Profound Application

March 28, 2012March 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Profound preaching is not dense, complex or over peoples’ heads. Neither is it merely historical, lacking any hint of relevance and application. The person shaking your hand at the door may tell you “that was deep!” but really mean “that was over my head and apparently irrelevant!” That is not our goal. True biblical preaching should be profound in the right sense of the word – deep, weighty, serious, life-changing. So let’s move on to matters of application:

9. Instructing conduct is probably not profound, motivating it biblically probably is. I say probably because if your motivation method is to guilt trip listeners as you twist their arms to force them into external conformity, then that is not profound. It is poor. The Bible stirs life change and so should our preaching (by God’s grace, of course). We tend to hit truth in explanation and conduct in application, but the Bible goes deeper than a behavioural model of motivating humans:

10. Application should go deeper than a to-do list, probing into thinking patterns and beliefs. There is a place for practical to-do suggestions, but if that is the staple application of a preaching ministry, the long-term fruit will be flimsy even if numerous. Christianity isn’t about conforming behaviour to external standards, but about response to the truth of who God is and what He has said to us. But again, the Bible goes deeper than cognitive approaches to life change:

11. Application needs to target the affections, because the Bible does. Discourse moves us, narratives engage us, poetry stirs us – the Bible reaches to the heart of the listener. Sadly too many preachers assume their role is merely to pressure behavioural change, or educate for cognitive adjustment, but these approaches don’t fully present the message and method of the biblical passages. We must wisely, honestly, carefully and prayerfully engage the hearts of our listeners with the biblical text.

12. While relevance should be a given, transformational application is rare, so pursue it. For instance, how easy it is to preach “don’t be anxious” from the Sermon on the Mount and end up imploring people to try harder not to fret! But the passage points listeners to how much God cares for them. Let’s not promote a pseudo-relevance through just being strongly against something, but rather offer the text’s bigger alternative that attracts and woos. To think of a common Old Testament example, by all means let’s smash idols, but not because we are just anti-idol, rather because God is so much better.

If explanation and application can be more profound, we are on the right track. Tomorrow we’ll look at aspect of our presentation and delivery.

Profound Preparation

March 26, 2012March 26, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

This week I’d like to ponder what it might look like to pursue a more profound preaching ministry. While most would acknowledge that preaching should neither be dense nor inaccessible, this does not mean that shallowness and dumbing down are the order of the day.

Profound preaching must surely start with profound preparation. Four suggestions to get a week-long list going:

1. Begin with humble recognition that you yourself need to be changed by God. It is too easy to think of preaching preparation as being about you the preacher pursuing a message to preach to them, the needy recipients. At this point in the process you stand very much in their shoes, needing to hear from God. You need to encounter His heart in His Word. You need to be marked deeply and changed by a God who communicates, who cares, who challenges and who changes. It makes no sense to have profound faith for the sake of others, but not an openness and humility in yourself. The preparation of a sermon will be a privilege, an opportunity for God to mark your life profoundly.

2. Study the passage to know God, not just the facts. It is easy to treat Bible study as a pursuit of non-trivial trivia. Don’t. Study the passage in order to know God better. What is His self-revelation saying of Him? How are the characters responding to Him? Wherever you are in the canon, the passage is theocentric, so make sure that your heart is too.

3. Don’t mix your message preparation with your Bible study. As a preacher who cares about the congregation, or as a preacher desperate to be ready on time, it is tempting to blend passage study with message formation. Keep the stages separate. You have the privilege of doing some in-depth Bible study, take advantage of that! You may not be able to help thinking of who you will be preaching to, but try to keep those thoughts until you’ve really gotten to grips with the passage (or better, until God has gotten to grips with you through the passage).

4. Saturate your preparation in prayer. This should go without saying, but it can’t, so it won’t. The entire preparation process should be absolutely pickled in prayer. Prayer in passage study, prayer in personal response, prayer in “audience analysis,” prayer in message formation, prayer for delivery, prayer for life change, prayer for immediate impact, prayer for long-term fruit, etc.

