Stage 8 – Message Detail

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions, part 2

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment
Yesterday I started this list.  The goal is to avoid explanation of Bible text becoming dull and boring:

6. Do honour the whole text.  It may be tempting to dump half the passage and preach the preachy bit, but often seeing how the whole works actually can add focus to the more obviously powerful section.  There will be times to zero in, but don’t always do so and miss the text as a whole.

7. Do recognize and explain the text in light of its own structure.  This follows on from the previous suggestion.  Help people learn to see the structure in a passage.  If it is a poem, help them spot the stanzas (even if you use the technical term “chunk” instead of stanza or whatever sized unit you have).  In an epistle help them see the logical flow of thought.  Very rarely are texts three equal and parallel points.  Help people spot the textual structure, rather than predictable sermonic structure that you impose on the text.

8. Demonstrate the structure of the passage by means of the connectives and content.  One way to show the structure is to highlight the change of content.  Another way is to point them to the connectives.  “Scan down verses 11-16, notice how he says ‘and also,’ ‘you also,’ ‘again’, ‘and you also’ . . . he is really piling up the blessings here, isn’t he?”

9. Do describe the scene so effectively that people can see it.  Here’s a big one.  Too much explanation is too arms’ length and abstract.  Explanations can feel so dull, but when the narrative or situation (or potential application, but that’s for another time), when the situation is so compellingly described that listeners can actually see it in their hearts . . . they also start to feel it.  This is the power zone of explanation.  Help people with good description and they will thank God for your preaching.

10. Develop a contemporary simile.  “This is like . . .” here we enter into the realm of so-called illustrations.  I prefer to name them what they are.  All illustrations are either explanations, proofs or applications.  If you think the best way to explain the text is to use a contemporary example or simile, go for it.  As long as you know what you are trying to achieve, there is a good chance you will be successful.

Five more tomorrow, but your thoughts are invited at any point.

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I am pondering the issue of explaining the biblical text.  This is one of the staple ingredients in all true biblical preaching.  I wouldn’t like to taste omelette made without eggs, or preaching without explanation.  But doesn’t explanation get a bit dull?

It certainly can.  Read a verse, say what it means, read a verse, say what it means.  This can be dullness personified in a pulpit.  But it doesn’t have to be dull.  Actually, it has to not be dull, otherwise we’re boring people with the Bible which has to be wrong.

So hear are some brief suggestions on ways to explain a biblical text.

1. Don’t think that the context isn’t critical.  It really is.  Neither short-change the historical situation and setting so that the text feels like a random set of statements, nor overkill the historical background so that the listeners feel like they need to lie down before they’ve even met the text you’re preaching.

2. Do set the scene with the written context.  Even if it is only a few sentences, help orient listeners to what has come before, or how this text fits into the whole passage.  Remember that most books/letters were written to be heard as a whole.

3. Don’t forget that length of explanation may influence order of content.  In a single sentence, the order of thought may work in a way that it won’t when developed into a sermon.  The same is true of some Bible texts.  For instance, here’s a random sentence: “I am going to town, to go to the electrical store, to replace our dead washing machine.”  That makes sense, but what happens if I “sermonize” it?  “I am going to town: not to the country, nor to a suburb, but to town.  Specifically, the town of . . . “  Suddenly it feels a bit random and aimless.  The sentence wasn’t, but the explanation is.  Maybe I need to clarify the goal earlier in a developed sermon on that sentence – “our washing machine has died and so I need to replace it, here’s the plan…”  (Not compelling sermon material, but illustrative nonetheless!)

4. Do weigh words appropriately.  Or to put it the other way around: don’t treat every word as equal.  It can be dull beyond words to hear an explanation of word after word in a text.  Take, for example, Ephesians 1:15 and following.  It would be easy to explain great words like faith, Christ, love, saints, glory, etc., but lose people before they get to the main thought of the sentence – the end of verse 17 onwards.  Put energy into the main words, not equal energy into all words.  They all matter, but some are pushing you toward others.

