Stage 5 – Message Purpose

50 Summer Preaching Tweaks: 31-35

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Summer50bHere are another five suggestions to consider . . . September is almost here!

31. Add a Bible tip or two.  When you preach, don’t just explain the text and make its relevance clear, take the opportunity to equip your listeners to handle the Bible for themselves.  Don’t turn your message into a lecture, but reinforce the importance of understanding a text in context, the need to make sense of it “back then” before applying it to today, etc.

32. Express expectation and encouragement.  It is easy to turn application of the Bible into pressure and burden.  Mix in a bit of negativity and the hoped for life impact is quickly undermined.  Take the temperature of your application and conclusion – see if it can be increased.  Encourage and expect . . . perhaps it will help.

33. Learn the local lingo.  It is possible to speak a generic form of English and get by in England, America, Australia, South Africa, etc.  It is also possible to learn the local dialect and fit in so much better.  Maybe the same is true in the Bible.  Instead of just speaking Biblish, why not speak the Johannine dialect when preaching John, or Lukan when preaching Luke?

34. Simplify the message.  When we plan messages on paper we can easily make them more complicated than necessary.  Try making the structure and shape of the message as simple as possible.  This is not about dumbing it down, it is about helping listeners be able to follow, no matter how deep or weighty the content might be.

35. Map the message.  In fact, instead of outlining the message as you would an essay for college, try mapping it as you would a journey.  Where will we go first, and then, then after that?  I often end up with a sermon map on the whiteboard, rather than an outline.  Some people like to tie the landmarks to physical landmarks in the church space.  Somehow the sense of movement and progression becomes stronger with this approach.

50 Summer Preaching Tweaks: 26-30

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Summer50bFive more suggestions that may or may not be helpful as you ponder moving your preaching to the next level:

26. Go on an illustration hunt for a week.  Take a week when you are not preaching, carry a notebook and try to fill it with material for messages.  It could be traditional anecdotes, quotes, etc., but also look for normal life observations that people will resonate with . . . an illustration does not need to sound like it comes from an anthology of illustrations (please).

27. Evaluate a masterful communicator.  Pick someone you think is a great communicator and watch them as if they are preaching in your classroom.  What are they doing well?  Why does it work?  What can you learn?  Perhaps take a traditional and a contemporary communicator, maybe even one from another culture . . . watch and learn.

28. Preach through a prayerful rehearsal.  If you think it is unspiritual to run through a message out loud, perhaps the time has come.  Pray, and go for it.  Some things will only become evident when you hear them with your own ears!  If you can preach where you will preach, all the better!

29. Pray for the people in their places.  You know where certain people sit.  Pray for them and the effect of the forthcoming ministry on their hearts and lives. It will help them, and it will help your preaching to invest in them in this way.  Bless the church is a bit more vague than any prayer you will find in the Bible! Take a deep gulp of Colossians 1:9ff and then pray for people in your church.

30. Preach a grain instead of a slice.  We can get very stuck in the pattern of preaching a chunk of text.  Consider preaching a grain instead – that is, a theme as it develops through a book or section.  You could even do this beyond the borders of a book and give a biblical theology of something.  Don’t over reach, but variation can be so healthy for listeners as well as preachers!

50 Summer Preaching Tweaks: 16-20

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Summer50bA little pick and mix selection of fifty tweaks that you might want to ponder as we head into another school year of preaching ministry:

16. Smile.  If you know you do this, move on (but only if you actually know, not just if you think you do).  There are a surprising number of preachers that never seem to smile.  Implication?  Either there is no good news (we are called to preach good news), or no love for listeners (we are called to love listeners), or no delight in God (no comment necessary).

17. Use your preaching space effectively.  You may have a vast platform area, or a small cluttered space, but are you using it to maximum communication value?  I remember preaching Pilate with Jesus (one side of the pulpit) and the Jewish leaders (on the other side of the pulpit).  The use of space helped the message to be visualized, simply by my deliberate movement.

