Stage 7 – Message Outline

Lazy Preaching?

/ Peter Mead / 9 Comments

Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church, made a passing comment about lazy preaching in an interview with Preaching magazine.  He was talking about his desire to come up with a statement, a takeaway point in a sermon.  His stated goal was that a listener could come back to the same passage of Scripture later and say, “I know what that means.  I know what that’s about.”  Because of that goal he does not like to say, “Paul said” and “John said that again” and so on.  Here are his words, reprinted in Preaching with Power edited by Michael Duduit:

I hate sermons like that.  When I listen to them, I just turn them off.  I think just one passage that says it is all we need.  Just help me understand the one passage – please don’t proof text every point with a verse.  I think that’s lazy preaching.  It would be easy to develop sermons like that.

I tend to agree.  There are reasons to go to other passages, but far fewer legitimate reasons than many of us think.  When we have the opportunity to preach a passage, let’s do the hard work and really preach that passage.  It’s easy to skip all over the canon, but if there isn’t a genuine reason for doing so, it’s lazy preaching.

Surrogate Sermons – Part 2

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Continuing on with Dwight Stevenson’s list from yesterday . . . “surrogate sermons” we should be avoiding:

Palace propaganda – Catering to the specific audience in a church by giving exactly and only what they want to hear (often determined by their socio-economic class, race, etc.)

Theological lecture – We must be able to give reason for our faith, but that does not mean we substitute dogma for faith in preaching.  Preaching can be doctrinal without sounding doctrinaire.  Preach the inspired text, not only a system.

Argumentation and debate – We are called to be Christ’s witnesses, not his lawyers.  It is easy to level our guns at a theological position, or a moral concern, but let us be careful not to breed counterattack, controversy and division.

Eulogy – A syrupy diet of simplistic non-answers to life’s realities that sound acceptable because they elevate Christ continuously.

Ecclesiastical commercial – The promotional work for the programs of the church can be done effectively and creatively outside of the sermon.

Monologue and soliloquy – Communication that is effectively the act of hearing one’s own voice, because the preacher is unaware of the internal and explicit reactions of the listeners.

Surrogate Sermons

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It is easy to preach something less than a sermon.  We thought of one example yesterday – the curiosity satisfier.  Today I’d like to list a few from a list by Dwight Stevenson (published in A Reader on Preaching).  His goal is to help us spot sermon replacements and erradicate them from our ministry.  Here are his titles with brief explanations:

Moralistic harangue – The exhorting, punishing or whipping of our people because they are not living up to their obligations.  Many people seem to appreciate receiving these bashings.  Why?  Perhaps because they don’t like themselves much anyway, feel guilty and appreciate taking their medicine.  “It is a fine way of paying for sin without repenting of it.”

Aesthetic artifact – The carefully produced work of art that one hopes will be a blessing to behold for generations, rather than carefully designed nourishment for these people now.

Pontifical pronouncement – The preaching of one who seeks to do the thinking for the people, standing in authority for the immature who find security in such “assistance.”

Museum lecture – Often the best one can hope for is mildly interesting and informative, but often becomes dull and boring, and is almost always irrelevant.

Palliative prescription – As we run from moralistic harangue we are always in danger of falling into cheap grace, easy assurance, repentance free pardon and superficial pain-relief.

That’s enough for today.  It’s only half his list, but that’s enough.  Again, these examples of surrogate sermons remind us of the importance of the Bible in expository preaching.   The Bible does not merely give a starting point, or illustrative material, or a stamp of approval.  The Bible has to be in charge of the message – the idea, the content, the relevance, the mood, the goals.

Prayer, Preaching, Professionalism?

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

 

Is there any stage of the preaching process that we should not be bathing in prayer? When people are first exposed to training in homiletics there is often an initial concern. Is this “process” reducing a highly spiritual ministry to a series of stages, techniques and professionalism? That would depend on the instructor, but I’d hope the answer would be no.

We should be praying at every stage. We should prayerfully select the passage and make sure it is a true literary unit. We should prayerfully study the passage and determine author’s purpose and idea. We should prayerfully consider our congregation and determine appropriate sermon purpose, idea, strategy and details. We should even pray about delivery, and of course we should be praying for the people as well as ourselves throughout the process.

Prayer does not result in a bypass around the work. Praying as we select the passage does not mean we will receive direct revelatory guidance about what to preach. Praying during passage study and sermon preparation does not excuse us from the long hours of wrestling with the text or the often grueling work of crafting the preaching idea, and so on. So we don’t pray begging for a hard work bypass. If we do receive an objective direct revelation then we should obey, but prayer is not primarily about that. Prayer is a lot about dependence, about humility, about asking for wisdom as we do our part of His work.

