Probably it’s a combination of attending an apologetically driven conference and being scheduled to preach on faith this Sunday, but I’m pondering preaching for faith.  I suppose that is always close to the heart of the matter in Christian preaching.  Anyway, here are a couple of thoughts, although this could be a series of posts for the rest of the month.

The critical role of God’s Word. Right back in Genesis 3 everything “went wrong” when?  When they doubted God’s Word and listened to another “authority.”  Surely God’s Word couldn’t be trusted since this impressive creature had disobeyed it and yet still lived?  So they ate and they died spiritually, they began to die physically and the whole creation began to suffer death.  From that decisive moment on, the Bible is full of narratives, all of which have a big question mark hanging over them like an unfurled banner – “will people trust God’s Word or not?”  Interestingly, when God’s Son steps into the world to make a path back to deep relational intimacy with God, He comes as God’s Word.  Will he be trusted?  Doubting God’s word in the first place led us away, now there is a symmetry in the remedy in that we are asked to trust God’s Word (incarnated and inscripturated) in order to be brought back.  Consequently Paul writes to the Romans that faith comes by hearing, so the Word of God must be preached.  Peter tells his readers that they were born again through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and through the living and enduring Word of God.  Hebrews urges the believers to remember their leaders who spoke the Word of God to them, and thereby imitate their faith.  In John 17, Jesus prays concerning the Word of God that He has given to His followers, and prays that they will be sanctified by the truth, which is the Word.  I could go on pulling example after example, but the point is critical – the preaching of the Word of God is absolutely central to the purposes of God in redeeming a lost world.

So the simple question is this – as you look at your message this Sunday, what is the appropriate faith response to God’s Word as preached in your message?  Is it clear?  Is it central?

In the next post I’d like to share some provocative thoughts on faith from Dr John Lennox.

Preacher Say Something

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday my wife had to spend the day in the hospital having blood taken every hour.  So I received regular updates by text message (SMS).  She was listening to some CDs she’d been sent.  Teaching on the subject of the family.  I received a sort of running commentary by text message.  The bottom line?  This preacher had taken a long time to say nothing.  Sort of a safari through Scripture making passing observations about families in the Bible (“Oh look!  There’s another one!”).  A great opportunity, but he’d essentially just filled time.

I am not one to spend hours trying to fix a broken pipe.  I tend to think that if I can afford to have someone else do the work, then I will, because my time is also worth something (and because I’m rubbish at fixing things and will end up paying anyway!)  If I spend four hours to save fifty pounds ($75), have I really saved any money?  Likewise, when we are preaching, we are asking people to sit and listen to us for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, however long you preach.  Please don’t just fill time.  Say something.  Study the text until you grasp it, until it grasps you, then say the text’s something.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to scan over this Sunday’s message once it is ready to roll out.  Is there any filler?  Is there any pointless meandering?  Is there any “saying something and nothing?”  Why is that line there?  And that paragraph?  What about that illustration?  In the past I wrote a post entitled “Please only powerpoint on purpose.”  I suppose I could steal my own line to conclude this post – please only produce preaching prose on purpose.

3 DQ’s – Dynamite Questions

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Okay, that should be “developmental questions,” but they are dynamite.  Sunukjian and others have followed Robinson in making quite a fuss of these three questions.  I would encourage you to do the same.  The questions represent the three ways in which a stated idea can be developed.  There are no other ways to develop an idea than in these three directions:

1. What does it mean? (Explain)

2. Is it true? (Prove)

3. What difference does it make? (Apply)

The great thing about knowing these three questions is that they are so versatile:

Use them in studying the passage – Unless the writer is moving on to a new idea, these three questions can help you understand what is going on in the passage.  Not only do they move you toward an understanding of content, but also authorial intent – which is so valuable as you wrestle with a passage.

Use them in developing your main idea – Consider your listeners in order to determine which of the three developmental questions are needed to develop your message.  If they don’t understand the idea, there’s no point jumping to application without further explanation.  Just because people understand what you are saying, it doesn’t mean they are convinced – perhaps proof and support is needed?

Use them in developing each movement in the message – What works on a macro level also works in the chunks.  With these three questions as keys to developing your ideas as you communicate, you need never scratch your head for things to say (few of us struggle with that), or simply pad the message with pointless filler materials (some of us may struggle with that!)

I don’t advocate a predictable and slavish repetition of these three questions under each point of a message.  I know some that do and the result is both predictable and often unengaging, not to mention how it can turn every genre into a dissected discourse.  However, it is not a bad discipline to be asking yourself these three questions, both in study of the passage and in preparation of the message.