Tomorrow I’ll offer a few more thoughts, this time on profound explanation in preaching. Feel free to comment any time.

Representing the Gospel

March 23, 2012March 22, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

When we preach, we are representing an absolutely glorious gospel! I was just emailing with a friend in another country who made the observation that in some cultures preachers entertain people to death, while in others they bore people to death. So true. So wrong.

The preacher is representing a message from a communicating and wonderfully gracious God, and it is a message of great news. Here are some ways that we might fall into a false representation:

1. Boring news. If we ponder it for half a minute, we should repent of ever boring people with the message of the Bible. How can we take such a magnificent message and make it boring? If it doesn’t even keep our preaching from being dull, it can’t be that good, can it?

2. Restricting news. If we really read the New Testament carefully, we should never come across as if the gospel is the good news of life restricted. It sets people free from slavery to sin to know life to the full. Certainly there are costs involved, perhaps even our lives, but if the preacher looks like all life has been strangled out of them, what does that represent?

3. Angry news. If all the preacher offers is a visual representation of the wrath of God through their demeanor and expression, might that indicate that they don’t know the God they preach about as well as they should? Christ attracted the broken, he didn’t scare them all away.

4. Silly news. If the preacher has to act like a clown to get the attention of the listeners, I suspect there may be a problem in the content of the message. If the preacher has to be a sophisticated entertainer, then I still suspect there may be a problem in the content of the message.

5. Illogical news. If I can be honest, some preachers almost convince me that the atheists are right. It sounds like everything is about a petty creator judging well-meaning people for the smallest of sins with the greatest of torture, but its okay because we just need to say a magic phrase to get a ticket to paradise. Sometimes the gospel just seems illogical, and…

6. Flimsy news. If I can continue from the previous point, sometimes the message just seems so lightweight that it doesn’t seem to stand up to listeners questions, let alone any real scrutiny. Is the simplistic and self-centred gospel really what so many have given their lives for? Were they burned at the stake for something so flimsy? Surely not.

7. Tired news. If listeners are not stirred by the gospel, it should be because they are blinded by the god of this age, not because it isn’t stirring. Christians listening should be responsive, and if they are not showing some indication of how great the news is, perhaps that shows the preacher hasn’t really represented the gospel well.

What would you add?

Overqualified! Says, Means.

March 1, 2012February 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

From a more specific, to a more general post. Preachers have a tendency to overqualify some things. For instance, going beyond the plain meaning of the text is a common, but often unhelpful strategy.

The text says this, but it actually means that. There are many variations on this, some speculative and bizarre, others that appear thoroughly orthodox and sound. Yet we must always think twice before going beyond the plain meaning of a text.

By all means show how the text fits in the larger flow of progressive revelation. By all means show how God’s plans are worked out in the fullness of the canon. But beware of making a leap from what it says to what it means so that listeners are left staring at the text in confusion, or at the preacher in awe.

Typically this doesn’t happen out of some sinister motivation to twist the text and promote heresy (some certainly do this, but I suspect they won’t be allowed to read this site). Typically this error occurs out of good motivation.

Perhaps the preacher fears that the plain meaning is just too, well, plain. Their job is to add some fizz to the water of God’s Word?

Perhaps the preacher wants to give a more complete biblical message, but fails to show the linkages to the “greater” content offered. This leaves the listener without clear sense of where the meaning is supposed to be found in a text.

Perhaps the preacher feels the text at hand is just a little too basic, too obvious, too simple to count as a rich feast of biblical truth, and so unpacks the text to reveal rich truths never before discovered in that corner of the canon. Oops. Trust God’s intent in the Bible – maybe the people need to hear that passage clearly explained and applied, rather than the whole canon squeezed in for good measure.

I am not suggesting there is no complexity in Scripture, there certainly is. But as we preach, let’s try to make it so that listeners looking at the text will see where we are coming from. What benefit is there in leaving them staring at the text in confusion, or at the preacher in awe?

Overqualified! Go, Stay.

February 29, 2012February 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Ok, I can’t help throwing this one into the mix. How often do we drain the impact of a text by immediate overqualification? For example, in the area of response to the great commission.

