Attention! Strategy…

November 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

If you haven’t got the attention of your listeners, then they aren’t really listeners, and you’re not really preaching to them. I know there are all sorts of factors influencing the preaching event, and we’ll probe some of those later in the week. But to be super simple, here’s a principle we should all take on board:

People listen if they want to, so make them want to . . .

How can we do this?

1. Relevance. I think the preacher needs to prove as early as possible that the preacher, the message and the passage is relevant to the listeners. Introduction is critical here. But then there needs to be a continual re-proving of relevance throughout. Don’t leave “application” until the last few minutes, they probably won’t be with you by then. Demonstrate relevance all the way through. This includes lots of factors, but the content is critical. Historical lecture, theological diatribe, rant against them out there, etc., are all felt to be irrelevant to listeners in the church setting. Speak to us.

2. Interest. When the content is interesting, people are more likely to pay attention. Never bore people with the Bible. Be interesting. Does that mean we rush to our illustration sources? Hang on. The Bible is interesting. Too many preachers preach dull Bible enlivened by interesting anecdotes and stories. This may be less dull preaching, but it is not interesting biblical preaching. Communicate the content well, and use explanations, proofs, applications, when they are genuinely helpful. Make sure the core of the content is interesting.

3. Accessibility. If it is completely over their heads, they won’t listen. If it is patronizing and trite, they will get annoyed and also stop listening. Make it appropriately accessible for the level of those present.

4. Energy. Getting attention has a lot to do with delivery as well as content. Your energy matters. When we stand in front of a crowd, our natural instinct is to become limited. Seek to break out of that monotonous box and be yourself with appropriate energy for the occasion and your personality. This means eye contact, facial expression, vocal variety, movement and gestures. If you are enthused and have an appetite for it, they have a chance of catching it. If you don’t have the disease, you’ll struggle to be contagious.

5. Warmth. Energy in delivery is not about a show or a performance. It is about the real you communicating with them. One key ingredient is your personal warmth. If you come across as cold, they won’t lean in to what you are saying. Simple. Represent the gospel in your manner and tone, as well as in the precision of your content.

6. Spirituality. People can sense when you have the spiritual gravitas that comes from being with Jesus.

More to add, but I’ll leave it there. Tomorrow we’ll consider some of the illegitimate approaches people take to get attention.

Providence and Preaching 3

November 22, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last time we thought about the potential value of unsolicited information. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so “in the zone” that we become blind to God’s providence at work. Let’s take another example:

Unknown perspective on the passage may be critical – This probably shouldn’t come through lack of good exegesis and study, although it might. So let’s think about that first, then come at it from another angle.

Good preparation should involve not only good accurate study, but probing study that comes at the passage from multiple angles. It is good to think through how people may misinterpret it, or mis-hear you. It is good to ponder the various theological and philosophical positions in your group of listeners (even if they don’t know what their theological and philosophical presuppositions may be, you should have a fair idea!) So while it may take only so long to grasp the meaning of a passage, let’s study for so long plus a bit to ponder the potential alternative perspectives, even if the alternative is built on a flawed approach or biblical background.

Another approach is to proactively pursue varied input from others before preaching. Having grasped the main idea of the passage, offer that to others and see what they do with it. Hear the perspective of others. You can do this with commentaries, of course, but why not go for real humans too. A friend who knows the Word can be a real blessing, but don’t overlook interaction with someone who seems to be less informed. The interaction with one or with a purposely-formed group can be so significant. Better to hear that you are off target, or shallow, or misfiring, before you stand and deliver.

So the issue may be one of exegesis, but as we’ve already hinted, it could be with reception too. You may fully grasp the import of a passage and get the meaning very accurately. But how will people misunderstand the message? This is why we cannot prepare a perfect message in the solitude of a study. We need some interaction in general, and it wouldn’t hurt before this next message. It isn’t just accurate exegesis that you pursue, but effective communication to others. Their preconceived notions can be massively significant – if you know them ahead of time.

Providence and Preaching 2

November 21, 2012November 22, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In my last post I wrote about the issue of interrupted “zone-ish-ness” – that is, what happens when we are in the zone for a sermon and something comes out of nowhere and knocks us so that we wobble? I say let’s learn to trust God’s providence and become better preachers.

Here are some thoughts to probe the notion further:

Unsolicited information may be pure gold – One of my most creative sermons was never preached. Probably a good thing, too. I had this great idea to preach Ezekiel 16 from another room. That is, it would just be a voice speaking out to the gathered people, perhaps in low lighting. The idea was developing nicely, and then the chap giving the church announcements made the suggestion that people might like to bring their friends along to that particular event. Uh? No! Oh wait, perhaps the creativity was a little off target anyway. I’m glad I didn’t preach that without thinking through the very real possibility that guests would be present (announcement or no announcement).