18. Step outside your preaching mode to communicate effectively.  Periodically drop the preaching mode and just be real.  Actually, you are still preaching, and deliberately so, but it offers another ethos.  If your normal preaching mode is too preachy, just drop it permanently and preach real!

19. Increase the vulnerability value.  Speaking of being real, how vulnerable do you get in your preaching?  Some think it is wrong to let any of you show in your preaching.  That’s fine.  You can continue to preach from another room via radio mic.  But for those who recognize that preaching involves communicating God’s truth through your personality and life (i.e. an incarnational view of preaching), then evaluate how vulnerable.  Where can you be appropriately, but helpfully, vulnerable?

20. Preach first-person at least once.  It is so different, you have to give it a go.  Pick a passage, study like crazy, write a message from the perspective of one character in the story or associated with the passage.  Decide if the listeners have gone back there, or if the character has travelled through time to today.  It is more work, but the impact is typically worth the effort (costumes and fake voices are not worth the effort!)

50 Summer Preaching Tweaks: 11-15

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Summer50bContinuing my random assortment of preaching tweaks to consider before the next year of preaching:

11. Watch yourself on video.  If you have never done this, maybe now is the time.  It does not need to be Hollywood quality filming, but I guarantee you will learn a lot when you watch yourself preach.  There really is no alternative that will achieve the same value.

12. Go somewhere different in the Bible.  Are you an epistles preacher?  Always in the gospels?  Push the boat out and try wisdom literature or a minor prophet.  Try a Psalm that isn’t an obvious one sitting up ready to be preached.  Pick a book you have never preached from.  You will enjoy, others will be helped, and you will grow as a result.

13. Avoid the moral finish.  And so the moral of the story is . . . don’t finish messages this way!  Wrestle with and recognize the insidious danger of moralism in preaching.  It is the most tempting option to get the most affirmation and feel most Christian in your ministry.  But moralism is not the gospel.  Moralism is not what we are called to bring to society, or to the community of believers.   Try finishing a message with a warm invitation to respond to the Christ offered in Scriptures (and watch the moral fruit!)

14. Add vocal variety.  Watch a great communicator and you will see more pauses, more pace variation, more pitch range, more volume extent.  Listen to yourself and see where your voice freezes into a certain zone.  Vary there.

15. Prune that distracting mannerism.  Most people have slightly distracting mannerisms.  That includes you.  Ask or watch until you discover it. Shoot it.  Preach without it.  It will just be better that way.

50 Summer Preaching Tweaks: 1-5

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Summer50bAs we are all about to head into a new (school) year of preaching, how about a big collection of little tweaks for effective preaching?  In no particular order, here come the fifty summer tweaks to sift through and prayerfully consider:

1. Be mastered by a book.  Whether you regularly preach through whole books or not, make sure you spend enough time soaking in a book that it can truly grip you.  Be saturated so that when squeezed, you ooze the content of that book.  Then prepare a series to invite others into that blessing.

2. Invite others into the preparation process.  We all tend to go solo on preaching preparation.  Invite some folks to join you.  Perhaps in a group,  perhaps a series of conversations, perhaps ask for help on facebook or twitter.  Perhaps talk through the message, perhaps ask for help on support material, perhaps find out where others think the points of tension lie.  It will probably be better together.

3. Lean less on your notes.  If you are a manuscript reader, take only an outline. If you are a notes user, experiment with note-less.  Be as prepared as you can, but make the message simpler in structure, stick in a passage and run through it several times.  Going noteless is not as hard as you think, and the benefits might mean you never go back!

4. Stay put, dig deeper.  If you are a concordance freestyler, try preaching a message where you stay put.  You will find that you will tend to dig deeper in the passage and apply more fully in the present.  Both are good things!  Only cross-reference if there is a genuine need to do so.

5. Craft the main idea a little bit more.  Take an hour at some point and work on the main idea of the message for an hour more than you normally would.  How can it be more precise, more memorable, more relevant, more text specific, more encouraging, less wordy, less historic, less theologically phrased?

Preaching Myths #8 – Delivery Equals Circus

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

myth2How about a pair of myths?

