Stage 5 – Message Purpose

Word Studies 5 – Using the Fruit pt. 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I offered three suggestions on using the fruit of word studies in our preaching.  I urged us to default to a smooth integration – just let the fruit show through accurate explanation, rather than excessive demonstration of exegetical labour.  There are times to underline and show the process a bit more, but they should be strategically selected.  And I think we should think twice and then again before letting the original languages show.  Three more thoughts:

4. Beware of cross-reference overload.  The nature of word study done properly is that you will end up chasing a lot of texts in their contexts to make sense of the author’s use of the particular term.  The danger is that when you preach you give people a quick dose of cross-referencing that is simply too much to bear.  You had time to pause and think about each one.  But if you fire them out like a machine gun, your listeners will have the tendency to be overwhelmed by other passages and stop engaging.  Alternatively they will try to follow and get bogged down in the process.  Or they will think that Bible study is about rapid cross-referencing without looking at texts in context.  None of these are good.  Better to keep hearts and minds in one passage as much as possible.  Venture outside of your preaching text on purpose and carefully.  Make sure you bring everyone back in with you.

5. Don’t fall into the etymological fallacy.  The process suggested this week shouldn’t lead you into this arena, but I know some reference resources will.  The word the writer uses here comes from two terms – butter and fly.  Butter is a dairy product made with churned milk.  Fly is the term used for pesky insects like bluebottles.  Interesting, isn’t it?  The butterfly is a creature that . . . well, that has nothing to do with butter or fly.  The key issue in word study is how the term is being used at that time, and ideally, by that writer.  Where it came from typically isn’t a key issue.

6. Pursue whole passage clarity.  This is the goal.  Do your best in your passage study to make sense of the passage.  Then do your best in the message preparation to make the message clear.  That is a big goal not easily achieved.

Words are little things, but the ones in the Bible are critically important.  God inspired them.  All of them.

Word Studies 4 – Using the Fruit

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week we have been pondering the importance of word studies.  It is vital that we take the words of Scripture seriously, and thereby make our preaching as accurate and effective as possible.  So let’s say we’ve identified key words in a passage, pivotal terms on which the passage turns, and we’ve studied them to get a good sense of what the author meant by choosing those particular terms.  How do we use the fruit of the study in our preaching?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Default to smooth integration.  The majority of word study work that you do in your study need not show in your preaching.  By show, I mean overt reference to it.  The default should be that the study you’ve done is hidden, but the explanation you give is accurate.  Sometimes I would even go for smooth integration when I think the translation isn’t the best.  So I will read it as is, and then subtly state a preferred translation.  No fuss, no critique, just staying on track for effective explanation.  I think this is a good default.

2. Underline word studies sparingly and strategically.  There are advantages to sometimes letting some of the word study show overtly.  Perhaps you go to a couple of familiar or enlightening uses of the term, to give a taste of the process and help people see why you explain it as you do.  If this is done too much it will lose its impact.  Choose to show the word study more overtly in strategic moments – perhaps when the term is critical to the passage as a whole, or at least to a major point in the passage.

3. Avoid original language flaunting.  I know it is tempting to let your Hebrew or Greek hang out.  And if you haven’t studied it, it may be even more tempting to show you’ve read heavy commentaries.  I also know that some people will shake your hand and thank you for the wonderful insight into the original language.  What neither of us know is how many in your congregation are sitting there feeling linguistically inadequate, assuming that you can find things in the Word they never could, and therefore feeling less motivated to read the Bible between now and when you preach again.  Typically there is no need to refer to the actual term, just say “in the original” or “the word Paul uses here . . . ”

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with three more suggestions on using the fruit of Word Studies.

 

Heartfelt Explanation – Preaching to the Heart (2)

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Yesterday I gave three thoughts on preaching to the heart.  The heart of the author of the biblical text matters, the hearts of the listeners with whom the text communicates matter, and God’s heart is revealed in the text.  Three more thoughts to conclude the list:

4. Dispassionate presentation is not honest, be sure to incarnate it.  Some are committed to being as dispassionate as possible in presentation.  “If I let my own heart response show, then I might distract listeners from the information in the text.”  The text is therefore offered at arms length, and typically received as such.  It should make us stop and wonder why we see no support for dispassionate preaching in the biblical record.  Some preaching is more like 1980’s washing powder advertising than biblical preaching.

