Stage 4 – Passage Idea

The Two Keys in the Simplicity Struggle

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I’ve been writing about struggling to simplify messages.  There are numerous potential issues, but I want to keep this post really simple.  I think that when all is said and done, there are two key things to keep in mind:

1. Big idea preaching promotes unity, order and progress.  The big idea school of preaching is not about having a pithy grabber at some point in the message.  It is about recognizing the inherent unity in a unit of Scripture and letting that be the boss of the message.  That means that you will let it determine whether a detail makes it into the message.  And it will determine the best order of the details included.  And it will determine the best way to convey forward movement in the flow of the message.  The main idea is like the arrow, the sermon purpose is like the target, and the shape of the message is like the strategy for accurately planting that arrow deep in its intended target.

S0 an illustration may be a good one, but if it doesn’t help communicate the main idea, bye for now.  An exegetical insight may be impressive, powerful, moving, or whatever, but if it doesn’t help in the strategy for delivering the main idea, save for another time.  Every detail, every statement, every explanation, every proof, every application, every word in the message has to be there because the main idea is helped by its presence.  Like a commanding team captain, the main idea determines who gets to play on a given Sunday and who doesn’t.

2. Pray about it.  Simplifying your message in order to communicate more effectively is not a selfish pursuit.  You aren’t trying to be clear for your sake.  It is for the sake of the listeners.  It is that they might be gripped by the passage, transformed by the truth and marked by an encounter with the God who reveals himself in the Word.  Consequently, don’t be bashful about praying for your next message, and for your preaching in general, to become more consistently clear.  Ask for wisdom in terms of what to cut out.  Ask for a mentor.  Ask for understanding.  Ask for your preaching to be clear because your passion is for God’s Word to be heard and followed and felt and applied.

Neither Padded, Nor Dense – 4

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I don’t normally use the movie analogy, but perhaps I could linger with it slightly longer.  A good movie does not pad the main plot, nor does it make it impossibly dense.  In fact, every good movie can be boiled down to something more precise than a ten-minute plot.  It will have one main idea.  And that idea is driven home by the plot and every detail throughout.

I actually watched a movie in the cinema this week (I can’t remember the last time I did that!)  One crystal clear main idea, effectively communicated with every detail included to support it.

Robinson uses the analogy of the arrow and the target – the big idea and the sermon purpose.  I like that.  I add to that the strategy of the preacher.  How is the main idea  to be delivered?  Will it be up-front and repeated throughout?  Will it be built toward and revealed strategically?  There are several approaches.

However the bigger issue is not how it will be delivered, but whether it will be the control mechanism for the whole message.

If the biblical text determines the main idea, and if the main idea is the gatekeeper for every detail of the message, then the message should not be padded, nor dense.

It will not be a padded sermon because every element will be there on purpose.  The explanations will be there to help communicate the main idea.  The proofs will be there to reinforce and support the main idea.  The applications will be there to drive home the main idea.  There won’t be padding because padding makes no sense in a message designed to communicate a main idea.

And it will not be a dense sermon because over packing makes no sense when the goal is the effective applied communication of the main idea.  Over packing only makes sense if the goal is something else.  If we want to show off, we may over pack.  If we want to communicate multiple ideas, we will over pack.  But if our desire is to see the main idea do its job, then we won’t want anything to get in the way of that.

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.5

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Let’s finish the list, but by no means finish the pursuit of effective epistle proclamation!

21. Select the take home goal – Is your goal for people to remember the outline?  Why?  Better to aim at them taking home the main idea with a heart already responsive to it, rather than a commentary outline of a passage.  Let’s not flatter ourselves – people don’t need hooks to hang thoughts on, they need a thought to hang on to.  Better, they need to leave with a changed heart.  If they are changed by an encounter with God in His Word, then looking at the text should bring a sense of the structure back to mind.  However, remembering the outline on its own has very limited value (unless they’re taking a Bible school exam that week).

22. Pre-preach the message – Don’t rely on written preparation.  Most things make sense on paper.  It is important to preach through a message before preaching a message.  Better to discover that it simply doesn’t flow, or a particular transition is actually a roadblock, when you can still fix it.  Pre-preach in a prayerful way – i.e. why not talk out loud to the Lord about the message before and after actually trying it out?

23. Don’t just preach single passages – I am not saying that the only way to plan your preaching is to preach through a book sequentially, but that should probably be the default approach.  Series should not become tedious, but cumulative.  Let each message build on what has gone before, while standing in its own right.  One way to inject variety is to vary the length of passage.  You can cover more ground sometimes, zero in other times, and why not begin and/or end with an effective expository overview of the whole?