Let us be preachers who do not shy away from the work involved in our ministry, but let us also be preachers who never fail to pray at every stage in the process.

Evaluating Outlines

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The outline of a sermon is important.  Even though it may not always show clearly to the listeners, it must be clear to you the preacher.  So when you have an outline, how can you evaluate it to make sure it is a good one?

1. Look for the unity of the sermon.  When all pieces (points or movements) in an outline are considered, the whole idea should be adequately covered and supported.  At the same time, the whole biblical text should be adequately covered.  This should be saying the same thing since both the outline and the idea should take into account the entire text.

2. Look for the order of the sermon.  The elements of an outline should move forward in an order that makes sense, and often in the order of the text (although this is not a requirement).

3. Look for proportion in the sermon.  This does not mean that every point has to cover the same number of verses, but the points should be proportional to their relative weight in the sermon.  Often the points will be roughly equal in importance and length.  At other times you may have two or three briefer points  and one more major point.  In this case a briefer point should be clearly briefer in the outline.  Is briefer a word?

4. Look for progress in the sermon.  Each point or movement should convey the message forward.  Listeners do not enjoy the feeling of standing still or moving backwards in a message.  This is similar to point 2 above, but also different.  Order has to make sense.  Progress has to be felt.

Outlining is not about jumping through a homiletical hoop.  It is about accurately reflecting your thought, the structure of the message, in a visible form.  With the outline in hand, you can then evaluate not only an outline, but the message itself.

More on the 2 Basic Stances

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Bob asked some helpful questions on yesterday’s post.  Generally an expository sermon will have “back then” and “today” stances because by definition an expository sermon needs to both explain and relevantly apply the text. So at a certain level the progress will typically go from then to now (allowing for the sermon to start in the present before moving back in order to create need). Within a sermon point, you would often include both.

However, there is a nuance that I intend here. It is possible to explain a text either with our feet firmly planted in the present, or by travelling back to Bible times and getting into the mind and situation of the writer. Also it is possible to apply the text from “back then” or from a “today” stance.

Perhaps first-person preaching is the best explanation of this. When you choose to preach in character, you have several choices to make. One key choice is whether your character is visiting today, or whether the congregation is visiting back then. I recently preached Nahum as Nahum, but I decided to have Nahum visit contemporary England to give the message. This allowed him to make more specific applications to my listeners than if they had been transported through time to Nahum’s day. However, if I had chosen to take them back there, I would have been able to explain the text more vividly. Instead of referring back to what happened all those centuries ago, I would have been able to engage imaginations more directly and create a sense of fear at the Assyrians who live over there, etc. In first-person preaching, a “back then” stance is stronger for explanation and weaker for application (because it can only be hints that people have to translate into their own world). But a “today” stance is often weaker on explanation while allowing more in application.

In normal preaching it does not have to be either/or. We have the freedom to select the stance throughout the sermon. If we are aware of the strengths of both, perhaps we will do better at selecting the most effective means of preaching the Word. Perhaps taking a few minutes to “experience” through imagination exactly what the writer is meaning by his words would be worth it for better understanding (rather than just making explanatory comments from two-thousand years away). But then you want to clarify the relevance of that understanding, so you switch back to today and address people in their contemporary life situations. Application is usually better when direct, clear and vivid. Explanation is usually better from a closer perspective.

This may seem obvious, but I have heard a lot of preachers choosing the wrong stances. I’ve done it myself. It is easy to analyze the text from a distance, sitting very comfortably in the 21st century. And then somehow we hope that vague applications in the terms of the 1st century will hit home. How much better to get us back into the 1st century to understand the passage, but then vividly apply in contemporary terms. Be aware of the basic concept of preaching stance and evaluate your sermon accordingly. These are not hard and fast rules, but perhaps a helpful insight.

Stances Between Two Worlds

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

John Stott’s classic preaching text, Between Two Worlds, is one of several works that have utilized the metaphor of a “bridge-builder” in relation to preaching.  Stott rightly notes that in preaching we have to build from the world of the text and earth the message in the world of our listeners.  Good biblical preaching will always include explanation of the text and application to our times.  

Whether we think in terms of the bridge or not, we are constantly faced with a two-option decision in preaching.  It is true in first-person preaching, in “normal” preaching, in expository-topical preaching, etc.  The choice is a choice of stance.  Let’s say you are in the second point of your sermon.  You have a text and you need to talk about it.  Which stance do you take?  Do you orient yourself back then, taking people toward the world of the writer, the culture, the situation, the language, etc?  Or do you orient yourself to today, bringing the text into the world of the listeners, their culture, their needs, their situation?  

