Stage 7 – Message Outline

Spaces: Thinking Through the Process

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

A little while back I offered the preparation process in terms of four locations: Study, Stop and Pray (Prayer Closet), Starbucks, Stand and Deliver (Pulpit).  To finish this series on spaces I want to poke around in each of these four locations and prompt our thinking.

1. Study.  I’ve talked about this over the past few days, but essentially the issue here is both noise and access to resources.  To really concentrate on getting to grips with the exegesis means not being pulled away by other things.  It also means being able to spread out the books, while also opening up the heart.  Is it worth considering a separate desk for this?  Is it possible to make the key resources easily accessible?  Can you put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door?

2. Stop and Pray.  This one is all about noise.  The noise of people interrupting, the noise of phones beeping, the noise of tasks calling you.  You need to silence them all.  I suspect many of us can’t achieve this in our study or office.  Would it be better to walk and pray with the mobile phone left at home?  Would it be better to go to the church and pray through this phase in the place where you will preach the message?  I find this helpful as it helps to prompt my prayers toward the specific people and families that will be there.

3. Starbucks.  This one is about targeting the message.  Personally I don’t find coffee shops the most conducive to concentrated preparation.  But I see the argument in favour of them (as long as I have music in my ears instead of loud conversations from the volume-unaware that tend to sit near me in these places!)  Somehow the goal here is to be sensitive and alert to the people and the kind of people to whom the message will be preached.  This could be as simple as putting a couple of pictures up on the screen, or placing names on 3×5 cards on the desk, or being around people.  But, if I can’t help but be distracted by being around people, it is better to get the work done in a room on my own!

4. Stand and Deliver.  Different issue, but worthwhile . . . what are the issues in terms of preaching proxemics?  Is there clutter in the preaching environment?  Am I situated in the best place for this congregation?  Should I come down to their level?  Can I lose the seaworthy pulpit and be seen?  Is there clutter from their perspective?

Making Truth Memorable

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

“Homiletics is all about making truth memorable.”  That’s what I was told recently.  It was explicitly focused on the issue of sermonic outlines.  While I can see some merit in the statement, I ultimately have to disagree.

I think this is an old way of thinking that is rooted in a limited understanding of both the Bible and the listener.  It assumes the Bible is a repository of truth statements muddled by different genre.  It assumes the listener is a mind-centred creature that will live well if well informed.  It assumes preaching is primarily about the orderly transfer of information.

There may be some value in memorable preaching outlines for the listener.  I suspect they are overrated.  Do people really review passages and ponder the outlines they have heard preached?  Perhaps.  A few thoughts:

1. Transferring an outline to the listeners is not the goal of preaching.  In fact, it might even distract preacher and listener from what is more important…understanding the passage, encountering God in His Word, feeling the force of its application, etc.

2. Overly crafted outlines might have some negative side effects.  For instance, the listener may equate crafting alliterated outlines with accurate interpretation of Scripture and then either copy the method, or feel inadequate to handle the Bible for themselves.  In this generation, perhaps more than before, the listener may find the preacher with clever outlines to be inauthentic and perceive him to be something of a performer.  We need to be wary of over crafting.  It would be better to understand the passage more, especially since many passages are not written as equally weighted paralleled points.

3. There are some things to make memorable.  The main idea of the message, the application of the passage, perhaps the sense of encounter with the Lord, the sense that the passage was helpful (better for them to go back to the text, instead of  relying on a simplified outline).

4. There is more to preaching than making something memorable.  The human is created as a more complex creature than a computer.  We don’t simply live from coding placed in our memory.  We are heart-driven responders and relaters.  We need to be informed, but in that informing process we ultimately need to encounter the Lord who reveals himself to us in His Word.

Tomorrow I will ponder another overly simplistic explanation of preaching, hopefully with some value for us as preachers.

Interactive Bible Observation Preaching 2

/ Peter Mead / 7 Comments

Yesterday I shared some reflections on the advantages of the approach I took to preaching through Ruth last month.  The evening meeting allowed a different approach to the morning meeting, so I had folks marking up the passage on a handout, and then interacting together about observations along the way.

Here are some of the disadvantages, limitations or challenges in this approach.