5. When we add “affect” to the text, we are in danger of manipulation or emotionalism.  Why do we assume the text is dull and that our job is to add a stirring or rousing challenge?  Why do we think the text is dull, but we can add windows to the building by fascinating little illustrations?  I’m not against effective challenge, nor helpful “illustration”, but I am bothered by the assumption that the Bible is sterile and flat.  If we would reflect the affect of the text better, perhaps we’d see more listeners genuinely stirred by it.  When we simply add our own impact, we shouldn’t be surprised when people seem superficially stirred, or uncomfortably annoyed.

6. When we remove “affect” from the text, we are in danger of dulling hearts.  Some preachers don’t preach to the heart.  They take a vibrant and living Word and turn it into dull lecture material for the heads of their listeners.  Do we really want churches full of well-informed heads with dulled, or hardened, hearts?  If our theology and view of ministry leads us in that direction, please let’s respond to the warning flag and evaluate where we might have gone slightly off target.  Or to put it another way, if you think preaching is simply about informing people in a dull manner, please stop preaching for the sake of your listeners. Take a sabbatical and prayerfully chase God’s heart on the issue through the Bible.

Preaching to the heart matters, because the heart matters.  And preaching to the heart is not primarily an issue of application or challenge, it is at the very centre of our explanation.  God’s heart revealed, in heartfelt inspired texts, should be felt by the hearts of those hearing it properly presented.

 

There is more to be said, some of which I’ve probably addressed previously.  What would you add to this list?

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions, part 3

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Finishing off the list of suggestions to help make textual explanation more effective:

11. Defer to a historic explanation.  “Martin Luther explained it in this way . . .” this can be helpful.  This can be unhelpful.  Whether it is Luther or Calvin or Wesley or Edwards, no matter how heavy a hitter, you have to be careful with this approach.  It is important to know your history and not just pluck a quote off a website.  Their context may have been different.  Your listeners may not grasp their significance, and may get confused by going to another different place in history.  Equally a historical explanation may allow for indirect communication of hard hitting truth.

12. Defer to a commentators explanation.  “Doug Moo explains it like this . . .” this can be helpful.  My preference would be for preachers to digest the commentaries in the context of a conversation with them, then preach in their own words.  Preaching is not a footnoted seminary project, nor an unpublished commentary.  Listeners typically don’t know the commentators (or even what one of those is).  The names can be distracting.  The impression given can be misleading.  But sometimes somebody’s turn of phrase hits the nail on the head.  “One writer put it like this . . . “ will usually suffice.

13. Develop an explanation piece by piece using effective review along the way (walking through a passage).  This is the more traditional approach, but it can work well.  Make sense of the first chunk, then build on that with the second chunk, etc.  Be sure to review the progress so they get a sense of the building explanation and logical flow.

14. Deliver explanation by means of a birds eye view of features and chunks (flying over a passage).  The opposite approach is to give them a birds-eye view of the whole passage before coming in closer to see the details.

15. Dive in to a key location and work out from there (skydiving into a passage).  Another approach is to drop in at verse 8, then work outwards to see what came in the preceding paragraph, then explore in the other direction and see how verse 8 is worked out.

This is still just scratching the surface.  What would you add?

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions, part 2

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Yesterday I started this list.  The goal is to avoid explanation of Bible text becoming dull and boring:

6. Do honour the whole text.  It may be tempting to dump half the passage and preach the preachy bit, but often seeing how the whole works actually can add focus to the more obviously powerful section.  There will be times to zero in, but don’t always do so and miss the text as a whole.

7. Do recognize and explain the text in light of its own structure.  This follows on from the previous suggestion.  Help people learn to see the structure in a passage.  If it is a poem, help them spot the stanzas (even if you use the technical term “chunk” instead of stanza or whatever sized unit you have).  In an epistle help them see the logical flow of thought.  Very rarely are texts three equal and parallel points.  Help people spot the textual structure, rather than predictable sermonic structure that you impose on the text.

8. Demonstrate the structure of the passage by means of the connectives and content.  One way to show the structure is to highlight the change of content.  Another way is to point them to the connectives.  “Scan down verses 11-16, notice how he says ‘and also,’ ‘you also,’ ‘again’, ‘and you also’ . . . he is really piling up the blessings here, isn’t he?”

9. Do describe the scene so effectively that people can see it.  Here’s a big one.  Too much explanation is too arms’ length and abstract.  Explanations can feel so dull, but when the narrative or situation (or potential application, but that’s for another time), when the situation is so compellingly described that listeners can actually see it in their hearts . . . they also start to feel it.  This is the power zone of explanation.  Help people with good description and they will thank God for your preaching.

10. Develop a contemporary simile.  “This is like . . .” here we enter into the realm of so-called illustrations.  I prefer to name them what they are.  All illustrations are either explanations, proofs or applications.  If you think the best way to explain the text is to use a contemporary example or simile, go for it.  As long as you know what you are trying to achieve, there is a good chance you will be successful.

