Preaching Myths #6 – Evaluation Verboten

August 8, 2013August 5, 2013 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Thankfully this is quite a rare one in my experience, but since it exists somewhere, let’s prod it towards its demise:

“If a preacher has prayerfully prepared, then that must have been what God wanted us to hear – i.e. don’t critique a preacher.”

First of all, there are things to commend this idea. Roasting the preacher is entirely too easy and simply critiquing the message should not become a cover for not letting God’s Word work in our hearts. Sometimes God will speak to a church through a message that makes people uncomfortable.

However, the idea that a preacher is above critique because they prayed in their preparation is a strange notion. Here are some points to ponder:

1. Preaching is not about direct revelation, so the preacher’s prayer by no means guarantees that the preacher is in step with God’s Spirit when he preaches.

2. Evaluation and critique is not always a matter of personal preference. There are ways to evaluate preaching. Is the Bible accurately handled? Is the message organized and presented clearly? Is the preacher and the message engaging? Does the truth of the Bible nuzzle deeply into the realities of our lives today? These are not matters of subjective preference and personal taste.

3. Just because someone else affirms a message, this does not negate a fair negative evaluation. In most congregations you will find someone who likes a poor preacher. This does not make them a good preacher.

4. The leaders of the church are responsible for the diet of the church, even if the speaker is a visitor. It is the job of the leadership to make sure that people do not get fed with poor, weak, dangerous or sub-Christian teaching.

5. Evaluation is necessary for improvement. While you may choose not to invite a visiting speaker back based on evaluation, there is a positive value within the church. If you preach regularly, evaluation can help you improve. Howard Hendricks critiqued the notion that practice makes perfect. “Practice makes permanent. Evaluated practice makes perfect.”

Every church leadership needs to carefully and prayerfully evaluate who is feeding the flock. You cannot be careless in this and expect no negative consequences. Evaluation is not some sort of ungodly judging of others, it is a necessary part of serving the church and always moving toward better stewardship of the privilege of church leadership.

Preaching Myths #5 – Short Talk Required

August 7, 2013August 5, 2013 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

People still like to wheel this one out:

“The current generation cannot concentrate as long as in the past, so reaching this generation requires shorter talks.”

Uh, no. There is no evidence to support this. People always like to cite the rapid-fire nature of contemporary TV, or they buy into the increasingly high-paced and frantic presentation at some youth events. But what about other evidence? Films are longer than ever – gone, it seems, are the days of 80 minute action films. And of course, preachers popular with the younger generation are all only giving 12 minute mini-talks, right? I listen to a lot of 40 minute messages, and then there’s the folks attracting the younger generation with their 60 minute messages!

The evidence is not all stacked up in favour of bite-size preaching.

1. People could never concentrate for 30, 40 or 60 minutes years ago. People have always been gripped and regripped by good preachers every few minutes. People have always been bored to tears by dull and unengaging preachers. 10 minutes is far too long to tolerate some preachers, others can hold attention for an hour.

2. Gripping content and effective delivery, combined with engaging persona and prayer-prepared people will add up to concentration. Notice that it isn’t delivery alone. Great content poorly delivered will always be an open invitation to mental drift. But poor content delivered well will still lose you.

3. Concentration is not optional. As a preacher you either keep people with you or go learn how to do it. Preaching to drifted minds and distracted hearts is not acceptable. Get their attention and keep it. If they aren’t listening, and you are ok with that, what are you doing? Please don’t preach just to fulfill some sense of obligation, or worse, for the money . . . preach to connect and communicate!

Whether you preach for 15 or 60 minutes next time, make sure it is appropriate to the occasion and the listeners, and then do everything you can to avoid the charge of going on too long – that is, make it so good that folks leave pondering the punch of the message, not the pain of its protraction.

Preaching Myths #4 – Non-Gospel Preaching

August 6, 2013August 5, 2013 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

How about this one?

“We should preach the gospel to unchurched folk, but give teaching to church people.”

I grew up going to two church services on a Sunday. One was for the church people. One was supposedly for the unchurched people. This second service always included a sermon that was a basic gospel presentation. Whether or not there actually were unchurched folk there is not the point. 6:30pm was the time for a gospel presentation.

But can we make, or indeed, should we make, such a strong distinction? I am not convinced. The reason is because I have heard enough preaching that is supposed to be “teaching” to realize that believers need gospel preaching more than something entirely different.

Too many have dumbed down the gospel to a transactional deal struck between God and the sinner at the point of conversion, which then recedes into the background as the new believer now learns to implement their responsibility with good moral teaching from the Bible. Learn this lesson. Apply this truth. Heed this warning. Follow this example. But gospel-less instruction can really start to sound like something other than Christianity.

Paul warned the Galatians when they started to think there was something more for them than an ongoing application of the gospel.

