Ultimate Impact

June 2, 2012June 4, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Is it just me, or was there an ultimate weapon used in cartoons that isn’t used quite so much in real life? Whether it was a cat chasing a mouse, or a bird fleet of foot, sooner or not much later the arch nemesis would bring them into collision with a great heavy anvil. Ouch.

I suppose in real life the anvil has its disadvantages as a weapon. It is probably fairly heavy. Somewhat cumbersome. And it is probably fairly avoidable. What it gains in gravitas it loses in penetrative impact. To put it another way, I’d rather fight a foe with an anvil than an enemy with a blade.

Which brings me to preaching. Some sermons feel like the preacher is trying to reproduce the cartoon impact of an anvil. A massive amount of weighty content delivered as quickly as possible. Much better to sharpen that sermon and preach a single point, rather than trying to deliver the whole container load of exegetical insights. The blade may feel lighter to carry, but it will have a great impact in listeners’ lives.

I need to ponder this afresh before tomorrow. It is so tempting to try to give ’em everything right between the eyes. In my cartoon-like prayers they will all be stunned and transformed. In reality they will both see it coming and feel annoyingly pushed by it, but without the message penetrating. How can I sharpen my main idea. What can I cut out to make the message do its work in a streamlined way?

The Word of God is sharper than any double-edge anvil. Obviously. May our preaching of His Word have the massive weight of the text behind it, but the sharpness of a deft blade in terms of its focus.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching Psalms

June 1, 2012May 29, 2012 / 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

May 31, 2012June 4, 2012 / 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?

Jesus, How Should I Preach?

May 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I had the joy of leading a morning seminar that overviewed the preaching preparation process. I guided the participants through the 8-stage path that I advocate on this site and find so useful in my own ministry. But I think there is another way to look at the process – in effect a view from a greater height, a helicopter view of the preaching process. Dare I say that this might even reflect Jesus’ approach?

I would love to get the in-depth Jesus preaching seminar. Surely it would involve issues of speaking with authority unlike the scribes, and how to select compelling images, effective storytelling, memorable motifs, etc. But I want to suggest a slightly higher level, helicopter (or should I say more heavenly) view of the preaching process.

The gospels don’t give us the answer to how should we preach. But as well as His example, there is also the consistent pattern of Jesus’ theology. How should we pray? He answered with a variation on the theme of what is the greatest commandment? Since the pattern was so common in his teaching, allow me to speculate on an overview of the preaching preparation process from Jesus’ perspective. Jesus, how should we preach?

1. Love God. The first phase of the process is to be loving God by sitting at Christ’s feet. Stop being manic and busy for God, but instead sit at His feet and allow Him to minister to you. Don’t search the Scriptures and miss the person that is there, but seek the Lord in His Word and you will find Him. Treat the Bible as if God is a good communicator and so diligently study and wrestle with the text, allowing it to do a work in you before you even think about offering it to others. Love God in response to His self-revelation in His Word.

2. Love your neighbour (congregant, listener, audience, etc.). That is, pray for the people who you will speak to. Really spend time with God concerning them. Then as you start planning your message, plan it prayerfully with a deep concern for them to understand, to stay engaged, to be able to follow, to feel the import and impact of the message of the text. And as you preach it, preach with the winsomeness and grace of God permeating your demeanour, because God is passionately excited about incarnating His grace and truth!

I could be wrong, but I wonder if Jesus might give an answer along those lines.

15 Ways to Improve Clarity

April 27, 2012April 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

This week I’ve been writing about the doctrine of Biblical clarity – the fact that the Bible may be understood. This is a cause for great rejoicing. Imagine for a moment that the Bible was absolutely impregnable. Anyway, one of the points I made the other day was that preachers are representing a God who made His book understandable, so we should model a passion for clarity in our communication.

Let’s have a rapid-fire list of factors that influence our clarity in preaching. I’ll start, you finish:

1. Voice. If it isn’t loud enough, and distinct enough, it isn’t clear enough.

2. Vocab. Don’t try to impress, try to communicate. Jargon doesn’t help, good word choice does.

3. Preaching Text. If you stay in your text as much as possible, it should be easier to follow.

4. Structure. A memorable outline remembers itself, there’s no need to be clever, be clear.

5. Main Idea. One controlling, dominant thought, distilled from the passage is critical for clarity.

6. Unity. Let every element of the message serve the main idea, nothing extraneous.

7. Order. Take the most straightforward path through the message, so others can follow.

8. Transitions. Slow down through the turns or you’ll lose the passengers.

9. Pace. Sometimes you really need to take the foot off the pedal to keep people with you.

10. Visual Consistency. Keep your gestures and scene “locations” consistent to reinforce well.

11. Verbal Consistency. Let key terms rain down through the message, don’t be a thesaurus.

12. Restatement. Restate key sentences in different words, less patronising, but helps clarity.

13. Illustrative Relevance. Be sure illustrative materials have clear connection to the message.

14. Flashback and Preview. Whenever appropriate, review and preview at transitions.

15. Pray. Pray for message clarity during preparation, God cares about this!

That’s a start, what would you add?