God is a missionary God. What if the Son had responded to the Father as many preachers respond to texts that assume and expect missionary momentum from lives transformed by the gospel? What if the Son had insisted that He could be a missionary-messiah right there, in heaven? What if the Son had pulled out Acts 1:8 and spoken of the need to minister in “His Jerusalem” first? This does seem bizarre.

But I have to say that as a speaker sometimes asked to preach on “missionary” type texts and at “missions” events, it can get frustrating to see others overqualify and undercut the thrust of a message. Let’s say I preach a text and in the preaching suggest that it would be a natural response for some of us to respond by seeking to take the message of God’s love to other cultures and lands. What happens? The service leader or worship leader then stands up and thanks me for my message, then prays about how “we can all be missionaries right here in our own neighbourhood!”

That’s nice, very inclusive, now everyone can feel involved. Or, to put it another way, now the potential impact of the message is dissipated and any self-focused listeners can remain comfortably, well, comfortable.

I’ve heard preachers do it too. They preach on the giving and going and sacrificing nature of God. Then they preach a passage where the followers of Christ are urged to give and go and sacrifice. Then they immediately qualify so that all can feel included, and none need feel too stirred.

“Go isn’t an imperative in Matthew 28, it is just ‘as you are going’ – that is, wherever you find yourself.” (Uh, maybe…or perhaps more accurately, go isn’t in itself an imperative verb, but as an attendant circumstance participle it does carry the force of the verb it goes with – in this case an imperatival force. Ok, don’t quote the Greek grammar, but be right if you’re going to use Greek to support your explanation. Jesus is assuming and urging a “go” in this passage!)

“Remember that Acts 1:8 starts with Jerusalem, that’s where we have to start!” (Uh, ok, but the momentum in that verse is leaning towards the ends of the earth, and if you keep reading you’ll see how God used persecution to get them moving!)

I could go on, but my point applies in lots of areas. We have a tendency to read one thing, then by unthinking qualification end up preaching something else. We do it with grace, we do it with Trinity, we do it with missions passages. Any others you’d add?

Overqualified! Grace, But.

February 27, 2012February 27, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

Here’s a quote to start the week. It’s a quote I found very encouraging last night. Yesterday morning I preached the first message in a series on Galatians. Paul pulled no punches and I reflected that somewhat in my message. So this morning I’ve woken up pondering this quote from Andy Stanley:

“The church, or I should say, church people, must quit adding the word “but” to the end of our sentences about grace. Grace plus is no longer grace. Grace minus is no longer grace. We are afraid people will abuse grace if presented in its purest form. We need not fear that, we should assume that. Religious people crucified grace personified. Of course grace will be abused. But grace is a powerful dynamic. Grace wins out in the end. It is not our responsibility to qualify it. It is our responsibility to proclaim it and model it.”

I wonder what proportion of gospel preachers really preach the radical message of God’s grace, and how many feel the need to qualify it and augment it and protect it? How do we over-qualify grace?

1. We preach grace, but insist on human commitment and responsibility in our gospel preaching. It’s so easy to preach of God’s wonderful, amazing, life-transforming, gaze-transfixing, heart-captivating grace. And then in the same breath speak of our need to make a personal commitment, to be diligent, to conform to standards, etc. Either God’s grace is as good as we say it is, or it is lacking and needs human supply.

2. We preach grace, but quickly shift to focusing on our legal obligations as humans. Grace plus works is not grace. Grace minus relational freedom and delight is not grace. Grace with a good dose of law is not more, but less. People might abuse grace? Indeed, so let’s put more effort into communicating how good God’s grace is, rather than feeling obliged to supply qualifiers that are somehow meant to stop people gratuitously sinning in light of the message of the gospel. When a heart is truly gripped by God’s grace, then it is truly free to live a life of love for God and others – will such preaching lead to licentiousness and abuse? Certainly not as much as preaching law will lead to rebellion and the fruit of the flesh.