When you choose, for a section of a sermon (a section which may only be as long as a sub-point in your outline) to orient toward the “back then” . . . then you probably hope to achieve better explanation of the meaning of the text.  When you choose, on the other hand, to orient toward “today,” then you probably are aiming for better application of the text.  Since true preaching includes both explanation and application, it follows that during a sermon there will be times when your stance is more “back then” and times when it is more “today.”  Be sure to include both, and do so purposefully.  Both have their strengths, so use both accordingly.

How Do Ideas Develop?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

If communication is all about ideas, which it is, then what happens to those ideas? Haddon Robinson regularly states that there are only three things that you can do to develop an idea. You can explain it. You can prove it. Or you can apply it. There is nothing else that can be done to develop an idea.

* In a biblical passage, what is the author doing? Is he explaining/clarifying, is he proving/convincing, or is he applying/exhorting? It is helpful in Bible study to discern what the author is actually doing as his thought develops.

* As you preach the passage, what does your audience need? Do they need explanation? Do they need to be convinced? Do they need to consider application?

* You do not have to do just what the passage does. It could be that a passage spends no time explaining a concept, but your listeners need that extra explanation. We must know our listeners and their needs as well as possible in order to communicate effectively.

* There is a logical progression to the three developmental options. Generally explanation precedes proof/convincing, and both proceed application. The progression is important to note, even though this does not require us to therefore be rigid in our preaching. We do not need to always follow a formula of stating, explaining, proving, applying, etc. This can be both tedious and unnecessary. But it is important to understand the three options, and to think through what is necessary at each stage of each sermon.

Expository Preaching is More Than a Commentary

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In Christ-Centered Preaching (p55), Bryan Chappell makes the following distinction:

“Expository preaching is not a captioned survey of a passage. By this I mean the typical: ‘1. Saul’s Contention, 2. Saul’s Conversion, 3. Saul’s Commission’ (Acts 9:1-19). In my own circles I think I have heard more sermons of this type than any other. They sound very biblical because they are based on a passage of Scripture. But their basic failure is that they tend to be descriptive rather than pastoral. They lack a clear goal or practical application. The congregation may be left without any true insights as to what the passage is really about, and without having received any clear teaching about God or themselves.”

He is so right. My circles also yield many messages of this type. If you look at tomorrow’s notes and discover you have a message like this, what can you do? Well, with just 24 hours to go, probably not too much. Try to change the points from captions to full sentences that state the idea of that section. Try to change those sentences from historical statements to contemporary applicational points. Or just preach what you have and pray for God to use it anyway.

However, before you start next week’s message, there are things you can do. First of all, remember that your goal is not to present a vocal commentary, but a message where God’s Word is vital and relevant to the lives of your listeners. Take the time to evaluate the listeners as well as the passage. Make clear notes for yourself on the purpose of your message. Seek to integrate relevance and application throughout the message, not only at the level of “illustrations,” but right in the points themselves. Make the points full sentences. Preach to transform lives, trusting the Holy Spirit to do the transforming, but not “despite” your message.

Repent of the faulty idea that merely getting biblical information into peoples’ heads, perhaps with a brief vague application in the conclusion, is enough. To preach an expository message, seek to bring the truth of the Word and the lives of your listeners into an encounter. It is about real life, not vague application. It is about the heart, not just the head.

Who You Preach To – Part Two.

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Ramesh Richard presents a helpful angle on the variety of people listening to any sermon. He presents three attitudes that will be present at various times in a message. “An expositional ministry,” he writes, “allows you to put a weekly dent in their apathy, passivity, ignorance, or hostility to equip them for godliness and service.” So the three attitudes that we must be aware of and communicate with?

1. The I Don’t Cares! These are not hostile, they just don’t feel they should be there at all. They are there out of a sense of duty to friends or family, or habitual routine. For this attitude the need raised at the beginning of the message is critical. Without it, they are free to continue their inner stance of not caring.

2. The I Don’t Knows! They lack the background awareness that others may have regarding God, the Bible, Christianity and church life. These people need good biblical content clearly explained.

3. The I Don’t Believes! These people are doubtful about the truth of what is said, or the applicability of it to real life. They are likely to test what is said with questions such as, “Is this truth coherent?” or “Is the sermon consistent?” or “Is this truth practical?” and especially, “Will this work?” For this attitude you must demonstrate a coherent consistency as well as practical applicability.

These attitudes may come and go during the same sermon, sometimes within the same person. Before preaching, evaluate your sermon and adjust its design to overcome the potential pitfalls for these attitudes. Is a clear and valuable need raised? Is there sufficient accessible explanation? Is the message relevant and practical? We preach not to get our study into the public domain, but to see the lives, the hearts, the attitudes of our listeners changed by exposure to God’s Word.