Preach To Your Listeners

November 15, 2011November 15, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In my experience there is a clear division among sermons preached. Two categories, and almost every sermon falls cleanly into one or the other. There are sermons preached to the people listening, and there are sermons preached to some other group.

Here are some of the indicators:

1. People in the crosshairs. Sometimes the preacher seems to be focused very fully on me, the listener. He seems to know about my circumstances, my life, my local culture, etc. The preacher seems to care – it comes through demeanor, content, warmth, smile, etc. It is great feedback when people say, “it felt like that was just for me!” Some of that is definitely a God-thing, but don’t miss the difference your love makes! Other times the preacher seems to have the target fixed on some other people – those who don’t go to church, or the New Atheists, or the gang culture, or media moguls, or some high profile Christian leaders, or another denomination. That can be hard to take for listeners when they get the sense we are preaching to someone else.

2. Purpose of message. It may be that the preacher feels we need to be equipped to understand and handle the arguments of New Atheists. That could be very helpful. But sometimes it can feel like the preacher is having a go at certain people in their absence. It’s like when a preacher looks up from their notes and only looks over your head at the clock or the door. After a while you start to wonder why you are there.

3. Content of message. It seems so obvious that we should target our communication at those people we want to understand what we are saying. I wouldn’t preach in English without translation while visiting Japan (unless, of course, it were an English speaking gathering). So why offer content that is inaccessible to your listeners? Good communicators always make their listeners feel connected and focused on. It is true in conversation. It is true in preaching.

It is such a simple question, but so important. Am I preaching specifically to these listeners?

It’s All About Me / Us, Jesus

November 14, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Is the church filled with a sort of sanctified self-obsession? Do we fuel that with our messages, our words, our prayers? Today’s post is hosted on the Cor Deo site – click here to go there.

Saturday Short Thought – Preaching Good News

November 12, 2011November 11, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been blogging on here about preaching the gospel, the Good News. Thursday night I had the opportunity to preach to a gathering of Christian students in Birmingham about what really matters to our God. It would be easy to make that kind of message into a guilt trip, a pressure message. Sort of like preaching about the good news, but dressing it up in the garb of bad news. But I tried to show how really it is all about Christ, and Christ is so careful with fragile ones like us.

I tried to show that while we have a mission to participate in here on earth, we are invited into that by a very sensitive Christ who doesn’t snap a bruised reed, or snuff out a smoldering wick. We all have reasons to hold back from joining in Christ’s mission to reach this world – financial reasons, guilt reasons, fear reasons. But the issue really isn’t those obstacles, the issue is Christ. And my aim, in preaching the passage I preached, was to bring the listeners face to face with the Christ who loves them and gave Himself for them.

So here’s a quick thought to end the week – if you are preaching tomorrow, and the core of what you are preaching is the gospel, will the message feel like good news? That is, will your presentation of Christ and the written Word smell of the grace of God? Or will your manner, your applications, your tone, your demeanour, your presentation somehow dress it up as something other than Christlike? Let’s preach good news.

PS One More Critical Concern With Gospel Presentations

November 10, 2011November 11, 2011 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I thought I might need to add more. Here’s one:

11. The Gospel requires clarity about the true nature of sin. Since the gospel of grace is good news about the solution to a problem, we have to be clear on the nature of the problem. What is the sin we are saved from?

Sin results in ignorance, but sin is much deeper than that. The gospel is not simply an education programme.

Sin means people don’t choose well, but sin is much deeper than that. The gospel is not really about God empowering our wills to choose rightly.

Sin means people broke and break the law – lawlessness, but sin goes deeper than that too. The gospel is not simply about God enabling us to become law-keepers again.

In the Fall, humanity didn’t just shift the moral prerogative from God to themselves, they shifted their entire affection.

Sin, at its core, is about rebellious rejection of the love of God in favour of love for self that influences every facet of our life and being. Our first parents turned from a love relationship with God to the death of self-love (a deathly curvature of the soul). The gospel has to address this deepest motivational reality of sin. In the Gospel, God needs to somehow captivate our hearts and overcome our powerful self-affection with a greater and more compelling affection, thereby drawing us back into fellowship with Him, which is life itself.

If we aren’t clear about the depth and extent of sin, then our Gospel presentations will be inadequate. People will listen and compare themselves with the depraved individuals that make the TV news, presuming their need is less since they don’t break the law quite that much. But when sin is seen as a heart issue at its core, then people can start to see that the manifestation might be lawless rebellion, or it might equally be self-righteous religiosity.

We must be clear on the bad news, in order to be clear on the good news.

Final Critical Concerns With Gospel Presentations

November 9, 2011November 7, 2011 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

To wrap up this mini-series, three more critical concerns with gospel presentations (I’m sure you and I could add more too!)

8. The Gospel is about God giving life to the spiritually dead and the Satanically blinded. The people to whom we present the gospel are not just uninformed, or weak, or sick, they are dead. And the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers. This is more than a little obstacle. That is to say, we must never rely on our cleverness, our apologetic sophistication, our smooth presentation or any particular “this is the only way to evangelise” kind of presentation. Let’s benefit from all that is available apologetically, and let’s do the best we can, but let’s do that completely in dependence on, and in prayer to, the God who brings people from death to life.

9. The Gospel is about both personal and communal realities. Many of the contemporary critiques of ecclesiastical blind spots tend to push us toward a less individualistic and more corporate view of salvation. This is a vital need in an overly individualistic worldview. However, don’t lose one at the expense of the other. We are saved into dynamic relationship with the Trinity and the body of Christ . . . but we are brought into this reality individually.