All that I say here applies to both evangelistic and to edificatory preaching. If the text speaks of our response in some way, or offers guidance on the difference this gospel will make, then of course we must preach the text. But let’s not automatically feel the need to over qualify and potentially lose the impact of the message if the inspired author didn’t add qualification.

Preaching grace is dangerous. It is dangerous because unlike overqualified human-centred preaching, it might actually stir a heart to be captivated by the abundant grace of God and lead to radical transformation!

Saturday Short Thought: Bible Story Both/And

February 25, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

So looking back on three weeks of posts about preaching Bible story…there’s so much more to be said! Let me offer one more thought before I turn my attention elsewhere.

There is a tension between historical accuracy and literary artistry.

Some preachers are so concerned with historical accuracy that they are blind to the literary artistry. Every narrative offers nothing more than a chance to probe the historical accuracy issues, an apologetic opportunity to reinforce our confidence in the biblical text.

Some preachers are so concerned with literary artistry that they seem unwilling to accept the possibility of historical accuracy. Every narrative is so well written that it must therefore be playing fast and loose with the facts. The listeners are impressed with the skill of the writer, but left with the distaste of deliberately fictitious presentation.

We don’t need to fall into one camp or the other. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

I believe we should be alert to all the evidence of historical accuracy, both within the text, and in biblical archeology, etc. Let’s build the confidence of our listeners in the veracity of the biblical accounts. Let’s not act as judge and jury over whether Jesus actually said this or did that.

At the same time as holding to the accuracy of the Word, we need to honour both the human author and the inspiring Spirit of God in recognizing the masterful communication that is the Bible. It is brilliantly written. We don’t have to lose one to affirm the other.

Let’s preach in such a way as to build confidence in both the accuracy and the artistry of the text. It is true and it is effective, for the God who inspired it is a God of truth, and a God of great communication!

Narrative as Super-Genre?

February 24, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

While we tend to think in terms of seven biblical genres, I find it helpful to recognize three types of literature – narrative, poetry and discourse. These types occur proportionately in that order. Narrative is the most common, discourse the least.

In simplistic terms narrative consists of people in plots, poetry consists of parallelism and imagery, and discourse consists of direct speech or correspondence.

For the past weeks I’ve been bouncing around the field of preaching narratives, which I hope has been helpful. But here’s a thought with which I’ll finish this extended series. Maybe narrative should be considered a super-genre.

That is to say, the core features of narrative are not completely absent from the other types of literature. Let’s say the core features include the development and resolution of tension in the situation of characters. There are people with a problem in a plot.

What do we have with poetry? Often we have a person reacting to life in the form of poetic writing. If they are reacting to the threat of enemies, then we might find a psalm of lament. If they have been delivered and are looking back on the experience, then we might have a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Poem’s often function as a snapshot into the response of an individual to the narrative of life lived in a fallen world, in response to our good God. Most poems are not narratival or complete in terms of plot line. But often poems are glimpses into the narratival nature of life’s experience.

What do we have with discourse? Often we have a person addressing others who are facing the realities of life. In the midst of a problem we might find the text offers guidance or encouragement. In the aftermath of a problem we might find gratitude and thanksgiving. Since no individual or church is ever beyond problems in this life, typically we will find the discourse to be engaging the realities of these tensions in some form. Discourse rarely reflects a complete plot (except in review), but it does give a snapshot into an ongoing narrative. Discourse offers a glimpse into the narratival nature of life for a person, nation or church.

We could go through the genres and see the narratival features of prophecy, apocalyptic, wisdom writings, etc. Space does not permit, this post needs a conclusion:

So what? Well, as preachers, this is important to recognize. This means that we can bring some of the skills needed for effective preaching of story over to the other two types of biblical literature. We don’t preach poetry or discourse as pure narrative. But we miss an opportunity if we preach either as if there is nothing narratival about it.

Our listeners are also mid-story in the narrative of life. They also struggle with the incomplete experience of tensions as yet unresolved. Perhaps a narratival engagement with the emotion of poetry, or the wisdom of discourse, might prove invaluable.