 “As long as the content of a sermon is true, that is good preaching.”

“Delivery doesn’t matter, the church is not a circus.”

According to the dictionary a circus is “a frenetic disorganized disturbance” or “a performance given by a travelling company of clowns and animals.”  I should probably leave that alone and affirm the notion that the church is not supposed to be a circus.

However, to reject any effort regarding the delivery of preaching because that may turn into a performance of entertainment is like refusing to exercise in case you turn into Mr Olympia.

Preaching is not about performance, and neither is it about a set of words.  It is about communication.  This is crucial to grasp.  The prophets, Jesus, the apostles – they were effective communicators!  Good communication is always concerned with what the recipient hears and understands.

Take a solid biblical sermon and preach it without any thought as to the delivery, what might be understood?

1. This is not important.  Why?  Because the preacher’s body language, posture and energy levels indicate a lack of conviction.

2. This is not relevant.  Why?  Because the preacher’s dress sense and lack of eye contact made the message feel distant and aloof.

3. This is not true.  Why?  Because the preacher never looks at us and is decidedly shifty in mannerisms.

4. This is not good news.  Why?  Because the preacher never smiles and gives off an aggressive I-don’t-like-you vibe.

5. This is not comprehensible.  Why?  Because the preacher gives no thought to annunciation, and the delivery is not engaging, so the bored listeners perceive the message to make no sense.

Delivery can never substitute for content, but bad delivery will always sabotage good content.

If preaching were just the content, we could mail a manuscript and save time from our Sunday mornings.  Preaching is content appropriately clad in the clothing of relationship, communication and connection.

Preaching Myths #7 – Sawn-Off Concordance

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myth2Just coming at this from another angle, but one I’ve touched on before:

“Listeners are impressed with, and helped by, a blast of Scriptural cross-referencing diversity – it breeds confidence, assurance, awareness and whole-counsel-health.”

This thinking is fairly common.  Preachers assume that listeners will benefit from multiplied cross-referencing because it will give them confidence in the preacher’s knowledge, assurance of biblical truth, awareness of the big picture of the canon and health from receiving the whole counsel of God.

I do not want to say that the preacher should only ever preach from a single text and never cross-reference.  There are times when it is helpful.  For instance, if the main idea of the preaching text seems unusual, it may help to show the same idea elsewhere in the Bible.  For another instance, if the main preaching text is built on, or anticipates another biblical passage, it may be helpful to go there and show the link.

Also there are times when the message is built on multiple texts, as in a topical exposition, or when the message is tracing a biblical theme.

But there is a difference between a message that picks off key passages like an accurate sniper and a message that feels like the preacher has hacked off the barrel of their concordance and aggressively pulled the trigger in your direction.

1. Listeners gain confidence in the preacher through the quality of Bible handling, not the quantity of texts momentarily touched.  Imagine being taken into a new city.  Would you prefer a knowledgeable guide who takes you to a particular point of interest, or even a select few, and then introduces you carefully and accurately to their history and significance.  Or would you prefer to drive around the city at break-neck speed with shouts of, “and there’s a house!  And there’s a phone-box-thingy!  Another house!  That’s the place that so and so had something to do with!  Another house!  Town hall!  House! . . . etc.”?  The latter approach tires people out, overwhelms them, and by no means generates confidence in the tour guide’s knowledge.

2. Listeners gain assurance of biblical truth by probing a text well, rather than briefly touching on multiplied texts.  Even if there is a need for a quick survey to underline a truth, it is a truth seen by careful consideration of a primary text.

3. Awareness of the whole canon comes from a tour of selected highlights that is reinforced carefully, rather than from a snapshot of texts wrenched from context.

4. Health does not come from a shower of vitamin pills, but from properly digesting a good balanced diet.  Give the listeners the whole counsel, but don’t just shower them with biblical cross-references every week.  They need to be able to digest what they are taught.  Since explaining and applying the text takes time, why steal from explanation or application by filling the message with the sideways energy of unnecessary cross-references?