5. Don’t treat a verse as a unit of thought.  This is the same as above.  It is tempting to go verse by verse, but sometimes a verse is half a sentence.  Don’t feel bad about summarizing chunks effectively in order to emphasise the main thoughts in a section of text.

Tomorrow, another five.  Meanwhile, any thoughts on these?

Saturday Short Thought: Dangerous Preaching x4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I recently heard Gavin McGrath speaking and he was asked what he thinks constitutes dangerous preaching.  I really liked his list of four off the top, as it were:

1. False teaching – of course.

But in good church circles, the other three would be –

2. The mocking or patronizing of non-Christians –  So easily done, so unhelpful to all.

3. Legalism and feeding religiosity – If you perform better then you will be a better Christian.  This leads to either pride or despair, but neither are helpful.

4. Formulaically simple preaching – Just follow this abc and you will have better life.  Problem is that the Bible doesn’t teach that, nor is it effective.

What would you add now that you’ve had time to think about it?

The Four Places of Preaching – 3

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So the preaching process starts in the study, then the preacher needs to stop and pray (in an even less distracted place), but then comes the third location.

Place 3 – Starbucks.  Huh?

Let me clarify before I start into this that I personally don’t tend to pick Starbucks (or pray in a closet, for that matter), but the principle applies.  I have a good friend, and a preacher I highly respect, who does literally go to a coffee shop for this phase of his preparation.

He takes five 3×5 cards and puts names on the cards – the names of individuals in the church, a cross section, essentially.  With his five listeners spread out on the table, and surrounded by real life and culture, he is then able to prepare the message.  He can ask himself as he goes, “would this communicate to Jim?”  or “How would Kerry take that?”

The goal in this place?  To prepare a message that will effectively communicate the prayed-through main idea of the passage to the particular listeners as an act of love for them and for the Lord.

The best biblical content will be wasted if it isn’t targeted appropriately.  Our task is not to make the Bible relevant.  It is.  Our task is to emphasize that relevance.  And by definition, something can only be relevant to specific people.  Relevant to this age.  Relevant to this culture.  Relevant to this community.  Relevant to this church.  Relevant to these individuals.

So John Stott was on target when he urged preachers to be at home not only in the world of the Bible, but also the world of the listener.  Haddon Robinson took the two worlds notion and expanded it to distinguish contemporary culture from the specific culture of the local church.  So we can misfire with  traditional presentations in a changing culture, as we can with postmodern engagements in a church that hasn’t gone there.

Whether we sit in Starbucks, or ponder the church’s phone list.  Wherever we spend time with church members and people from the community we seek to mark.  Somehow we need to make sure our messages are more than great biblical content.  They have to be on target, and to be on target, we must know the hearts we aim to reach.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching Psalms

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

So yesterday I shared some thoughts on preaching the prophets.  How about another list on the Psalms?  Why do I enjoy preaching them?

1. They are self-contained.  A psalm is a complete unit of thought.  It may be part of a short collection, so it is worth looking at those before and after.  It may give a historical clue in its superscription, so it is worth looking at that and chasing the history if there is anything suggested.  But essentially with a Psalm I know what I need to study and prepare . . . the psalm.

2. They are real and messy.  Life isn’t all clean and simple.  Life gets messy.  Emotions soar and plummet.  Situations overwhelm and resolution of tension can utterly delight.  The Psalms don’t pretend we are unfeeling stoical creatures.  We might, but the Psalms remind us to be real.  Not only does this make for preaching that sounds real and not just some sort of religious talk, but it also connects because listeners are also living real rather than merely religious lives.

3. They are emotive and heart-felt.  As a communicator I know the danger of adding emotional thrust to cold sterile content.  It can be very manipulative.  But I also know the danger of sterilizing powerful biblical texts into safe little life lessons.  Oops.  The Psalms are sitting up to be preached with a full heart to those who have a feeling heart – whether that be pain, or joy, sorrow, or delight.