1. It takes longer.  If the church is very strict on end time, then you have to begin it earlier in the meeting.  What might take 30 minutes to preach, can take 45-50 minutes with this approach.  Having said that, people should feel fully engaged if it is done well.  It may also take longer in preparation. That is, even though the homiletical crafting may be less, the exegetical awareness needs to be maximal.

2. It requires a certain relational comfort level.  Maybe requires is too strong a word.  I appreciated knowing the people and feeling a sense of mutual trust.  Having said that, I have seen someone do the same thing with a group of people he’d never met before and it worked very well.  But he had to win trust very quickly.  Too big of a group and it would lose the relational connection potential.

3. It requires care in interaction management.  When people participate, you have to handle what is said graciously.  Even when they are wrong.  This is where knowing the congregation really helps.  A comment shouldn’t be crushed, or too overtly corrected, etc.  I see this as common courtesy, but I am used to it in more “classroom” environments.  Some preachers seem unable to handle interaction without offending people.  I was talking with someone recently and we mentioned a speaker who might be invited to something.  The comment was telling: “yes we could invite him, but don’t let him have any Q&A time!”

4. It requires lots of preacher thinking.  When people participate, there is less control for the preacher.  You don’t know where they will go.  Your questions will influence that, but you really have to know your stuff, and know your plan.  How will you create and sustain tension with this approach?  When will you preach, and when will you interact?  How can the conclusion have impact?

5. You may have to overcome other messages and ideas.  Perhaps it wouldn’t work so well in a very familiar New Testament passage.  Or perhaps it is just what is needed.  But you would need to help people see the text itself, rather than their preconceived ideas and favourite points from other preachers.

Overall, none of these issues disqualify the approach and I will used it again, modifying continually.  Print the text, let them mark it up and lead as you all enjoy the adventure together.

Interactive Bible Observation Preaching

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

Last month I decided to try something a little different in our church.  I used the Sunday evening service (we have two services on a Sunday), for a study through the book of Ruth.  Each person attending was given a handout with the plain text of the passage for the evening with headings removed, but plenty of margin space allowed.  At various points I had them marking the text and then interacted with them as we observed the passage together.  I still preached, but it wasn’t a tightly controlled sermon.  I determined when there would be interaction, and overall I think it worked well.

Upon reflection, here are some of the advantages of this approach (not saying it should replace normal preaching, but I think it has a place).

1. It shows people that they can read and think about the passage, they don’t need to be spoon fed.  It is easy to get into the habit of only getting Bible input from “experts” – either at church, or for some, on MP3 downloads during the week.  But this approach subtly reminds people that they can look at and think about the text themselves.

2. It shows some people that they don’t automatically know everything.  This is in contrast to number 1, I suppose.  Some people are over confident in their view on everything.  This approach allows them to discover that they missed something and should look closer.  “I never saw that before” isn’t such a scary phrase from the preacher’s perspective, when they are actually observing the text with other people and it is plainly before them (rather than a homiletical invention).

3. It gives people experience of observing, then interpreting, then applying.  Some never really observe, some skip straight to application, etc.  This is a good group exposure to inductive Bible study.

4. It slows the pace of experiencing the text.  In this instance, it was Ruth, a narrative.  Good preaching can also slow the pace of experiencing the text, but this approach certainly did.  People felt the tension and it built nicely, both during the message and over the weeks.

5. The preaching element is proven.  That is, if done well, the preaching element should not get the “I wouldn’t have seen that in the text” kind of response.  They are seeing it, the preacher is just building and reinforcing what has already come through.  I found the more traditional preaching element in this series felt very gritty and real: it was the explanation and reinforcement of the main theme in each passage, tied into the bigger picture of the book.

There are other advantages, so feel free to add by comment…

Expository: Why?

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All week I have been raising concerns about different approaches taken to preaching.  There are others, but I wanted to finish with a reminder of the core requirements for expository preaching.  It isn’t about sermon shape – all four approaches mentioned this week might be used in an expository ministry.  Yet none of them define it.

