Stage 8 – Message Detail

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

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

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!

Preaching New Covenant and Fellowship with the Trinity

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

I have been pondering the New Covenant and what might happen if we were to dwell on it as the New Testament writers do.  We’ve thought about the wonder of sins forgiven, the profound work of God in the hearts of believers, and now for the last post . . . God in the hearts of believers.  Or to put it another way, fellowship with the Trinity!

There are many New Testament passages that seem to point to the believer being “in Christ” or “abiding in Him” and the indwelling presence of God, by His Spirit, in the believer, causing us to cry out to our Abba.  This mutual indwelling motif is not uncommon.  Sadly, nor is our tendency to treat these notions as some sort of technical truth, a legal reality, as it were, and then focus our reading or teaching on our self-driven effort to live good lives, as if only marginally connected to God.

If we go back to the promises of the New Covenant, there is plenty to rock the original recipients back on their heels.  Ezekiel 11 looks forward to when “they shall be my people and I shall be their God.”  Good stuff, but what is key to this reality?  “A new spirit I will put within them.”  Later, in chapter 36, after references already in the preceding chapters, God gets more overt on the indwelling Spirit theme; “I will put my Spirit within you” – this is not normal fare in Old Testament times!  Remember that a key theme of Ezekiel is that of God’s special presence (or absence) from the temple.  The stunning hope of the city, is the reality of the New Covenant believer – The LORD is there. (Eze.48:35)

In Jeremiah God looks back to the Old Covenant, which was also marital in nature, but the New Covenant is different.  They will be His people, He will be their God.  Meaning?  Well, they will all know the LORD.  (Jer.31:34)

In Isaiah there is already the marital motif, the indwelling Spirit and the close relationship.  In Joel we read of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh, and a mutual calling – the LORD calling the people, and the people calling on His name.  In Zephaniah there is the hope of the LORD being in the midst of Zion, exulting over her with loud singing, quietening her with his love.  In Malachi we look forward to the coming Lord of the future covenant.

I suspect that if we spent time pondering the New Covenant, both in its predictive descriptions, and with sensitivity to the New Testament texts, we would find ourselves preaching more a message of wonder than a message of pressure.  More a message of delightful description, than a message of demanding duty.  More a message pointing to God, than a message pounding on us.

Perhaps we are just so familiar with the New Testament texts that we miss what they are saying.  Perhaps our theology somehow overrides what our eyes could see if they looked carefully.  The Christian life doesn’t just include fellowship, it is fellowship.  And that isn’t just with each other, it is profoundly with God, through His Christ, by His Spirit.

Preaching, New Covenant and Heart Transformation

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Yesterday I pondered the familiar but radically exciting truth of having sins forgiven. This core feature of the New Covenant has to drive us deeper, to the issue of the heart. Sin is not just behavioral error, or contravention of legal codes. Sin springs from where it is born: the human heart.

A solution to the problem has to address the problem as it is. If the issue were merely a failure to obey, then God could simply provide empowerment to obey. A better battery. Simple. But what if sin goes deeper than external obedience? What if the very problem Christ came to address was the problem of human hearts?

Then something along the lines of the New Covenant would be needed. Not just a power supply to enable obedience, but a change of heart from death to life. And what would that new heart, new inner life, also point toward? An inner living desire to please God.

Believers in the days of David, of Daniel, or whoever, could only dream of the day when God would do a work in the heart of all his people. They could only imagine what it would be like for God’s people to have heart-stirred inner motivation for fulfilling the moral requirements of a just and holy God.

Speaking of moral requirements, Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment. He pointed to a matter of the heart – the requisite of love for God and for neighbour. Such a love would leave the whole legal corpus unbroken. That’s an amazing thought. In fact, Paul said the same thing, in Romans 13 for instance. Love fulfills the Law.

So its fairly simple then, we’ve just got to preach and pressure people to produce love from their own inner being, right? Tell ‘em to love God and love others, and hey presto, we’ll have communities of law abiding Christian citizens?

