Stage 5 – Message Purpose

Don’t Dilute By Distraction

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just a quick thought relating to the concluding movement of a message. This includes the conclusion, but might also bring in the final movement or point of the message. During the final thrust, the crescendo of the message, do not dilute the focus of listeners. It is so easy to unnecessarily add new elements to a message at a time when the need is not variation, nor interest, but focus. For instance:

Don’t dilute by adding distracting texts. It’s so tempting to refer to another verse somewhere or other in the Bible. Often, not always, but often, this is a distraction rather than a help. Evaluate carefully before redirecting the gaze of the listeners to a passage, to wording, to a story, to a psalm, to anything that has not been the primary focus of the message. You may mention one verse, but their minds may blossom out in all sorts of bunny trails, or at the very least, the new information may dilute their focus. Be wary of adding texts in this final leg of the journey. (Sometimes a specific text, painstakingly chosen, and carefully used, may serve to close a message well…but only sometimes…a small sometimes.)

Tomorrow I will bring up another source of distraction that can dilute the end of a message.

The Danger of Disengagement

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Yesterday I enjoyed a couple of very encouraging, although too brief, conversations on preaching.  One thought that was bounced around was one I have addressed on here before – the fact that shortening attention spans is a myth.  People will listen as long as they are engaged.  For some preachers, that means an hour long sermon is entirely possible, while for others, twenty minutes is beyond what they can manage.

This issue of attention brings two thoughts from two very different “homiletics” voices to mind.  First, David Buttrick is among those who suggest that really people can only concentrate in short blocks of time, perhaps up to five minutes.  So the preacher should plan their message in order to recreate attention in these blocks.  I won’t go into detail on that here, just that simple thought may be helpful.

Second, Andy Stanley has helpfully pointed out the danger of disengagement.  What happens once people disengage from our message?  Stanley suggests that once someone disengages, they start to process the preached information in a different way: “this is irrelevant; church is irrelevant; God is irrelevant; the Bible is irrelevant.”  For Stanley the key is to keep listeners travelling with you on a journey.  (For a teaser of Andy’s book, here’s an interview on communication with Ed Stetzer – Andy Stanley interview)

How do we engage our listeners?  How do we keep them engaged?  Do we really recognize the danger when they disengage?

How Would Jesus Preach?

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Haslam’s book, Preach the Word, has a chapter entitled “Learning from Jesus.”  To some it is obvious that we should look to Jesus, who was, after all, the finest of preachers.  But I suppose some would overlook Jesus as a model of preaching since, well, we’re not Jesus.  In this chapter, the writer points out ten characteristics of Jesus’ teaching.  It’s not an exhaustive list, but it is a list worth pondering:

(1) Revelatory in Content – intimacy with the Father added an authority to his teaching, quite unlike the teaching of his contemporaries.

(2) Anointed by the Spirit – another key element in his authority was the role and freedom of the Spirit in the empowering of Jesus’ ministry.

(3) Biblical in its Source – Jesus knew, quoted, cited, explained and preached the Hebrew Bible.  While he was able to add to it in a way we cannot, he never contradicted it.

(4) Always Relevant – Jesus knew who he spoke to and he connected his teaching to their lives.

(5) Compassionate in its Motivation – Jesus really loved those he sought to draw to faith, and it showed in his communication.

I’ll give the other five tomorrow, we already have enough to ponder for one day!

Plagiarism and Echoes

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

At some point I will write a review of Preaching on Your Feet by Fred Lybrand.  I need to finish it first.  Today I’d just like to raise an interesting thought.  Is there a connection between plagiarism and the way most preachers preach?  To put it another way, is it possible to steal your own sermon?

Stealing sermons isn’t good.  Maybe you’ve tried it.  Maybe you’ve heard it.  (Maybe you do it every week – and sing private praise songs about the internet!)  No matter how good the original, no matter how well-crafted the wording, no matter how inspiring the passion, or amusing the anecdotes, somehow a stolen sermon can only be, as Phillips Brooks described it, a “feeble echo” of the original power.  It seems to bounce around in the second preacher’s head and come out as an echo.  It doesn’t resonate from every fiber of his being, it pings out with all the added noise and cavernous emptiness of  a poor recording from a low quality cassette player.

Lybrand raises the possibility that preachers of integrity (ie. not verbatim sermon stealers) might still preach with the same kind of echo.  It’s easy to preach on Sunday morning, referring to notes that prompt your thinking back to your preparation on Thursday.  It’s easy to be preaching trying to recall exactly how you had it before.  It’s not as hollow an echo as a sermon that has bounced through cyberspace (or even through history!) and landed in your memory.  But there is still a hollow-ness.  Still an echo.  Somehow we can fall into preaching the sermon of another preacher – that is, the sermon of you three or four days ago (and God has changed you since then).

I won’t offer Lybrand’s solution today.  I’ll just leave this as a point to ponder as we wrestle with how to really preach, how to really connect with real people at a real moment in time.

Chatting Through Sunday’s Sermon

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Sunday’s coming and hopefully your message is not too far away now.  Allow me to engage you in a brief conversation about your message.  Perhaps this is the kind of conversation you have with your spouse or a staff member of your church.  So we chat about the passage, the main idea as you see it, perhaps the tension you plan to build into the message.  We go back and forth, all very cordial and maybe with some humor thrown in.  Then I ask,

“How will you apply this message?”

What is your answer?  If your answer is vague and fluffy, this says a lot about how you will preach the message (although the question might prompt some extra preparation in this area!)  If your answer is specific, with concrete and tangible contemporary examples of the message applied, then things are looking good for Sunday.