1. The best preaching will always involve the work of God’s Spirit.  He is the one that searches the depths of the heart and communicates that.  We need to be sure that we are pursuing His heart as we study His Word.  We must prayerfully pursue the whole process of preparation, all the time being open to learning and changing and growing ourselves.  We also need to pursue His heart for the people to whom we preach.  Prayer has to be a critical thread throughout the whole preparation process.

2. The best biblical preaching will always be genuinely biblical.  That is, the text is not being used, but offered.  It isn’t a data source for anecdotes, for launch pads or for proof texting.  It is the inspired Word of God that we seek to offer to others as we preach.  This means that we take the form seriously, we take the meaning seriously, we take the relevance seriously.  The Bible is not something that serves us, it is something that changes us, and it is something we consequently serve to others.  And the more effectively we communicate the Word, the clearer the path for listeners to not only gain information, but to be transformed by encountering the God who gives of Himself in His Word.

3. The best preaching will always take the issue of communication seriously.  So it isn’t enough to pray hard and study well, producing a textually accurate and even a congregation specific relevant message.  If we don’t take our role as communicators seriously, then we can be a real bottleneck.  Communication is more than just a crude explanation of exegesis with some illustrations stapled on to the outline.  Communication is concerned with the mood of the text, the persons to whom we are speaking, the situation, etc.  It is concerned with the words we choose, the way we say them, the body language that reinforces or undermines.  Our communication matters because God places such a high value on communication.

4. The best preaching will always emphasise the relevance to the listeners.  We don’t make the Bible relevant.  We show how it is relevant.  And so we don’t perform a sermon to show off our own knowledge, nor even to simply declare God’s truth.  We preach to communicate to people.  So we care, and we prepare in order to communicate.

God. Bible. Communicator. Listeners.  All critical features of expository preaching.

Topical Preaching: Why Not?

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Titles are intended to provoke interest.  This one is not intended to condemn all topical approaches to preaching.  I suppose I should probably call it “A brief discussion into why a topical approach to preaching should not be our default.”  But that would hardly make you want to read it.

I preached a topical message last Sunday.  I will do so again.  However, I don’t do this as a default approach.  I think the reason that people do is probably tied to the issue of interest or relevance.  Surely a topical approach allows the preaching to be relevant to the listeners?  Not necessarily.

1. The relevance of a message is not determined by sermon shape, but by preacher’s strategy.  That is, you can preach topically and be both dull and irrelevant.  You can preach a single text exposition and be both engaging and highly relevant.  The real issue is the heart of the preacher being in tune with God’s heart for His people, and in tune with the people to whom he preaches – both to know them, and to care for them.  If you care, it will show.

2. Relevance is not something we add, it is something we bring out.  It is something we emphasize.  All Scripture is God-breathed and it is useful, profitable.  Our task is not to add relevance, either by making up disconnected applications, or by piling up application-overt texts.  Our task is to show how whatever we preach makes a difference in the lives of the listeners.  Whether we choose to use multiple texts or not is a different matter, but it is not the key to relevance in our preaching.

3. Topical preaching, if it is to be truly expository, is a lot of work.  This is something I always tell beginning preachers.  It might seem like the only way to “fill time,” or a helpful short-cut, or even a means to relevant preaching.  In reality, good topical preaching is a lot of extra work.  Let’s say you choose four texts to be your four points, with an overarching biblical main idea to guide the message.  That’s four passages that you should study properly and handle properly.  Topical preaching multiplies work for the preacher (and sometimes it multiples work for the listener, just trying to keep it all together, find the passages, etc.).

4. Topical preaching, if it isn’t expository, can lead to dangerous imposition.  That is to say, if you aren’t diligently and carefully understanding passages according to their context, then you could well be imposing meaning that isn’t really there.  And let’s say you somehow manage to handle every text accurately, chances are that listeners will copy your approach to Scripture.  They will parachute in, grab a phrase, apply it according to their own agenda and they will get it wrong (even if you got it right).

I think we should preach topically.  But let’s do so judiciously.  It shouldn’t be our default.  And when we do it, let’s be sure to really let the texts be in charge of the message.

The Dangerous Half Quit

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A post on this theme from five years ago caught my eye, so I thought I’d offer a re-write.