24. Converse with the commentaries and other conversation partners – Notice I didn’t put this in at the start.  I believe we should converse with others during the process, but not become beholden to one other voice.  Doesn’t matter if your favourite preacher preached it that way, or a commentator explained it that way, or your friend sees it that way . . . you are the one who has to preach it.  But all of those do matter.  Your goal is not stunning originality.  You want to be faithful to what the text is actually saying, and faithful to your unique opportunity, audience, ability, etc.  So converse with, but don’t ride on any of these partners.

25. Present the passage with engaging clarity and relevance – Here’s the catch-all as we hit number 25.  I’ve hammered the need to be truly biblical, rather than just biblically linked or biblically launched.  But you also need to preach with a relevance to the listeners, and with a clarity that can be easily followed, and all of that with the engaging energy, enthusiasm, warmth, concern, love and delight that is fitting for someone soaked in a passage from God’s Word.  This engaging preaching certainly includes the content, but also the delivery – your expression, your gesture, your movement, your body language, your eye contact . . . it should all be about a heart brimming over with God’s Word to connect with God’s people.  Your heart has encountered His heart, so you want to engage their hearts for the sake of transformed lives and a pleased Lord.

What might you add to the list?

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Still pondering pointers for preaching the letters.  Here are five more:

16. Aim for clarity in your explanation – You will dig up masses of information if you study properly.  Sift and sort so that your sermon isn’t packed and dense, but engaging and on target.  You could offer a subsequent audio file of out-takes (bonus material!) and notice that most people don’t take you up on the offer!

17. Be alert to different levels of application – Not every application has to be an instruction to action.  Sometimes the text’s application is at the level of belief rather than conduct.  Sometimes the take-home should be a heart stirred by truth, by Christ, by the gospel.  Affections, belief and conduct all matter.  If we make application purely about conduct, then we are missing a goldmine of genuine life change.

18. Keep your message structure simple – An easy message outline will remember itself.  If you need extensive notes to keep track of your message, don’t expect first time hearers to get it (you’ve had hours of thought and study and practice and prayer, they’re getting one shot only!)

19. Preach the message of the text, not a message from the text – There are any number of potential homiletical outlines, thoughts and applications in a passage.  Some are closer than others to the actual message of the text.  If you preach clever messages derived from texts you will get lots of affirmation.  If you actually preach the message of the text, and you preach it well, you will be a gem of inestimable value in the church!

20. Begin your relevance in the introduction – The old idea of explain for ages and then apply briefly should become a relic of an idea.  You can demonstrate the relevance of a passage before you even read it.  Get the relevance into the introduction, then continue to show the relevance of the passage and seem relevant as a preacher throughout the message.

Just one more post, not because that is all there is to say, but because I don’t want the series to go long in the hope of being exhaustive – that doesn’t work in preaching, so I probably shouldn’t do it here either!

25 Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – pt.2

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So, the next five pointers:

6. Grasp the flow of the whole – As a preacher you need to be able to explain the flow of the epistle.  Some of us are better at the details, others at the big picture, but we all need to work on both.  Preaching that just methodically explains the details without a good sense of the whole will be tedious, atomistic and disjointed.  Preach so the whole epistle can hit home.

7. Study the sections in light of their detail and the big picture – So as you look at a particular section, you will need to wrestle with the tiniest detail.  That may or may not need to be explained when you preach.  But don’t forget to keep thinking about the big picture, the broad flow of thought – that will need to be explained!

8. Study details and structure – Close reading of a passage is not just about word studies, it is also about sentences, and how sentences connect, and how transitions are made, and how paragraphs link.  Be sure to recognize repeated terms and themes, as well as patterns in flow of thought.  We have to study and hold understanding of the text at multiple levels of elevation at the same time.  A fun challenge!

9. Let the shape of the text shape your message – Or to put it another way, stop trying to find a list of three equal points in every text.  Sometimes a text will offer a negative example, then a positive example and then five instructions.  This is not three equal points.  Sometimes a text is essentially in two parts.  Preach a two-part message, you’ll be fine, don’t worry 🙂  (You don’t have to preach the sermon in the shape of the text, and there may be reasons not to, but as a default, its not a bad way to go.)

10.Compare and contrast situations – The original audience and their situation is not going to be the same as your listeners.  Compare and contrast the two.  What need do your listeners have for this passage?  Adjust how you present it accordingly.  But don’t adjust its original situation or meaning accordingly, that will weaken the message.