As a default, stick in your text and preach it better, your listeners will be grateful and healthier as a result.  When you need to cross-reference, do so on purpose and judiciously.

Preaching Myths #5 – Short Talk Required

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

myth2People still like to wheel this one out:

“The current generation cannot concentrate as long as in the past, so reaching this generation requires shorter talks.”

Uh, no.  There is no evidence to support this.  People always like to cite the rapid-fire nature of contemporary TV, or they buy into the increasingly high-paced and frantic presentation at some youth events.  But what about other evidence?  Films are longer than ever – gone, it seems, are the days of 80 minute action films.  And of course, preachers popular with the younger generation are all only giving 12 minute mini-talks, right? I listen to a lot of 40 minute messages, and then there’s the folks attracting the younger generation with their 60 minute messages!

The evidence is not all stacked up in favour of bite-size preaching.

1. People could never concentrate for 30, 40 or 60 minutes years ago.  People have always been gripped and regripped by good preachers every few minutes.  People have always been bored to tears by dull and unengaging preachers.  10 minutes is far too long to tolerate some preachers, others can hold attention for an hour. 

2. Gripping content and effective delivery, combined with engaging persona and prayer-prepared people will add up to concentration.  Notice that it isn’t delivery alone.  Great content poorly delivered will always be an open invitation to mental drift.  But poor content delivered well will still lose you.

3. Concentration is not optional.  As a preacher you either keep people with you or go learn how to do it.  Preaching to drifted minds and distracted hearts is not acceptable.  Get their attention and keep it.  If they aren’t listening, and you are ok with that, what are you doing?  Please don’t preach just to fulfill some sense of obligation, or worse, for the money . . . preach to connect and communicate!

Whether you preach for 15 or 60 minutes next time, make sure it is appropriate to the occasion and the listeners, and then do everything you can to avoid the charge of going on too long – that is, make it so good that folks leave pondering the punch of the message, not the pain of its protraction.

Preaching Myths #4 – Non-Gospel Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

myth2How about this one?

“We should preach the gospel to unchurched folk, but give teaching to church people.”

I grew up going to two church services on a Sunday.  One was for the church people.  One was supposedly for the unchurched people.  This second service always included a sermon that was a basic gospel presentation.  Whether or not there actually were unchurched folk there is not the point.  6:30pm was the time for a gospel presentation.

But can we make, or indeed, should we make, such a strong distinction?  I am not convinced.  The reason is because I have heard enough preaching that is supposed to be “teaching” to realize that believers need gospel preaching more than something entirely different.

Too many have dumbed down the gospel to a transactional deal struck between God and the sinner at the point of conversion, which then recedes into the background as the new believer now learns to implement their responsibility with good moral teaching from the Bible.  Learn this lesson.  Apply this truth.  Heed this warning.  Follow this example.  But gospel-less instruction can really start to sound like something other than Christianity.

Paul warned the Galatians when they started to think there was something more for them than an ongoing application of the gospel.

What about meat?  Indeed, we should move on to meat instead of milk.  How meaty do you want your gospel?  But to move from gospel to something non-gospel is not progress, it is moving backwards into the fleshly world of religion.  This is why some preaching could easily pass for instruction in another religion . . . responsibility-preaching will always appeal to the flesh, but it won’t be Christian.  Some closing thoughts:

1. Preach the gospel to whoever is present, whatever stage of faith they may be at. The lost need it, and so do we.  But preach the full, clear gospel, not a paper thin pale reflection of the real deal.

2. Since the gospel is at the core of instruction for believers, this means that every week can be both teaching for the believers and accessible for visitors.  Special guest events can be great, but visitors may return the next Sunday, or they might even just show up on a random Sunday.  Make every week seeker-safe.

3. Beware of the false “meat” of heavyweight responsibility preaching, or purely informational educative preaching.  It seems more meaty to raise the bar and pressure people to perform better, or to edify their intellect through an educational presentation . . . but our biblical preaching should be driving the gospel deeper into a life, not taking people away from the gospel – that is never progress.