Hearing just before standing up to preach that such and such a person is present, and is struggling with this or that harsh reality . . . this can be pure gold information. Suddenly a message that was true and good can become targeted and precise. It does involve prayer and a bit of thinking in the final minutes before preaching, but perhaps that is exactly what the message needed? I know I was planning a message recently and it was a bit flat. A comment from my wife about a conversation she’d had could have sent me spinning, but instead I thank God for that piece of information – it reshaped the message for good.

I remember finding out as I stood up to preach a 20-25 minute message that it had to last exactly 65 minutes. Not sure I did so well there, but maybe someone listening needed the extra repetition and reinforcement that they got as a result!

There are many times when we find out information a bit later than we might have preferred. It could be about the listeners. It could be about the church. It could be about the passage (hopefully not). Whatever it is, let’s be leaning on God and trusting Him to be providentially in charge, since, after all, He is.

Preaching & Application 5

November 16, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here’s the end of the list. Probably the most important post of the series . . .

17. Be wary since not every application is biblically legitimate. That is to say, a potential application in a passage may not be the intended application of that passage. For example, to make a big point out of the problem of grumbling from Luke 19:7 is to entirely miss why the reference to the grumbling crowd is included in the story of Zaccheus. You might point to the verse as support, but you don’t have the support of the passage standing with you.

18. Be careful that an application from here may not be consistent with the rest of Scripture. We are quick to talk about the value of comparing Scripture with Scripture in our exegetical phase of bible study. I think there is massive value in this principle coming to bear at the level of application. Stay where you are during your study (for the majority of your study), but be careful to check your application is consistent with the whole of Scripture. Be a shame to start sacrificing animals in obedience to Leviticus, right? We can fall into less obvious mis-applications too for the same reason.

19. Be wary of biblical application that is sub-biblical in its goal. Let me give one, probably the most common, sub-biblical application. “In light of this passage you need to . . . ” or “let us . . . ” Any application that focuses on listeners becoming self-starting or independently successful individuals should set off alarm bells all over our theology. Remember where the “you can be an independent self-starter” came from? Let the spiritual radar hiss when you hear this serpent-like implication, even when you are quoting Scripture to support your point (I suspect you won’t be quoting it accurately in its broader context!)

20. Be an on purpose “match-maker” in your application. Maybe this isn’t the best phrase for what I mean here, but it is a vital point. If your goal isn’t independent self-moved successful individuals, then your goal must involve some relational connection. The gospel changes lives. God changes lives. When you preach, please don’t beat us up and tell us to try harder. Instead, offer us the Father revealed in the Son by the Spirit and watch our hearts melt, our motivations stir, and our lives change.

Preaching & Application 4

November 15, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Part four of this series on application . . .

13. Be servant-hearted, not the model of perfection. It is so easy to come across as if you have already been mastered by and have already mastered the text. It isn’t about understanding. Be better at that every time you preach. But it is about whether you stand with the listeners as one who is also receiving from God’s Word, or are you just a dispenser of instruction, always? The servant-hearted part comes in when we realize our task is to serve others, not to impress them. Look to equip and enthuse, don’t look to show off so they feel obligated to you.

14. Be accountable to the text, not a red phone to heaven. Sometimes preachers come across as having a unique and Moses-like access to God. They seem to have spent the week face to face with the angel of the presence of the Lord, but it doesn’t stir the heart like Moses might have. Somehow it can instead be a bit intimidating. A bit of a spiritual superiority vibe that leaves others feeling spiritually inadequate. Don’t couch everything in terms of direct revelation if you actually prayerfully considered what to say and this felt right. That is very different than the red phone flashing on your desk and Gabriel passing on a direct message. Let your authority come from the Bible well-handled, rather than from an implied super-spirituality that may over-imply in places.

15. Be willing to describe the application. Don’t just preach truths and then leave them hanging in the air for people to grab and apply personally. They won’t. They will affirm you, but they won’t be touched themselves. Instead seek to spell out the difference this biblical truth might make in a life. They will translate that application to their own situation, but only after they see that you are offering more than just a nice spiritual thought.

16. Be specifically descriptive in applications. As you describe what it might look like to live in light of the passage, be specific. What does the truth of the Incarnation mean when I am struggling with my boss’s attitude tomorrow at work? What does it look like to trust God’s providence when everything seems to be conspiring against my marriage? What would be different if the peace of God gripped the ethos of our church with its grapevines and back-biting festivals?

Preaching & Application 3

November 14, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

No clever introduction, let the list continue . . .