There are always reasons to quit. This is true in anything you might pursue. Sport, music, hobby, fitness, work, ministry, marriage. Anyone who has ever been successful at anything has had to overcome numerous opportunities to quit. How true is that in preaching?

There are few things that can compare with preaching – how important it is, how much people need it, how much you give both in preparation and presentation, how emotionally and physically draining it can be, how open to criticism you become, how relentless the schedule can feel, how exacting the standards are in peoples’ minds for every other area of your life. To give the Lord our best as preachers we must exhibit a tenacious relentlessness.

The temptation to quit may always be lingering in the background, but for various reasons, good and bad, many of us would not simply quit. Perhaps it’s a little like marriage among some Christians a couple of generations back. A marriage could go very sour, but divorce was considered so inappropriate that couples would live out a “Christian divorce” – two separate lives lived under one roof for the sake of appearance. That’s a danger for us as preachers. When the pressures build, as they do so regularly, so do the temptations. Temptations to quit may be rejected. But temptations to half quit are an ever present danger!

When the schedule is tight and you are drained emotionally and physically, pulled in numerous directions, don’t half quit on your preparation. It may seem tempting to not really study the text, to short-circuit all exegesis.

When Sunday is rapidly approaching and your energy is low, don’t half quit on sermon shaping. Don’t just go with your study notes, but try to think through your audience and their needs, think through the best way to communicate this passage to them.

When you go through the post-sermon emotional roller-coaster that many preachers feel so often, don’t half quit.  Don’t make decisions that will undermine your subsequent ministry because of how you feel at that moment.

When you are on the receiving end of unfair criticism or unjustifiable sniping, don’t half quit. Don’t steel your heart against the people you minister to so that by not loving them they can’t hurt you. When you love you get hurt, but love anyway.

I’m not saying anything about rest, responsibilities with family, etc. I’m not saying sacrifice yourself to the point of burnout in an attempt to be spiritual. There are all sorts of appropriate balances to wisely employ in ministry. But those are for another post. All I’m suggesting here is that preaching is no easier than most other things you might pursue in life, and in many ways it is harder. To be the best you can be, to give the best you can give, you must be doggedly relentless. Don’t quit. And maybe more importantly, keep leaning on our good God and don’t half quit.

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.5

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Let’s finish the list, but by no means finish the pursuit of effective epistle proclamation!

21. Select the take home goal – Is your goal for people to remember the outline?  Why?  Better to aim at them taking home the main idea with a heart already responsive to it, rather than a commentary outline of a passage.  Let’s not flatter ourselves – people don’t need hooks to hang thoughts on, they need a thought to hang on to.  Better, they need to leave with a changed heart.  If they are changed by an encounter with God in His Word, then looking at the text should bring a sense of the structure back to mind.  However, remembering the outline on its own has very limited value (unless they’re taking a Bible school exam that week).

22. Pre-preach the message – Don’t rely on written preparation.  Most things make sense on paper.  It is important to preach through a message before preaching a message.  Better to discover that it simply doesn’t flow, or a particular transition is actually a roadblock, when you can still fix it.  Pre-preach in a prayerful way – i.e. why not talk out loud to the Lord about the message before and after actually trying it out?

23. Don’t just preach single passages – I am not saying that the only way to plan your preaching is to preach through a book sequentially, but that should probably be the default approach.  Series should not become tedious, but cumulative.  Let each message build on what has gone before, while standing in its own right.  One way to inject variety is to vary the length of passage.  You can cover more ground sometimes, zero in other times, and why not begin and/or end with an effective expository overview of the whole?

24. Converse with the commentaries and other conversation partners – Notice I didn’t put this in at the start.  I believe we should converse with others during the process, but not become beholden to one other voice.  Doesn’t matter if your favourite preacher preached it that way, or a commentator explained it that way, or your friend sees it that way . . . you are the one who has to preach it.  But all of those do matter.  Your goal is not stunning originality.  You want to be faithful to what the text is actually saying, and faithful to your unique opportunity, audience, ability, etc.  So converse with, but don’t ride on any of these partners.