Every parent, every pastor, every preacher knows that telling people to love God and love others doesn’t quite seem to work. Its almost as if we aren’t in control of our own hearts, but they are in control of us. We do what we love, right?

So there has to be a better way than pressure. Most pastors and parents tend to fall back on that, because in the absence of a clear alternative, it seems better than saying nothing. But God doesn’t seem to be groping for a solution to the self-loving human heart.

He brings about the transformation of the New Covenant, in which our hearts are made alive and the requirements of righteousness are written there, rather than externally. How? Well, we love God (and we love at all), because we are loved first. He demonstrated His own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! It is the cross that presents the powerful love of our loving God – it is His love that ignites in us a love that is nothing other than response to His great love.

So what does this mean for preachers? Well, for one, perhaps we need to put more preaching effort into presenting Christ and Him crucified, and less effort into pressing Christians to copy Christ and His character exemplified.

And if God is doing a work on the heart, surely there’s another level to plumb too. Tomorrow.

Preaching to the Heart

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Just for a change, I’d like to offer a list of posts relating to this subject.  I think it is so important that we preach to the heart and not just fill the mind or press the will.  So here are some past posts on the subject:

Profound preaching involves profound preparation, profound application, profound presentation, all working toward profound transformation.

10 Biggest Big Ideas of the Bible made much of the central role of the heart, both God’s and ours.  Here are the links – God, Creation, Sin, Grace, Faith, Redemption, Community, Spreading Goodness, Hope, Christ.

Our View of the Bible is critical in respect to the heart.  This post on the clarity of Scripture pointed to the issue of the heart.  We don’t need to add force, we need to feel the force of what is there.

Preaching to the heart goes beyond guilt – four-part series – one, two, three, four.

How often do we hear the terminology of the Bible being overqualified.  Here’s a post from a while back on confusing the heart and the head.

Preaching from the heart?  Here’s a post.  Depends on your motive.  What about when the preacher is passionless?  What if there were a thermal imaging camera?  When should the message touch the preacher’s heart?  One thing I’ve said more than once is that we shouldn’t de-affect the text.

Preaching to touch the heart?  Images matter, especially biblical ones.  And so does vivid description.  How will you touch the heart?  Beware of manipulation though, or troublingly distant preaching, and one more.  Mentoring is critical to truly marking hearts.

Some historical thoughts on preaching and the heart?  How about Wilberforce.  Or Jonathan Edwards.  Even Chrysostom.  And Thielicke on Spurgeon, and more of that gold.

A series on the preacher’s heart.  Part one, two and three.

And an article on heart-centred hermeneutics.  (And a recipe to finish.)

Why Being Natural Feels Unnatural

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I hope you’ll forgive another oldie from the archives – this is from 2007:

While this may not be true in every culture, many have little time for “pulpiteering” these days.  The appearance of performance is significantly off-putting to those who place high value on genuine, vulnerable, honest and natural speaking styles.  People do not appreciate the sales patter of a car dealer or the obvious reading of a script in a phone conversation.  And in many churches the ranting, prancing or different enunciation of earlier generations is long gone.  But the key to being both natural and effective is not simply to relax.

As a general rule, the bigger the congregation, the bigger the gesture.  This can feel unnatural.  Yet the goal is not for you to feel natural, but for the listeners and observers to feel that it is natural.  Consequently a “natural” small gesture might look ridiculous to those in the pews.  It may feel natural to point to the left in reference to the past and gesture to the right when speaking of Christ’s return, but this is not effective as it looks awkward to the congregation.  After a while, the gesturing from right to left for time or logical progression starts to feel natural to the speaker, but only after thought and repetition.

As a general rule, a group of people require more repetition and restatement for concepts to formulate in their consciousness.  This can feel unnatural.  In a conversation with a friend it may be enough to say something once, but in a group you must allow several sentences for an initial thought to register, and then several minutes of careful work for the thought to form into something they can see in their minds.  This feels unnatural to you as the speaker, but that’s not the point.  The point is to come across as natural and to be effective in your speaking.