Five more tomorrow, but your thoughts are invited at any point.

Saturday Short Thought: Dangerous Preaching x4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I recently heard Gavin McGrath speaking and he was asked what he thinks constitutes dangerous preaching.  I really liked his list of four off the top, as it were:

1. False teaching – of course.

But in good church circles, the other three would be –

2. The mocking or patronizing of non-Christians –  So easily done, so unhelpful to all.

3. Legalism and feeding religiosity – If you perform better then you will be a better Christian.  This leads to either pride or despair, but neither are helpful.

4. Formulaically simple preaching – Just follow this abc and you will have better life.  Problem is that the Bible doesn’t teach that, nor is it effective.

What would you add now that you’ve had time to think about it?

The Four Places of Preaching – 3

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So the preaching process starts in the study, then the preacher needs to stop and pray (in an even less distracted place), but then comes the third location.

Place 3 – Starbucks.  Huh?

Let me clarify before I start into this that I personally don’t tend to pick Starbucks (or pray in a closet, for that matter), but the principle applies.  I have a good friend, and a preacher I highly respect, who does literally go to a coffee shop for this phase of his preparation.

He takes five 3×5 cards and puts names on the cards – the names of individuals in the church, a cross section, essentially.  With his five listeners spread out on the table, and surrounded by real life and culture, he is then able to prepare the message.  He can ask himself as he goes, “would this communicate to Jim?”  or “How would Kerry take that?”

The goal in this place?  To prepare a message that will effectively communicate the prayed-through main idea of the passage to the particular listeners as an act of love for them and for the Lord.

The best biblical content will be wasted if it isn’t targeted appropriately.  Our task is not to make the Bible relevant.  It is.  Our task is to emphasize that relevance.  And by definition, something can only be relevant to specific people.  Relevant to this age.  Relevant to this culture.  Relevant to this community.  Relevant to this church.  Relevant to these individuals.

So John Stott was on target when he urged preachers to be at home not only in the world of the Bible, but also the world of the listener.  Haddon Robinson took the two worlds notion and expanded it to distinguish contemporary culture from the specific culture of the local church.  So we can misfire with  traditional presentations in a changing culture, as we can with postmodern engagements in a church that hasn’t gone there.

Whether we sit in Starbucks, or ponder the church’s phone list.  Wherever we spend time with church members and people from the community we seek to mark.  Somehow we need to make sure our messages are more than great biblical content.  They have to be on target, and to be on target, we must know the hearts we aim to reach.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching Psalms

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

So yesterday I shared some thoughts on preaching the prophets.  How about another list on the Psalms?  Why do I enjoy preaching them?

1. They are self-contained.  A psalm is a complete unit of thought.  It may be part of a short collection, so it is worth looking at those before and after.  It may give a historical clue in its superscription, so it is worth looking at that and chasing the history if there is anything suggested.  But essentially with a Psalm I know what I need to study and prepare . . . the psalm.

2. They are real and messy.  Life isn’t all clean and simple.  Life gets messy.  Emotions soar and plummet.  Situations overwhelm and resolution of tension can utterly delight.  The Psalms don’t pretend we are unfeeling stoical creatures.  We might, but the Psalms remind us to be real.  Not only does this make for preaching that sounds real and not just some sort of religious talk, but it also connects because listeners are also living real rather than merely religious lives.

3. They are emotive and heart-felt.  As a communicator I know the danger of adding emotional thrust to cold sterile content.  It can be very manipulative.  But I also know the danger of sterilizing powerful biblical texts into safe little life lessons.  Oops.  The Psalms are sitting up to be preached with a full heart to those who have a feeling heart – whether that be pain, or joy, sorrow, or delight.

4. They are full of imagery.  I don’t have to look endlessly for imagery to add to a message when I’m preaching from the Psalms.  It is usually right there.  I need to spend that energy on the text and then on effective description and presentation, but then I can have confidence that the imagery choice was made by God’s Spirit rather than me.

5. They are always relevant.  When people have lived the Christian life for a while, they typically end up appreciating the Psalms.  The rugged rawness reflects their own personal experience.  It tends to be the less mature who can’t get into the Psalms.  So as I preach them, I can have confidence that nerves will be touched, hearts will be stirred, lives will be helped.

I haven’t even mentioned the messianic hopes, the glimpses into the godhead, etc.  Ah well, I will stick with the five I put in the title.  Just a nudge in case you’ve forgotten to preach from this great collection.

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?