So.  How will you apply the message?  There . . . I asked.  Now it’s over to you.  The answer that matters is not one you give me, but what you give them on Sunday.  (Thinking about it, perhaps I should ask me that question too . . . )

Easter is Coming – The Power of Identification

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I know Easter is still a couple of months away, but as a preacher it is never too early to think about Easter.  In fact, there is a sense in which commemoration of Easter is never more than six days away – the Lord’s Day is a weekly gathering because of His resurrection.  So here’s a thought regarding Easter (whether you’re planning for April or preparing for tomorrow’s message).

In preaching any narrative section, we need to consider whom listeners will gravitate toward, with whom they will identify.  We should consider how to encourage that or redirect that through our preaching.  In the case of the passion narratives, this tendency to identify can be powerfully used in our preaching.  Luther pointed to this when he wrote:

“Although Christians will identify themselves with Judas, Caiaphas, and Pilate; sinful, condemned actors in the Gospel story – there is another who took the sins of humanity on himself when they were hung around his neck.”

When it comes to the story of the crucifixion we find ourselves identifying with so many characters: Judas, Peter, fleeing disciples, Caiaphas, Pilate, Roman soldiers, Simon from Cyrene, mocking executioners, mocking crowds, mocking thief, repentant thief, followers standing at a distance, followers standing close by, even the Centurion.  Yet the wonder of it all is that we are invited to identify with the perfect One hanging on that cross, for in that act He was most wondrously identifying with us.

Consider how the natural function of narrative – to spark identification – can be utilized to communicate the wondrous truth of Calvary this Easter, or even this Sunday.

Adjust Agenda?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I quoted from JI Packer’s chapter on Charles Simeon in Preach the Word.  I wanted to finish quoting the paragraph since it is provocative and perhaps helpful:

The motive behind his almost obsessive outbursts against Calvinistic and Arminian “system-Christians,” as he called them, was his belief that, through reading Scripture in light of their systems, both sides would be kept from doing justice to all the texts that were there.  Be “Bible-Christians” rather than slaves to a system, he argued, and so let the whole Bible have its way with you all the time.  Whether or not we agree that such speaking is the wise way to make that point, we must at least endorse Simeon’s “invariable rule . . . to endeavour to give to every portion of the word of God its full and proper force.” (Packer, in Preach the Word, 147-148.)

Perhaps you might substitute a different theological label into his quote, but still I think the point is helpful.  It is naive to think that we can simply preach the Bible in a theology-neutral way.  However, there is a great difference between reading every text in light of your system and constantly adjusting your system in light of the biblical text.  In that sense, let’s preach as, and let’s preach to motivate, “Bible-Christians.”

Double Sermon Experiment: Lessons Learned

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I have suggested this before, but decided to try it again on Sunday.  One passage, two messages.  In the afternoon I had some doubts.  Perhaps I should do something different?  I prayerfully decided to stick with the plan and I’m glad I did.  (Despite this moment of doubt, the afternoon was less of a trial than it would have been had I needed to switch gears and mentally prepare for a totally different text!)  Here are some observations:

1. A second message in the same passage allows the preacher and the listeners to soak in a text, rather than jumping around. I appreciated this and it seems the listeners did too.  Perhaps we too quickly move from one part of Scripture to another in a two-sermon Sunday.

2. A second message allows elaboration on that which is squeezed by time in the first message. In this case I was preaching a fairly lengthy narrative in a limited time.  Consequently I could not develop the application of the passage to the extent that I felt necessary.  The evening message allowed more complete and concrete application of the main idea.

3. A second message allows for more exegetical work to show, to reinforce the authority of the main idea. I preached the story in the morning, then in the evening I reviewed it briefly before demonstrating how the context reinforces the main idea.  Hopefully this would result in people understanding the process of Bible study more (importance of context), and would motivate some to jump into the book for themselves.

4. A second message allows the main idea to be restated, reiterated and reinforced. Perhaps this is the best benefit of all.  In this case I had a main idea that I think was biblical, fairly clear and important for our lives today.  No matter how well I preached the first message (I’m not saying I did, I’m being hypothetical), I would not want to be overconfident in terms of how well my idea got through.  However, having had review, reinforcement and concretized application in the evening, I’m a little more confident that the main idea might be pondered and applied in the days ahead.

I commend this approach to you.  Study a passage, then preach two messages instead of one.  It allows for more focus over two services, for developed application, for more exegetical work to be demonstrated, for the main idea to have greater effect.

?-Centric Preaching

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There is a lot of discussion about whether preaching is anthropocentric or theocentric (man or God-centered).  Some like to get into the theocentric versus christocentric debate (God or Christ-centered).  I am not getting into that one in this post (although I will mention a helpful category I heard recently from Walter Kaiser – christocentric is one thing, but christo-exclusive is another . . . I like that helpful distinction!)

Based on the nature of Scripture, I think it is vital that we grasp the necessity of theocentric interpretation, and consequently, preaching.  Kent Edwards, in a journal article, stated:

The point of a biblical story is always a theological point.  We learn something about God and how to live in response to him when we understand a biblical story.  The narrative literature of the Bible is concretized theology.
J.Kent Edwards, JEHS 7:1, 10.

How true that is!  Even if you were to study Esther, the story in the Bible where God is textually absent, it doesn’t take long to recognize that God is very much present as the hero of the story!  Let’s be sure we don’t study Bible passages, stories in particular, and merely derive little lessons for life.  We can leave that with Aesop’s Fables.  Let’s be sure we grapple with the theological point of every story, the intersection between God and humanity.  God’s Word is all relevant and useful, so our preaching should likewise be relevant and useful to life.  But we also center our preaching on God, because the Bible is centered on Him!