What If You’re Not Ready?

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

It is so important to understand the text before you preach it!  I don’t mean just knowing what the big words mean.  I don’t mean just having a collection of exegetical insights to share.  I don’t mean even having a sermon vaguely based on certain parts of the text.  I mean really understanding what the text is saying – understanding it’s unity, it’s message, it’s point, it’s purpose, it’s role in the broader flow of thought in the book.  What if you’re not ready though?

Suggestion with several caveats to follow: If you’re not ready, don’t preach it.  Instead preach an old message again that you are confident is biblically sound.

Just think what an example that might be for the congregation!  “We were scheduled to be in Epistle XYZ 4:15-22, but I’ve been studying it over several weeks and still am not there yet – some passages take real work to really grasp!  So I’ll keep on studying, but for today, let’s look again at . . . ”

Caveats a coming!

1. Chances are, they won’t remember a message you re-preach.  But it would be honest to tell them it’s worth a second look at this old message rather than trying to “slip it through.”

2. Recognize that as a Bible student we never fully plumb the depths of any passage and as a preacher we shouldn’t really present all the plumbs either!  It takes wisdom to know the difference between “I’ll never fully plumb this passage” and “I haven’t grasped the fundamental unity and flow of thought in this passage.

3. It is in no way a good example if you simply started too late.

4. Whether you are a paid pastor preaching weekly, or an unpaid preacher preaching periodically, there is an element of commitment involved.  It will undermine your credibility if you follow the above suggestion more than very rarely!  (In fact, if you are only doing one section in a series from the same book, you can’t simply make the subsequent weeks shift by missing your section.  Get help earlier in the process and make sure you grasp the passage before you preach it, for surely you must preach it!)

5. It is probably better to take this post as a strong prod to really be prepared, rather than actually trying what I suggest!  (I’d be interested to hear if anyone has ever publically announced their need for more time to study a certain passage!)

Short Cuts to Nowhere Good

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There are a couple of short-cuts taken by many preachers that need to be highlighted for the sake of Biblical Preaching.  Please be sure to read the explanation as well as the heading (it’s amazing how people miss the point of what’s written sometimes!)

1. Prayer. Prayer is not a short-cut.  It is a necessity.  It is critical.  However, it is not a short-cut.  In fact, praying in preparation will probably make the preparation take longer, but it is worth the longer journey.  Many preachers think that all they need to do is pray and then preach their impressions.  This is neither pleasing to the Lord nor helpful for the listeners.  Why do some preachers think God is so pleased when they essentially dismiss the Bible by skirting around the study process in preparation?  I suspect that if we pray “Lord, please show me what I should say from this text!” that His answer would include “I want you to say what the text says.” God takes His Word very seriously, so should we, and prayer is not short-cut around the blessing of spending significant time and effort wrestling with the true and exact meaning of the passage.

Tomorrow I will add another short-cut that is not worth taking if we are to be Biblical Preachers!

Why Preaching is Ailing – Part Me

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In the last two posts we’ve considered Greg Haslam’s list of eight reasons why preaching is ailing.  I’d like to add a couple more to the list, from my perspective.  Feel free to add your thoughts.

Some don’t know how to interpret the Bible. Some preachers have the best intentions, and even good presentation skills, but are lacking in the core ability to wrestle with a biblical text and grasp its intended meaning.  It’s easy to search a text for launch pads to spiritual thoughts, but it takes some prayerful skill to grasp the point as intended by the author.  Hermeneutics is not a luxury for the preacher, it’s foundational.

Some don’t understand the biblical bigger picture. We live in a day of ready access to biblical information, but it takes more than a big virtual library to make a preacher.  Quick access to info on a passage is one thing, holding together the big picture of the whole Bible is quite another.  We need more preachers who are really people of the Book as a whole.

Some don’t know what preaching is. It’s easy to think of preaching as a form of communication, a religious pattern to be repeated each week.  But what of the core elements of true preaching: the true meaning of the text, effectively communicated through the preacher’s words and life, with an emphasis on the applicational relevance to the particular listeners present, all in full reliance on the Spirit of God.  Miss out one of these elements and preaching ails fast.

Some don’t care about their listeners. They say that church too easily reflects its culture.  Well we live in cultures often bereft of others-centered motivation.  It’s too easy to build a ministry around a core motivation of “whatever is best for me.”  Preaching withers when listeners don’t matter.

There we go . . . four more things to watch for in our own ministries.  Tomorrow I want to turn the tone so we don’t get discouraged!  And if this list doesn’t discourage you, then be careful of pride!