25. Present the passage with engaging clarity and relevance – Here’s the catch-all as we hit number 25.  I’ve hammered the need to be truly biblical, rather than just biblically linked or biblically launched.  But you also need to preach with a relevance to the listeners, and with a clarity that can be easily followed, and all of that with the engaging energy, enthusiasm, warmth, concern, love and delight that is fitting for someone soaked in a passage from God’s Word.  This engaging preaching certainly includes the content, but also the delivery – your expression, your gesture, your movement, your body language, your eye contact . . . it should all be about a heart brimming over with God’s Word to connect with God’s people.  Your heart has encountered His heart, so you want to engage their hearts for the sake of transformed lives and a pleased Lord.

What might you add to the list?

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Still pondering pointers for preaching the letters.  Here are five more:

16. Aim for clarity in your explanation – You will dig up masses of information if you study properly.  Sift and sort so that your sermon isn’t packed and dense, but engaging and on target.  You could offer a subsequent audio file of out-takes (bonus material!) and notice that most people don’t take you up on the offer!

17. Be alert to different levels of application – Not every application has to be an instruction to action.  Sometimes the text’s application is at the level of belief rather than conduct.  Sometimes the take-home should be a heart stirred by truth, by Christ, by the gospel.  Affections, belief and conduct all matter.  If we make application purely about conduct, then we are missing a goldmine of genuine life change.

18. Keep your message structure simple – An easy message outline will remember itself.  If you need extensive notes to keep track of your message, don’t expect first time hearers to get it (you’ve had hours of thought and study and practice and prayer, they’re getting one shot only!)

19. Preach the message of the text, not a message from the text – There are any number of potential homiletical outlines, thoughts and applications in a passage.  Some are closer than others to the actual message of the text.  If you preach clever messages derived from texts you will get lots of affirmation.  If you actually preach the message of the text, and you preach it well, you will be a gem of inestimable value in the church!

20. Begin your relevance in the introduction – The old idea of explain for ages and then apply briefly should become a relic of an idea.  You can demonstrate the relevance of a passage before you even read it.  Get the relevance into the introduction, then continue to show the relevance of the passage and seem relevant as a preacher throughout the message.

Just one more post, not because that is all there is to say, but because I don’t want the series to go long in the hope of being exhaustive – that doesn’t work in preaching, so I probably shouldn’t do it here either!

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.3

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Continuing the list of pointers for preaching epistles effectively, since they aren’t the automatically easy genre to preach well!

11. Preach, don’t commentate – Don’t offer your listeners either a running commentary or a labelled outline of the text.  Make your points relevant to today, put them in today language, then show that from the “back then” as you explain the text.  Don’t preach “back then” and then offer token relevance once people are disconnected and distracted.

12. Describe vividly, engage listener with letter – If you can do a good job of painting the original situation, the emotions of the writer, the potential responses of the recipients, etc., that is, if you can make it seem full colour, 3-D and real, then your listeners will engage not only with you, but with the letter.  Suddenly it won’t seem like a repository of theological statements, but a living letter that captures their imagination and stirs their hearts.  The theological truth will hit home when it is felt in the form God inspired!

13. Be sensitive to implicit imagery – Often the writer will subtly or overtly be using imagery to explain himself, pick up on that and use it effectively.  Our first port of call for illustration should not be external to the text (i.e. the books of supposedly wonderful illustrations – they are the last resort option.  Start with the text, then move to the experience of your listeners trying to combine the two.  Go elsewhere only if necessary.)

14. Keep imperatives in their setting – Some of us have a tendency to use an imperative magnet.  We cast our eyes over the text until we spot a command, and bingo!  Now we think we have something to preach.  We don’t.  Not until we get a real sense of how the whole passage is working.  It doesn’t take much skill to turn every epistle into a command collection.  Certainly don’t avoid the instructions, but don’t ignore everything else too.

15. Tune your ear to the tone of the writer – This is so important.  Some tone deaf preachers make every instruction, implication, suggestion, encouragement or exhortation into a shouted command.  I think Paul and company would look on with consternation if they heard how their letters were preached by some.  Be sensitive to the writer’s tone and develop sensitivity in your own tone.

Tomorrow we’ll touch on another, well, five, of course.  Add your own by comment at any time – the list is not intended to be exhaustive!