I am not advocating performance.  I am saying that effective preaching takes hard work, thought and much prayer.  Just relaxing doesn’t cut it.  Perhaps the real test of naturalness is the one that comes when the service is over.  As a listener approaches for a conversation, do they get the sense that you are a different person out of the pulpit?  Hopefully not.  Hopefully the switch back into conversational mode will not reveal that you are somehow acting when preaching, and a different person when not preaching.  Effective God-honoring preaching calls for real integrity in the pulpit, in conversation, in private . . . and we should learn our own appropriate communication approaches in each setting.

Word Studies 5 – Using the Fruit pt. 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I offered three suggestions on using the fruit of word studies in our preaching.  I urged us to default to a smooth integration – just let the fruit show through accurate explanation, rather than excessive demonstration of exegetical labour.  There are times to underline and show the process a bit more, but they should be strategically selected.  And I think we should think twice and then again before letting the original languages show.  Three more thoughts:

4. Beware of cross-reference overload.  The nature of word study done properly is that you will end up chasing a lot of texts in their contexts to make sense of the author’s use of the particular term.  The danger is that when you preach you give people a quick dose of cross-referencing that is simply too much to bear.  You had time to pause and think about each one.  But if you fire them out like a machine gun, your listeners will have the tendency to be overwhelmed by other passages and stop engaging.  Alternatively they will try to follow and get bogged down in the process.  Or they will think that Bible study is about rapid cross-referencing without looking at texts in context.  None of these are good.  Better to keep hearts and minds in one passage as much as possible.  Venture outside of your preaching text on purpose and carefully.  Make sure you bring everyone back in with you.

5. Don’t fall into the etymological fallacy.  The process suggested this week shouldn’t lead you into this arena, but I know some reference resources will.  The word the writer uses here comes from two terms – butter and fly.  Butter is a dairy product made with churned milk.  Fly is the term used for pesky insects like bluebottles.  Interesting, isn’t it?  The butterfly is a creature that . . . well, that has nothing to do with butter or fly.  The key issue in word study is how the term is being used at that time, and ideally, by that writer.  Where it came from typically isn’t a key issue.

6. Pursue whole passage clarity.  This is the goal.  Do your best in your passage study to make sense of the passage.  Then do your best in the message preparation to make the message clear.  That is a big goal not easily achieved.

Words are little things, but the ones in the Bible are critically important.  God inspired them.  All of them.

Word Studies 4 – Using the Fruit

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week we have been pondering the importance of word studies.  It is vital that we take the words of Scripture seriously, and thereby make our preaching as accurate and effective as possible.  So let’s say we’ve identified key words in a passage, pivotal terms on which the passage turns, and we’ve studied them to get a good sense of what the author meant by choosing those particular terms.  How do we use the fruit of the study in our preaching?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Default to smooth integration.  The majority of word study work that you do in your study need not show in your preaching.  By show, I mean overt reference to it.  The default should be that the study you’ve done is hidden, but the explanation you give is accurate.  Sometimes I would even go for smooth integration when I think the translation isn’t the best.  So I will read it as is, and then subtly state a preferred translation.  No fuss, no critique, just staying on track for effective explanation.  I think this is a good default.

2. Underline word studies sparingly and strategically.  There are advantages to sometimes letting some of the word study show overtly.  Perhaps you go to a couple of familiar or enlightening uses of the term, to give a taste of the process and help people see why you explain it as you do.  If this is done too much it will lose its impact.  Choose to show the word study more overtly in strategic moments – perhaps when the term is critical to the passage as a whole, or at least to a major point in the passage.

3. Avoid original language flaunting.  I know it is tempting to let your Hebrew or Greek hang out.  And if you haven’t studied it, it may be even more tempting to show you’ve read heavy commentaries.  I also know that some people will shake your hand and thank you for the wonderful insight into the original language.  What neither of us know is how many in your congregation are sitting there feeling linguistically inadequate, assuming that you can find things in the Word they never could, and therefore feeling less motivated to read the Bible between now and when you preach again.  Typically there is no need to refer to the actual term, just say “in the original” or “the word Paul uses here . . . ”

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with three more suggestions on using the fruit of Word Studies.