9. Be mature in your application. The immature preacher will hammer out simplistic advice. The mature preacher knows that Christianity isn’t about self-help advice and tips for better living. There is a place for clear guidelines, the Bible gives us such in certain areas. But a lot of life’s issues are not effectively addressed by simplistic “try harder” exhortations. We are designed to be empowered in responsiveness, not empowered for autonomous success. How does God’s promise and God’s presence change things? How does He change us? Don’t tell me to be a better man, but show me Christ and you’ll soon see a better me.

10. Be consistent with the worship. Too often the heart-stirring devotion of sung worship leads to whiplash when the whipping from the pulpit kicks into gear. The whole package should be consistent. If it doesn’t seem right to sing hymns of good living tips – “Raise up the bar so that we might try harder to be good,” or “Amazing Effort,” or “It’s All About Me, Jesus.” If that doesn’t seem right, then maybe it is the preaching that needs to be more consistent with the worship.

11. Be sermonically fresh. When sermons are predictable they tend to lose their impact. So if you are in a rhythm of explanation followed by three points of application in the final minutes, consider whether this tried and trusted method might well have become stale and predictable. Look for different ways to demonstrate the relevance of passages to your listeners.

12. Be consistently relevant. That is to say, instead of ending with application, consider how to demonstrate relevance and application throughout the message. The opening introductory comments are an ideal place to engage listeners and demonstrate your relevance, as well as the relevance of the message and the passage. Try stating your points in contemporary and applied terms. Use transitions for exploring developing application as the message progresses. Drop in hints of relevance, even if not fully developed applications, during the telling of biblical story (avoid trite applications that mishandle the text, but even hints of contemporary awareness can make a real difference to perception).

Application & Preaching 2

November 13, 2012November 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Carrying on with more thoughts on application in preaching…

5. Be aware of the specific people to whom you preach. Just because a church is in a neighbourhood, this doesn’t mean the people in the church are typical of the people in the neighbourhood.

6. Be aware of the people whom the church is trying to reach. Here’s where number 5 becomes tricky. You may be preaching to one group of people but trying to reach a quite different group of people. Application is about targetted preaching – aiming vaguely is never wise when trying to hit a target. So do you preach to those who are present, or to those you’d like them to feel comfortable bringing? Both is a good idea. Neither seems ludicrous.

7. Be applicationally authentic. While it is easy to throw stones at post-modernity with all its relativizing of truth and denial of absolutes, let’s not miss the underarm throw that sits up invitingly before us as if to taunt us. This culture craves authenticity. It doesn’t get excited by authority or formalized religion or establishment stuff. But it does crave authenticity. Where else but in the community of God’s saved people can people go to find authenticity? But will they find it with us? Honesty, vulnerability, transparency, authenticity. We need to find a voice that is personally real, rather than offering application at arms length and so coming across as tipsters from a bygone era.

8. Be courageously bold. Paul told the Ephesian elders how he did not hesitate to proclaim the whole counsel of God. Do we? Do we apply the truth of God’s Word to the quirks and distinctive corporate personality of a local church? This takes boldness. You’ll get praise for critiquing the sins of others, but don’t go touching local sin if you want an easy life! At the same time our culture needs a sensitive, yet bold, propheticc voice to speak out. This is where preaching from personal proof texts doesn’t look good. But preaching through books or sections can allow a greater freedom since the agenda is coming from the text.

Application & Preaching

November 12, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Our task as preachers is not only to explain, but also to apply the Word. How can we improve as “applicational” preachers? Let me throw some thoughts your way over the next days.

1. Be responsive to the Word. This means that as you read it, and as you study it, you respond to it. Rightly handling the Word involves work. Some of us are diligent in our exegetical processes, but light when it comes to personal response. Others are quick to respond, but weak on understanding it first.

2. Be convinced by the Word. We live in an age that is increasingly unconvinced by “well, the Bible says so!” Ok, I’ve understated it. Almost nobody is convinced there is a link between Bible and ultimate truth. So we must be increasingly convinced. This isn’t just about accurate handling of the text, with well-infomed awareness of historical, archeological and cultural backgrounds. It is also about living a life marked and shaped by the Word. It isn’t just explanation that must convince us, also lived application.

3. Be aware of the world. We don’t need to feast on sin to know how it tastes. But we can’t hide in religious ghettos and simply throw stones at the world around. Loving people means knowing people. It means finding out what makes them tick. Do we understand the shifts in thinking and communication between modern and post-modern worldviews? Do we know the difference between the modern Boomers, the hinge generation – Gen-X (who were raised modern but live in post-modern world), and the truly post-modern Millennials? Do we think through the shifts in communication, how in an electronic and virtual reality world there is a shift away from printed page communication, almost back toward an oral world, only now with overwhelming noise hitting both eye and ear?