What about meat? Indeed, we should move on to meat instead of milk. How meaty do you want your gospel? But to move from gospel to something non-gospel is not progress, it is moving backwards into the fleshly world of religion. This is why some preaching could easily pass for instruction in another religion . . . responsibility-preaching will always appeal to the flesh, but it won’t be Christian. Some closing thoughts:

1. Preach the gospel to whoever is present, whatever stage of faith they may be at. The lost need it, and so do we. But preach the full, clear gospel, not a paper thin pale reflection of the real deal.

2. Since the gospel is at the core of instruction for believers, this means that every week can be both teaching for the believers and accessible for visitors. Special guest events can be great, but visitors may return the next Sunday, or they might even just show up on a random Sunday. Make every week seeker-safe.

3. Beware of the false “meat” of heavyweight responsibility preaching, or purely informational educative preaching. It seems more meaty to raise the bar and pressure people to perform better, or to edify their intellect through an educational presentation . . . but our biblical preaching should be driving the gospel deeper into a life, not taking people away from the gospel – that is never progress.

Preaching Myths #2 – Cool Preaching

August 3, 2013 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Here’s another idea that bounces around in various forms, but I think should be probed a bit:

“Cool preaching attracts people.”

This could be the thinking of church leaders who decide to go with a “cool preaching” option in order to seek growth. Or it could be the critique of traditional church folks who are looking sideways at a different church which has a perceived “cool factor” and is growing faster than their church is. When used as a critique, it tends to carry with it the implication that such a church must be dumbing down, softening, weakening, diluting or corrupting the gospel in some way.

Before critiquing the myth, I suppose both thoughts can be affirmed. Some churches do make superficial style issues a driving factor in their growth strategies and in some cases it does seem to attract people (although any style may well put others off coming in the first place, even a contemporary style).

And indeed, some contemporary styled churches have weakened the gospel leading to shallow conversions and poor discipleship. But let’s be fair here, some traditional styled churches have weakened the gospel leading to shallow conversions and poor discipleship too! Sweeping generalizations about contemporary versus traditional are very naive.

So, does cool preaching attract people? I would say that it might, but probably not. The primary people who tend to be attracted to “cool Christianity” may well be Christians whose tradition store has become overstocked and they want to try something different.

Three thoughts:

1. Christ attracts people. Re-read the gospels and notice how normal and broken people were so drawn to Jesus.

2. Christlike communities attract people. If people are not drawn to Jesus today, it is probably because their exposure to his body is cluttered by other baggage and distraction. A community being transformed by the love of God so that they love each other (like Christ) will spill outwards in love to the community (like Christ) and thereby be a magnet to broken people (like Christ).

3. Effective preaching engagingly communicates what matters. Cool preaching without biblical substance is see through. People may well see through “cool-empty” just as they may see through “traditional-empty” (although sadly there will be those who don’t see through one or the other). So what then for our preaching?

A. We must seek to get the substance right: the Bible offered engagingly, the gospel full and clear, and the presentation of God in Christ as clear as the incarnation requires.

B. We must seek to remove unnecessary obstacles: issues of delivery, packaging, presentation, and content need to be carefully evaluated to make sure that people are not choosing to walk away from the gospel because of something other than the gospel.

Being cool is not the goal in preaching, unless you are wanting to temporarily attract young disenchanted Christians. Cool is really not the issue at all, but recognize that in your pursuit of best substance, obstacle-light preaching, you will probably be critiqued for being “cool” but shallow. Make sure you’re not.

Preaching Myths #1 – Pew Trust

August 2, 2013August 2, 2013 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I may not debunk these myths fully, but I do hope to make us think. Here’s one:

“Put effort into a one-off evangelistic preaching event in your church and people will bring people.”

Many churches recognize the need for preaching (as well as everything else), to be targeted if unchurched folk are going to be interested and understand. So periodically we might have an evangelistic “guest service” and encourage our people to bring people. Some will. But churches often struggle with why the majority won’t bring anyone. Perhaps the non-guest-bringers are just not as committed? Or perhaps it is something else altogether. Could it be:

1. They don’t have any meaningful contact with non-Christians. This is sadly too common. Too many church folks either feel woefully incapable of meaningful spiritual conversation or they are so busy with church activities that they have no time for meaningful relationships with anyone else.

2. They are not motivated to see others get saved. This points to issues in their spiritual maturity, and the answer will not be more arm-twisting and pressure tactics. Instead the church leaders need to think through actually helping them grow spiritually.

Perhaps the majority of people don’t bring people because they are very committed to reaching their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours! Bringing a contact into church for an evangelistic event is a big step of trust:

3. Perhaps they don’t trust the church or event. Here are some questions your church folk may be asking:

A. Do I trust the church to give my contact a good exposure to Christianity? This means more than just the preaching. Will they feel welcome? Will people talk to them? Will it feel awkward? Will there be unnecessary obstacles to their coming to faith in Christ?