Another five next time…

Misdistillation

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The study of the passage should lead to the passage idea.  This is a single sentence summary of the passage.  Or to put it another way, it is the passage distilled into a single sentence.  There are several ways to mis-distill a passage.  For instance:

1. Misdistillation by searching for the best verse.  This is a relatively elementary error, but not too unusual.  The passage is read and the preacher decides, “Verse 7, that’s the one, I’ll make verse 7 the passage idea!”  Now there are occasions where a particular verse, or phrase, or sentence, may function as a passage idea.  But typically this is not the case.  The goal is to summarize the whole text, not just pick out a part that stands out to you.  You should be able to test the passage idea against the rest of the passage and find that it is all feeding into the idea.

2. Misdistillation by scouting for commands only.  This is a common mistake, driven by theology as much as anything.  A theology that says people need to be informed and exhorted will probably be looking for the imperatives in the passage.  Again, the passage idea may well tie in to an exhortation in a passage, but it is to be the summary of the whole, not just an imperatival mood filter.  Be sensitive to what the passage is trying to do in the context of the whole book.  This may not be a commanding passage at all.  Take off the coloured glasses and try to see the passage on its own terms.

3. Misdistillation by spotting a meaty doctrinal truth.  This is a tempting error.  You scan the passage and notice a reference to a truth you’d love to expand at length.  Voila.  Main idea!  But that idea may only be part of the whole, or even a minor player in the choreographed presentation of all the players.  For instance, sometimes Paul makes a theologically meaty reference in the introduction to a prayer.  Be sure to study the whole and distill the whole, don’t just get excited because there is a passing reference to sovereignty, or whatever.

When you are wrestling with a passage, be sure to distill the whole passage down into the passage idea.  Any other approach and you won’t be preaching the whole passage.

Explanation: Indispensable Ingredient

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

When you boil it down, preaching involves quite a bit of explanation.  The Word of God is read out, but then we also have this tradition called preaching.  Why bother?  Isn’t the Word read, enough?

Part of the reason for preaching is because listeners need the text explained in order to actually hear it.  The Bible isn’t some sort of religious ritual, a magical incantation that will somehow change lives merely by being “under the sound” of it.  The Bible is communication.  It is breathed out by God, inspired communication that, well, communicates.

At the same time, the Bible is two to three and a half-thousand year old material that was originally written to communicate in a different culture, different language, different situation.  There is a huge gap in terms of religious and political culture, geography and topography and technology and familial structures and so on.  Explanation is about helping listeners hear the message of the text.

This is why explanation matters.  It isn’t enough to hear the words of the Bible and then attach some contemporary relevance or personal twist and then preach a Christian sounding message.  Actually, that isn’t just not enough, that is downright dangerous!

No matter how clever you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say.  We must be honest and try to communicate the text accurately, or else it would be better not to preach at all.

So a big part of preaching involves explaining.  We explain what the author meant at that time in that context to those people.  We explain what prompted the writing, what earlier Scripture was feeding into this passage (informing theology, in Walter Kaiser’s terms), as well as how this passage fits in the canon as a whole.

Preaching stripped of explanation is not somehow more relevant preaching.  It is not preaching at all.  It is confusion to think that we make the Bible relevant.  We show its relevance, in part, by effectively explaining it.  We’ll come back to emphasizing relevance later in the week.

I suppose it is obvious, but in order to explain it, we have to understand it.  Is that a burden?  Often hours of brain-tiring work in careful exegesis . . . I don’t see this as a burden at all.  This is one of the great privileges of preaching.  Studying the Bible in order to actually understand it (rather than to find a preachable outline), this is one of the greatest privileges I know.  To prepare to preach is to enter into a personal audience with God in His Word, wrestling with the text while looking to the one who is such a master communicator.

Preaching requires explanation.  Explanation requires understanding.  Understanding takes time and effort in prayerful study of the Word.  There is nothing negative in this package!

The Four Places of Preaching

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There is a journey from text to message.  A journey consists of a sequence of locations, so I’d like to lay out the four places of preaching.  Perhaps this will be helpful to someone.

Place 1 – The Study

The first place the preacher needs to go is the study.  Just the preacher, the Bible, perhaps a desk, whatever study resources may be available, and a prayerful pursuit of the meaning of the text.

What is the goal in this place?  To be able to accurately state the main idea of the passage in a single sentence summary as a result of prayerful historical, grammatical, literary study of the passage in its context, with a heart laid bare before God.

Who is involved?  This place is where the preacher is in prayerful pursuit of the meaning of the passage.  So there is a historical focus, a sense in which the preacher is seeking to go back then to the time when the human author wrote the passage.  There is a deep concern with making sense of the text as it was intended, as inspired, with the historical and written context, the inspired choice of genre, the content of the passage in terms of its details and its structure or flow, and the intent of the writer.