Our listeners are living life in narrative. There’s a reason that story engages listeners. Let’s not miss opportunities to engage present story with biblical story, whether that be a full-blown narrative, or the snapshot offered in poetry or discourse.

This is why I consider narrative to be a “super-genre.”

Lessons from Bible Storying

February 23, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In Cor Deo we have been enjoying the benefits of an approach to engaging biblical story known as “storying.” Coming from the study of oral cultures and the field of orality, storying is a mine of ministerial potential currently somewhat restricted to missiologists in non-literate cultures.

Forgive my brevity in description, but storying involves bringing a group of people into the experience of a story through the process of telling the story and having them re-tell it so as to enter in to it. In our setting we have found the Cor Deo participants discovering the interpretational value of extended exposure through the re-telling process. We hear it, re-tell it, critique and correct together, then repeat the process.

What does this have to do with preaching? Well, for one thing, it re-affirms the challenge we have when we seek to communicate a story to listeners and we only tell it once. A cursory overview of a story is simply not enough. People may get the bare bones, but storying tells us that a group needs greater exposure to a story before they are engaging it fully. As preachers we may not be able to go through the group interaction of re-telling story, but we must tell story well enough, in sufficient detail, with enough time, so that listeners have a hope of the story forming in their hearts.

But maybe there’s more than a subtle reinforcement of my “please tell the story and tell it well” theme. Perhaps we need to consider how to help listeners inhabit the experience of a specific character? Perhaps one idea might be to re-tell a story within a sermon, inviting listeners to imagine the events from a different perspective. Perhaps there is potential in this idea of re-telling stories within a sermon. Perhaps there is scope for listeners being less passive in the re-telling process, even within a sermon.

You might enjoy chasing the various approaches to storying and orality-based ministries – not only as a prompt to prayer for the pioneer mission fields, not even just as a source of potential ministry ideas for outreach to certain subcultures on the fringe of your church, but also as a potential nuancing of approach and nudging toward creative effectiveness in your own preaching of narratives in the church.

Preaching Story: The Challenge of Acts

February 22, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching the narratives of Acts? I think so, but it’s a book I love to preach from. Let me offer a few points to ponder:

1. Acts is not all action. Every biblical narrative tends to lean heavily on dialogue as a key feature in the inspired telling of the story. Ancient texts were often punctuated with the pause presented by means of speeches. To see Acts in all its glory, it is vital to see how the speeches are not a pause in the action, often they are the action. So let’s not skip Stephen’s great speech with a little summary statement in order to get to the stoning, let’s be sure to help listeners experience the power of his impressively targeted speech!

2. Acts is not mere history. It isn’t uncommon to find folks who view the epistles as the source of our theology, but see Acts only as a record of what occurred in the early days. Please don’t suggest such a notion in the presence of a Luke-Acts scholar! Acts is absolutely theological, it is just that Luke was inspired to write his theology in the form of narrative with speeches, rather than discourse in letters. Actually, I suppose Acts has the “discourse” feature of being addressed to someone – sort of an epistle with extended narratival content!

3. Acts is not all history. Some elements of the early history of the church are unique. The challenge for the preacher is to discern and then demonstrate the value of preaching non-normative history. We don’t tend to be pressured by the problem of replacing a dead apostle. We don’t need another Pentecost, whatever the hymn says. I presume your church doesn’t typically experience an Ananias/Sapphira church discipline model. I suspect the apostles aren’t still looking for a specific evidence of Gentile inclusion in the church, etc. We have to prayerfully ponder how to preach the non-normative elements of Acts with relevance to our listeners.

4. Acts is all applicable. So how do we preach Acts relevantly? And how do we avoid using Acts labels for contemporary experiences that may or may not be the same thing? How do we stir an excitement for the thrilling reality that is the church, without creating deep disenchantment with the myriad of ways in which our experience differs from theirs?

Acts is a phenomenal piece of inspired writing, and one I love to preach from, but it isn’t always easy. Let’s be bold in deciding to preach Acts, and extremely sensitive in how we interpret and apply it for the maximum benefit of our listeners. They need us to preach it, and to preach it well.