4. Be in touch with your local context. Churches aren’t simply islands in the large ocean of contemporary culture. They sit in local contexts. Some urban, others suburban, still others very rural. These are all different. Local contexts are regional, with all the prejudices and blind spots that come within a region. People in an area tend to have similarities, perhaps in education, perhaps in outlook. Don’t go preaching urban sophisticated application in depressed rural regions.

Don’t Just Get the Idea!

November 9, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The Big Idea approach to preaching is birthed from an understanding of the nature of communication. That is, when we communicate, we are not just firing words out into nowhere. Rather, we are seeking to have the other party get the idea of what we are saying. Communication is about ideas. We want the other to say, “I see what you are saying.”

Ideas change lives. People give themselves to ideas. Christianity is a content-based faith. Which is why a very high view of Scripture tends to resonate with a commitment to expository preaching. That is, bringing out from the text the meaning that is there and seeking to effectively communicate that truth to others with an emphasis on why it matters to them.

But I don’t just want to extol the virtues of a “big idea” approach to preaching. I also want to highlight a couple of potential misapplications of it. Let’s use a very simple “communications” model:

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

1. It is not just about the writer to the original recipients. It is possible to be committed to discovering what the writer meant by what he wrote to the original recipients, and then to preach that. Just that. This can come across as textually accurate, but distant and irrelevant. It can lose sight of the present and living nature of God’s Word. We can become lecturers in ancient manuscript interpretation, even if we add on application by extension. It is important to not lose the accuracy of original intent, setting, context, etc., but also to give a very clear sense that this is for us today.

So to tweak the model:

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

including the message to Us

2. It is not just about the human writer, it is part of God’s self-revelation in the Word. This is where I’ve seen Big Idea preaching misapplied and fall short. Understanding, distilling and effectively communicating the main idea of a passage is not the whole deal. We are not trading in brilliant information transfer, back then or today. We are handling the inspired Word of God, given to us to reveal His heart to us. When the text becomes opaque, when the personal nature of the Trinity grows distant, then all our meticulous accuracy and sermonic craft is wasted. We don’t just preach the written word, we preach Christ. Our preaching must be theocentric, for the Bible is all about God.

Final tweak?

The Revelation of God, who inspired the .

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

including His message to Us

True preaching happens in the present. As Donald Sunukjian puts it, in his shortened definition of biblical preaching: “Listen to what God is saying . . . to us!” Let’s preach so that our listeners can meet the God who still speaks through His Word today.

They Might Get the Idea!

November 7, 2012November 8, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Why is it worth the effort? Getting and giving out a big idea is not easy. It is much easier to preach collections of thoughts, rather than seeking to present a message that holds together around one main idea. If I could cut out the “main idea” phase of preparation, I could probably save 30% of my preparation time. Here’s why it is worth being committed to pursuing the main idea:

1. Pursuing the main idea will force you to study the passage more effectively. I think we are all experts in following bunny trails wherever they may lead us. Bible study can be an endless vista of bunny trails. But pursuing the main idea forces me to not only ponder the meaning of the details in a passage, but also to ponder how they are working together to communicate the author’s intent. The writers weren’t drunk or frivolous. Every word mattered, and every word was included to communicate something specific. Pursuing the main idea of a passage keeps me focused on what the author was trying to communicate, rather than playing creative word association games where I end up finding things that would leave a panel of original author, recipients and God Himself scratching their heads at my ingenuity.

2. Having a main idea will give you a guide for shaping the message cohesively. The beauty of a main idea is that it becomes the organizing factor for the content of the message. Should an illustration be included? What about the historical explanation? And that word study? How about that anecdote? Hundreds of decisions in every message. But actually the main idea gives a clear organizing factor – does including it help communicate the main idea? If not, save it for another day. The main idea is the message distilled into a single sentence, everything else is scaffolding, or a strategically designed support structure.

3. Offering a main idea will help listeners engage with what matters in the message. Here’s the thing: human minds don’t hold conflicted complexity. Its true in politics, its true in preaching, its true in most things. Rather than hang on to four major points, thirteen sub-points and five telling illustrations, the listener will subconsciously sift and determine the central thought. Problem is that they may well end up with that extraneous illustration being the main point. Since you’re spending the week preparing the message and thinking about it, do the work and decide what you want them to see as the most important thing.

4. Giving a main idea means there is a hope that listeners will remember something helpful from the message. People don’t tend to remember outlines. When they do, they don’t tend to do much with them. Even if they write them down. But Robinson is right when he tells us that “what people do live for, what they do die for, is an idea, some great truth that has gripped them.” Let’s give the greatest of truths every week.