So the preacher is studying, exegeting, interpreting.  Yet in that quiet place of wrestling with the text, the text is also wrestling with the preacher.  This is not some sort of abstract and entirely objective study.  The preacher is there.  When the Bible speaks, God speaks, and when God speaks, lives change.  So the preacher has the privilege of being marked by the text as the Spirit of God first applies the passage to the life of the preacher.

The study is a place of deep fellowship between the preacher and God.

Why, then, the study?  Should this not be the library, after all, studying involves resources?  No, this should be a study, because a library is a place of people pursuing information for a variety of purposes.  The preacher’s study is a place where the preacher meets with God as the biblical text is studied both exegetically and profoundly devotionally.

Should this not be the office, after all, ministry is a complex business these days?  No, this should be a study (whatever the room actually is), because an office is a place of action and interaction, of incoming emails and phone calls, a place where multiple plates are kept spinning.  No great and profound preaching can come out of an office.  (If your study is too much of an office, then study elsewhere – borrow a room and leave your phone behind, study in your car in the woods, but go somewhere where you can be with the Lord in a “study”.)

Tomorrow, place 2 . . .

Ultimate Impact

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Is it just me, or was there an ultimate weapon used in cartoons that isn’t used quite so much in real life?  Whether it was a cat chasing a mouse, or a bird fleet of foot, sooner or not much later the arch nemesis would bring them into collision with a great heavy anvil.  Ouch.

I suppose in real life the anvil has its disadvantages as a weapon.  It is probably fairly heavy.  Somewhat cumbersome.  And it is probably fairly avoidable.  What it gains in gravitas it loses in penetrative impact.  To put it another way, I’d rather fight a foe with an anvil than an enemy with a blade.

Which brings me to preaching.  Some sermons feel like the preacher is trying to reproduce the cartoon impact of an anvil.  A massive amount of weighty content delivered as quickly as possible.  Much better to sharpen that sermon and preach a single point, rather than trying to deliver the whole container load of exegetical insights.  The blade may feel lighter to carry, but it will have a great impact in listeners’ lives.

I need to ponder this afresh before tomorrow.  It is so tempting to try to give ’em everything right between the eyes.  In my cartoon-like prayers they will all be stunned and transformed.  In reality they will both see it coming and feel annoyingly pushed by it, but without the message penetrating.  How can I sharpen my main idea.  What can I cut out to make the message do its work in a streamlined way?

The Word of God is sharper than any double-edge anvil.  Obviously.  May our preaching of His Word have the massive weight of the text behind it, but the sharpness of a deft blade in terms of its focus.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching the Prophets

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

After three days of reflections on a great series from Daniel, here are a few reasons why I personally love to preach from the prophets:

1. They are less familiar.  This isn’t to suggest that sounding novel is a good thing, but it is nice to see people leaning forward once they get the sense that you are going to make clear something they may have avoided in their own personal studies.  Obviously there are the familiar parts – Isaiah 6, 40, 53, the first half of Daniel, Habakkuk, etc.  But there is plenty of relatively untouched ground in both the major and the minor prophets.

2. They are stunning communicators.  The prophets had to get attention.  They couldn’t even be normal, let alone dull.  As a communicator it is a bit of dream to be able to tap into the creativity of the truly shocking, without taking any real flack for the choice of approach.  If we let the genre, the tone, and the creativity of the prophets shape our preaching of them, we should see this as a real head-start!

3. They are robust and direct.  You don’t have to go far in a prophet to get a sense of what God is feeling about things.  In the narrative sections you sometimes have to think and feel your way through multiple chapters for a single narrative.  In the prophets you’ll probably get struck on the nose within a few verses.  The prophets were, by definition, stunning communicators.  They had to be, since the people were so often so dull of hearing.  This leads on to another…
4. There are cultural similarities.  I don’t want to overplay the “Christian nation” ideas that some seem so passionate about, but there is a real sense in which our cultures have slipped from what they once were.  People taking God for granted or treating Him as irrelevant; people living to please themselves; people pursuing dishonest gain, plotting and scheming . . . this is the stuff of the Prophets, and of today.

5. They are hope filled.  There are layers upon layers of hope offered in the prophets.  Not only do they give the messianic predictions, but also the shorter term sense of God’s concern and interest and involvement in their lives . . . and also the longer term sense of ultimate reconciliation and kingdom hopes and guaranteed judgment on the wicked, etc.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it there.  When was the last time you preached from a Prophet?