 

Heartfelt Explanation – Preaching to the Heart (2)

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I gave three thoughts on preaching to the heart.  The heart of the author of the biblical text matters, the hearts of the listeners with whom the text communicates matter, and God’s heart is revealed in the text.  Three more thoughts to conclude the list:

4. Dispassionate presentation is not honest, be sure to incarnate it.  Some are committed to being as dispassionate as possible in presentation.  “If I let my own heart response show, then I might distract listeners from the information in the text.”  The text is therefore offered at arms length, and typically received as such.  It should make us stop and wonder why we see no support for dispassionate preaching in the biblical record.  Some preaching is more like 1980’s washing powder advertising than biblical preaching.

5. When we add “affect” to the text, we are in danger of manipulation or emotionalism.  Why do we assume the text is dull and that our job is to add a stirring or rousing challenge?  Why do we think the text is dull, but we can add windows to the building by fascinating little illustrations?  I’m not against effective challenge, nor helpful “illustration”, but I am bothered by the assumption that the Bible is sterile and flat.  If we would reflect the affect of the text better, perhaps we’d see more listeners genuinely stirred by it.  When we simply add our own impact, we shouldn’t be surprised when people seem superficially stirred, or uncomfortably annoyed.

6. When we remove “affect” from the text, we are in danger of dulling hearts.  Some preachers don’t preach to the heart.  They take a vibrant and living Word and turn it into dull lecture material for the heads of their listeners.  Do we really want churches full of well-informed heads with dulled, or hardened, hearts?  If our theology and view of ministry leads us in that direction, please let’s respond to the warning flag and evaluate where we might have gone slightly off target.  Or to put it another way, if you think preaching is simply about informing people in a dull manner, please stop preaching for the sake of your listeners. Take a sabbatical and prayerfully chase God’s heart on the issue through the Bible.

Preaching to the heart matters, because the heart matters.  And preaching to the heart is not primarily an issue of application or challenge, it is at the very centre of our explanation.  God’s heart revealed, in heartfelt inspired texts, should be felt by the hearts of those hearing it properly presented.

 

There is more to be said, some of which I’ve probably addressed previously.  What would you add to this list?

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions, part 3

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Finishing off the list of suggestions to help make textual explanation more effective:

11. Defer to a historic explanation.  “Martin Luther explained it in this way . . .” this can be helpful.  This can be unhelpful.  Whether it is Luther or Calvin or Wesley or Edwards, no matter how heavy a hitter, you have to be careful with this approach.  It is important to know your history and not just pluck a quote off a website.  Their context may have been different.  Your listeners may not grasp their significance, and may get confused by going to another different place in history.  Equally a historical explanation may allow for indirect communication of hard hitting truth.

12. Defer to a commentators explanation.  “Doug Moo explains it like this . . .” this can be helpful.  My preference would be for preachers to digest the commentaries in the context of a conversation with them, then preach in their own words.  Preaching is not a footnoted seminary project, nor an unpublished commentary.  Listeners typically don’t know the commentators (or even what one of those is).  The names can be distracting.  The impression given can be misleading.  But sometimes somebody’s turn of phrase hits the nail on the head.  “One writer put it like this . . . “ will usually suffice.

13. Develop an explanation piece by piece using effective review along the way (walking through a passage).  This is the more traditional approach, but it can work well.  Make sense of the first chunk, then build on that with the second chunk, etc.  Be sure to review the progress so they get a sense of the building explanation and logical flow.

14. Deliver explanation by means of a birds eye view of features and chunks (flying over a passage).  The opposite approach is to give them a birds-eye view of the whole passage before coming in closer to see the details.

15. Dive in to a key location and work out from there (skydiving into a passage).  Another approach is to drop in at verse 8, then work outwards to see what came in the preceding paragraph, then explore in the other direction and see how verse 8 is worked out.

This is still just scratching the surface.  What would you add?