B. Do I trust the speaker? Will the speaker be warm-hearted or fiery and offensive? Will the speaker offer good news, or just a cringe-worthy critique of society today? Will the speaker speak in Christian-ese and preach to the choir, or will the speaker be relevant, engaging, interesting, clear? Which version of the gospel will be preached? How will the speaker end the message – strong appeal, awkward appeal, gentle landing? If it is a guest speaker, do I even know him or his plan?

C. Do I trust the following weeks? Huh? People look beyond the evangelistic event? Some do. I do. What if my colleague enjoys it and wants to come back, will church continue to be a good exposure to Christianity for them? Who is speaking next week? What will that experience be like?

D. Do I trust the discipleship ministry of the church? Let’s say my colleague becomes a follower of Christ, wonderful! Now, will the church be able to effectively disciple them?

Simply having an evangelistic event and pressuring folk to bring people is not enough. As my good friend puts it, “I don’t want seeker-sensitive, but I do want seeker-safe.” What has your church done to make this kind of outreach more effective? What do you wish your church would do?

Bibles Open

May 29, 2013May 20, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

When you preach, how long do Bibles stay open?

1. Open until right after the reading. Perhaps your listeners know from experience that once the reading is over, the message will fly every which way and the text that was read will become a distant memory. They may open their Bibles for the reading, but once that is done, the Bibles are shut. So what are you preaching?

2. Open until disconnect is evident. Perhaps they will be looking at the passage and listening for a while. But after a while it will become evident that your message has no real connection to the passage. At some point some will close their Bibles in an act of quiet pew-level frustration and sit listening in anticipation of the closing hymn. Or . . .

3. Open as alternative to listening. Perhaps some will stay open so that the listener can occupy themselves while your message continues. For whatever reason, they have struggled to stay engaged and have decided that rather than being frustrated, they will read some Bible and make best use of the time!

4. Open until fingers grow tired. Here’s another possibility. Perhaps after the fourteenth cross reference, they get tired of searching for 2nd Hesitations and decide they’d be better off just listening rather than trying to keep up in the grown up sword drill for the initiated Bible handlers (or the folks with the indented pages for cheating in sword drills!)

5. Open until end of message. Perhaps people keep their Bibles open right the way through, frequently checking that what you are saying fits with the text. It is both textually accurate and personally compelling. When the message ends, the Bibles are closed by grateful hearts and helped lives.

6. “Open” even on the way home. Perhaps people close their Bibles with a finger in the text, because subconsciously they can’t wait to get back into that passage and pray through it some more at home. This would be a good sign of effective preaching!

7. Open all week. Perhaps you preach in such a way that listeners are motivated and stirred to keep their Bibles open all week. They want to read on, read around, read more. They discovered that the Bible was accessible, enjoyable and relevant to their lives. They can’t imagine not wanting to pursue the God you introduced on Sunday. Good preaching!

Two Ways to Feed 2

April 17, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I suggested that offering a meal is more loving than throwing a shower of vitamin pills at someone. I’m not sure I want to overwork the analogy, but there is infinite variety even in the category of meal. Here are some thoughts on pulpit cooking options. I’ll let you evaluate each one:

1. Fast Food Preaching. It is prepared quickly, in a very standardized process, with standard content, high on application, but almost bereft of nutrition. Some people get addicted to it. Some people grow sick of it.

2. Home Delivered Fast Food. It is the same as number 1, but you didn’t even have to go and get it. It was delivered by the internet delivery moped and saved you a whole load of time.

3. Home Delivered Fast Food Stolen. Once you get it delivered, you hide the box and pretend that you cooked it. There is a sensed lack of integrity, but you think everyone’s nice comments are genuine.

4. Thrown Together Left-Overs. Again, short on time, you pull together scraps from here and there. They don’t necessarily go together, but what you heard from him and what you read over there and what is on your mind once you pause to think about it . . . all served on one sermon plate.

5. Good Food Disconnected. This is better, you have done some cooking. But you haven’t grasped that while all food may be good food, not all good food goes together on the same plate.

6. One Favourite Recipe. You have learned to do a mean chili con carne, so that’s what you cook. Every time. Guests coming? Chili con carne. Sorted. Unless, of course, they come twice. Works better if you are a traveling chef, unless people swap venues and then things get complicated 🙂

7. Good Ingredients Cooked the Wrong Way. You take your chili con carne recipe and just replace the ingredients. Problem is that it doesn’t work with a lamb joint, cooking chocolate or a fruit selection. Forcing every Bible text into the same sermon shape may not be such a great solution!