Authority and Clarity

April 24, 2012April 23, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Two sibling doctrines. One gets all the attention. The other goes unmentioned. Actually, one is the darling of preachers. The other might well think we are out to get it.

Authority and clarity.

These two doctrines matter. Authority speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how His Word got to us. It speaks of why we must hear it and apply it.

Clarity speaks of whose Word the Bible is. It speaks of how well His Word got to us. It speaks of how we can grasp it and apply it.

Some speakers overtly present the process by which the Bible got into our hands: how God was involved in revelation, inspiration, transmission, canonization and even in translation. Other speakers don’t get into specifics, but they keep on affirming that this is the Word of God.

Few speakers overtly present the clarity of Scripture: how God has communicated so well that His great book is able to be understood through diligent observation and interpretation, with prayerful reliance on His Spirit for illumination. Many speakers don’t get into clarity at all, if anything, they keep on giving the impression that God’s Word is out of reach to the average person.

That is the issue. While authority gets regular affirmation in the church, clarity is not only oft-ignored, but also oft-undermined. How so?

How easy it is to give the impression that people need the preacher in order to make sense of the Scriptures. How easy to undermine the listeners’ confidence that they have the necessary competence for reading and understanding the Bible.

I’m sorry to suggest this, but we need to ponder this issue: too many of us undermine the confidence of our listeners to take up and read. Tolle lege, if you will. Uh, I just demonstrated one way to do it…there’s nothing like an ancient language quotation to make normal people feel inadequate. But I didn’t mean that. Exactly. That’s how it happens.

Here’s the bottom line for today. The clarity of Scripture and our preaching. It is not about whether our sermons are clear or not (let’s hope they are). The issue is whether our listeners perceive themselves to be competent to pick up their Bibles and read.

That is a big part of our task. That is why I think Clarity deserves a break.

Preaching Christ or His Benefits

April 10, 2012April 10, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are many subtle problems that can creep into our preaching. This week I’d like to highlight a few that could undermine preaching effectiveness.

Do we fall into preaching the benefits of a hidden Christ? That is, does Christ recede into the background as a “given” in our preaching, so that what we offer people is really all about them?

It is so easy to do this. It is not just the “you can be rich” preachers that do this. In Christ, after all, we are offered forgiveness, identity, status, hope, transformation, eternal life, heaven, etc. But these are all offered in Christ. They aren’t just handed over so that we can continue in our apparently blissful independence.

To see the danger here, I think we have to be much more alert to the shadows of Eden in which we live. We can easily think the Fall has left us with the propensity to do sins, but not realize just how pervasive and absolute that fallen state actually is.

Sometimes the gospel is presented along these lines: God’s perfect standard will not tolerate the slightest blemish. So because I stole a paperclip from work once, therefore my record is forever blighted unless I am forgiven by Christ. This “49/50 is still falling short of the glory of God” idea can convey a couple of false ideas. One is that God is petty. Another is that I only need a bit of help for salvation.

The truth is that all of us are at 0/50, since even our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. Even the good things we do are not good if they are done in fleshly independence from God.

Consequently if we preach the benefits of Christ and miss the greater matter of the relationship we were created for, then the fleshly impulse will drive listeners to make an expedient decision – i.e. trust Christ so that they can have the benefits of forgiveness, status, hope, etc. I sometimes refer to this as “get your ticket to heaven” preaching.

We have to see that this is still shot through with the sin of Genesis 3, rather than the wonder of a heart transforming gospel.

Let’s be careful when we preach not to make the subtle shift from preaching a gospel that draws people out of their self-love, to preaching a gospel that essentially reinforces that self-love.

Profound Transformation

March 30, 2012March 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

As we finish up the series of 20 nudges toward more profound preaching, let’s ponder the goal of profound preaching: profound transformation. Surely that is our goal? Lives changed from the core of their being, from the inside out. That is the nature of new covenant ministry, it seeks to do what the old covenant could never achieve, hang on, I’m into the first point…

17. A transformed life comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Conforming folks to churchy culture and respectable behaviour is not too difficult. Having said that, for centuries people have been trying and failing with a transformation by Aristotle’s external ethics approach, because we are designed as heart-driven creatures. Maybe it’s time we followed Luther in rejecting the Philosopher’s theology and recognized the transformative power of a biblical new covenant ministry.

18. A transformed life actually has new wants, so profound preaching must penetrate the heart of the listener. You know the old maxim, if you aim at nothing, you’ll probably hit it every time. So surely we must at least be aiming to preach so that God’s Word can engage and penetrate the heart – to aim for information transfer only, or pressured behaviour only, is to aim to miss.

19. A transformed life is not about memorised outlines, but about the Word impacting life in the moment of preaching, and continuing to do so subsequently. So the main idea of the passage and its application needs to be remembered. This takes work. Too often we pour our energies into helping folks remember outlines, or we put no effort into helping them remember and they walk away with untargeted illustrations and anecdotes. Main idea and application – in the moment of preaching, and in the days to follow.

20. True transformation is humanly impossible, only God can do it, so pray hard and preach by faith!

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.