10. The Gospel is about both present and future concerns. Again, many contemporary critiques of traditional evangelical Christianity focus their attacks on the traditional emphasis on the future and eternity. It is true that the Bible also speaks much about the present transformation brought about by the gospel, and about the present experience of eternal life, but the key term here is “also!” The Bible does say a lot about the future and eternity too. Both and. End of.

Well, probably not end of, since there are other things to add. Any thoughts?

Critical Concerns With Gospel Presentations

November 7, 2011November 7, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I recently gave a lecture on the subject of Salvation to a great group of folks from various churches. I spoke candidly about some concerns I feel regarding how the gospel is preached in our churches. Let me share my concerns here. Some of these might be worth pondering further:

1. The Gospel is about Christ. As one writer has put it, it is about being brought into the intimate circle of God’s knowing himself in the Trinity. The focus is theocentric and Christocentric. It is not supposed to be me-o-centric, or behave-o-centric, or even creed-o-centric.

2. The Gospel requires clarity about which God we are referencing. As I have written on this site (and elsewhere), there is too much assumed awareness in terms of the identity of the God we are speaking about. The gospel often doesn’t feel like good news because listeners have zero desire to be brought into relationship with a distant despot (often their view of God is closer to a biblical understanding of Satan than the true God).

3. The Gospel is about relationship. It is not primarily about behavioural reform, or creedal assent, or social conformity. Don’t get me wrong, what people believe matters, and the gospel will bring transformation to a life. My concern is with the number of people in our churches who believe the right things, live the right way, and yet apparently, or admittedly, have no real love for Christ. 1Corinthians 16:22 – selah. Love cannot be forced, but functions via invitation and response.

4. The Gospel is, and is more than, justification by faith. This biblical truth has to be part of our gospel presentation, but it is not the full extent of the presentation. Whether we focus purely on justification, or on other aspects of the gospel, there is a danger that our message reinforces the very sin problem we believe the gospel solves. That is, listeners who are absolutely self-obsessed, can be offered the solution to their worst fears (hell), so that they get to go to a nice future (heaven) . . . all without any repentance toward Christ, without any change of heart, without any transformation from death to life.

More tomorrow . . .

Hearing the Text

November 4, 2011October 31, 2011 / Peter Mead / 4 Comments

This post is not about amplification, nor about the place and role of the Bible reading. Both issues would be worth considering, but not today. I’m talking about the message itself. It is troubling when you hear a sermon and can’t quite seem to hear the text coming through.

This is where the big idea approach to preaching is so on target. If the big idea of the text is the control mechanism during message formation, then the text should be coming through. Sadly though, too many preach generic messages that essentially disconnect from the text itself.

I suppose preaching is essentially very easy for some folks. A thirty-five minute message is really only a couple of minutes of “worked material” that builds tenuous links between the text and the message. Once the text is tied in somehow, the standard message content can flow freely without hindrance. Easy.

Some people do this by leaving the text behind. It is read, a couple of comments are made, and then the message moves on from the text into generic sermon zone.

Others do this by pulling from the text the three things they want to find there. Perhaps something pointing to human sin, and something to do with God, and maybe something along the lines of consequences, or perhaps a vague segue to Calvary, or whatever. Thus the narrative is plundered for intro links to the message the preacher intended to preach.

Let me encourage you to make the preaching text more than an introduction for the message, or an introduction for the points. Allow the text to be master over the sermon.

Seek to preach so that God’s Word is communicated and God’s voice is heard. Seek to preach so that listeners can clearly hear the text and its influence on the entire message. Seek to genuinely preach the Word.

How Long, O Preacher?

November 3, 2011October 31, 2011 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I’ve written before about sermon length debates, and may do so again. But this post is not about sermon length. It is about the ticking clock. From the moment the sermon begins, how long until . . .

Tick. . .

1. Relevance – That is, until the listeners get the sense that this message is relevant to them. Don’t leave application until a little section at the end, that is way too long. Show them from the very beginning that this preacher, this message, this text, is relevant to them.

2. Grace – That is, until the listeners are clear that Christianity is not about our performance and diligent dutiful behaviour. Don’t preach behavior and conformity and religiosity and law for most of the message and then throw in a bit of grace at the end. It is easy to do a law before grace approach that doesn’t just short-change grace, it positively rips it off. Undermine the religious misunderstanding, don’t reinforce it. Too many are still convinced the Bible is all about the rules we need to strive to obey, but are sadly unaware of the radical grace that stirs inside-out life change.

3. Delight – That is, until the listeners get a sense from your demeanour or expression that knowing Christ is a good thing. It is easy, in the seriousness of the preaching event, to fail to show the joy of the Lord. The pulpit is not the place for crass humour or inappropriate levity, but if we don’t have reason to be joyful, then nobody does!

4. Smile – That is, make sure number 3 shows in more than your words. Just saying you are joyful doesn’t convince anyone if there is no other hint of it!

5. Shuffling – Ok, changing category slightly, but how long until your listeners are shuffling, coughing, looking around, fidgeting, etc.? If this happens during your message, presume the problem is your preaching, not their level of maturity and spirituality. In fact, this may occur sooner that you’d like, because 1, 2, 3 and 4 have not come as soon as they should have.

This is a random list, but I’m sure other things could be added where the clock is really ticking!

Bring Back Ba’al?

November 1, 2011November 1, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Following a recent set of posts on this site, I’ve added a further piece on the Cor Deo blog. Should we bring back Ba’al? I have no desire to promote any despotic and demonic deities, but I do wonder if we are too quick to assume that people are on the same page when it comes to the term “God.” As preachers this is critical. I was listening to Mike Reeves again recently at Transformission (click here to find Mike’s talks), and he made a very clear point in his first talk about why the good news isn’t typically perceived to be good news by the world around us: because of the god they think we are inviting them to. Anyway, should we bring back the ba’als? Click here to see today’s post . . .