8. Good Ingredients Cooked the Right Way. Please cook salmon differently to beef. Deal with each text and congregation and situation according to what and who they are.

9. The Fast Feast. Seven good but random courses back to back in half an hour, without either break in delivery or connection in content. Not ideal.

10. Non-gourmet home cooked healthy meal. It isn’t exciting. It won’t win a prize. But it may win hearts as you give of yourself to those you love. And over time, it will generate health like nothing else.

Two Ways to Feed

April 16, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are essentially two ways to feed someone. I may decide to chase further possible analogies tomorrow, but for now, just two ways:

1. The pill shower. Next to our stove we have a funny shaped little dish. It usually contains some real treasures. It is where my wife puts her supplements for the day. There will be vitamin C for the immune system and various B vitamins for energy levels, and perhaps some fish oils for joint and heart health. Every one of those pills has real value for health.

Let’s say I come home from work and join my family at the dinner table. We pray and then my wife unveils the meal for the day – a randomly shuffled assortment of vitamin pills from the funny little dish!

Healthy? Technically it is.

Satisfying? Nope.

Sustainable for long-term health and growth? Hardly.

But is this not the way some of us preach the Bible to people in the church? An assortment of truth nuggets randomly assorted and presented in some manner as a “healthy diet”?

There is an alternative:

2. The meal. A meal tends to consist of a restricted number of elements carefully prepared and served in an appropriate order and combination. A meal can be healthy, or unhealthy. It can be gourmet or a highly processed “ready meal.” Oh the potential points of connection are multiplying!

Preaching a meal means preaching a passage or a small combination of passages, rather than assorted truth nuggets from all over the place. It means thinking about who you are preaching to and what they might need, rather than a standardized packaging of recommended daily allowance supplements. It means building long-term health and growth and even taking issues of satisfaction into account (although not exclusively, of course, or they may get a case of itchy-ear-itis).

Meals tend to be different each time, whereas a diet of supplements would always feel the same.

Let’s preach meals, seems like a proven and healthy approach to feeding folks. I’ll let you ponder the multiplying analogies. . . do you preach fast food, pre-packaged or home-cooked, etc.?

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit) 3

March 28, 2013March 27, 2013 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Crucifixion images tend to be sanitized. The reality was so much more shocking than we tend to realise. The frequency of reference, combined with serene artistic representations, has led many believers to have a altogether unrealistic mental image of the crucifixion.

If you are preaching in the next couple of days, before the celebration of Sunday, how should you handle the passion of our Lord? It is tempting for some to try to be as graphic as they can. The motivation may be good, but the net result can be lacking. Turning peoples’ stomachs is not the goal of Easter preaching. By all means be as biblical and historically accurate as you can be, but always keeping in mind that your listeners are a mixed bunch.

Some of them may fill their minds with horrific images from movie and video games. But there will be others present who find the slightest hint of blood brings about faintness and nausea. The goal is to preach Christ and Him crucified, not to preach so that all people recall is the horror of crucifixion itself. So beware of excessive medical detail, or overwhelming graphic description, or repulsive projected images.

It is important to remember that people will be drawn by the work of the Spirit, not by the effectiveness of our storytelling and vivid description.

We need to find the right balance this Easter. Tell it well and help people to know the historicity and reality of Calvary. But be careful to rely fully on the Spirit to stir the heart, as opposed to simply stirring the stomach by excessive and unhelpful shock and awe tactics.

Ground-Zero Preaching (Easter in the Pulpit) 2

March 27, 2013March 26, 2013 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Four gospels do not automatically mean four accounts of everything. In fact, most of the ministry of Jesus is told in less than four gospels (except for the feeding of the 5000). But once you get into passion week, then you have four gospels giving their all to get the story across. This is both a goldmine and a potential distraction for preachers.

After all, we can piece together so many details of that first Easter. At the same time, we can easily lose the theological emphasis of whichever gospel we are wanting to preach.

It is good to check all the gospels for accuracy. You don’t want to preach from John and make an error according to Matthew or Mark. The passion narratives do harmonize, but it is not always immediately easy to see how. So be sure to check and be fresh on the historical harmonization, but . . .

Preach the passage, not the historical harmonization. I am preaching from John this year. I want to make sure that the listeners hear what John intended to communicate. The gospels are not a transcribed video script, they are carefully crafted presentations of the history artistically woven to achieve something specific in the hearer. Our task as preachers is not just to tell the history, but to trust that the Gospel writer knew what he was doing (since the capital “A” Author was fully at work in each of the Gospels), and to preach accordingly.

It is a privilege to have the Bible in our language and to be able to preach one of the accounts. Even if you rotate through the Gospels each Easter, it will be four years until you come back to this year’s Gospel. Be sure folks get to hear it this time around!