4. They are full of imagery.  I don’t have to look endlessly for imagery to add to a message when I’m preaching from the Psalms.  It is usually right there.  I need to spend that energy on the text and then on effective description and presentation, but then I can have confidence that the imagery choice was made by God’s Spirit rather than me.

5. They are always relevant.  When people have lived the Christian life for a while, they typically end up appreciating the Psalms.  The rugged rawness reflects their own personal experience.  It tends to be the less mature who can’t get into the Psalms.  So as I preach them, I can have confidence that nerves will be touched, hearts will be stirred, lives will be helped.

I haven’t even mentioned the messianic hopes, the glimpses into the godhead, etc.  Ah well, I will stick with the five I put in the title.  Just a nudge in case you’ve forgotten to preach from this great collection.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching the Prophets

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

After three days of reflections on a great series from Daniel, here are a few reasons why I personally love to preach from the prophets:

1. They are less familiar.  This isn’t to suggest that sounding novel is a good thing, but it is nice to see people leaning forward once they get the sense that you are going to make clear something they may have avoided in their own personal studies.  Obviously there are the familiar parts – Isaiah 6, 40, 53, the first half of Daniel, Habakkuk, etc.  But there is plenty of relatively untouched ground in both the major and the minor prophets.

2. They are stunning communicators.  The prophets had to get attention.  They couldn’t even be normal, let alone dull.  As a communicator it is a bit of dream to be able to tap into the creativity of the truly shocking, without taking any real flack for the choice of approach.  If we let the genre, the tone, and the creativity of the prophets shape our preaching of them, we should see this as a real head-start!

3. They are robust and direct.  You don’t have to go far in a prophet to get a sense of what God is feeling about things.  In the narrative sections you sometimes have to think and feel your way through multiple chapters for a single narrative.  In the prophets you’ll probably get struck on the nose within a few verses.  The prophets were, by definition, stunning communicators.  They had to be, since the people were so often so dull of hearing.  This leads on to another…
4. There are cultural similarities.  I don’t want to overplay the “Christian nation” ideas that some seem so passionate about, but there is a real sense in which our cultures have slipped from what they once were.  People taking God for granted or treating Him as irrelevant; people living to please themselves; people pursuing dishonest gain, plotting and scheming . . . this is the stuff of the Prophets, and of today.

5. They are hope filled.  There are layers upon layers of hope offered in the prophets.  Not only do they give the messianic predictions, but also the shorter term sense of God’s concern and interest and involvement in their lives . . . and also the longer term sense of ultimate reconciliation and kingdom hopes and guaranteed judgment on the wicked, etc.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it there.  When was the last time you preached from a Prophet?

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 3

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

One more reflection on last week’s teaching.  I’ve written about the handling of the text and the targeting of the application.  But there’s an almost intangible element to be included in any set of reflections:

The Credibility and Integrity of the Speaker

A. Ministry and life.  Since I am not naming the speaker, this post might seem a bit pointless.  Nonetheless, rather than focusing our attention on him, I’d love it to prompt our thoughts in prayers in respect to our own ministry.  Here is an individual who has been running the race for a good long time.  The race for him has included crossing cultures, engaging with different and often very challenging contexts, success in other fields apart from biblical teaching, facing direct opposition with deep integrity, etc.  There is a weightiness and a power in a life well lived.

B. Longevity.  Maybe this is the same as the previous comment, but it is important.  For those of us that haven’t been in the race for five, six or seven decades, it can seem a bit irrelevant to us.  But that is exactly wrong.  The longevity of our ministry and the impact of our service is very much about the life we live this week.  Longevity and integrity doesn’t sneak up on us, it is cultivated in the daily walk with Christ.

C. Humility.  It is always striking when someone who has reason to be proud isn’t.  If messages like these had come out of a young man, it would be hard to imagine the possibility of such humility.  Courage and boldness combined with humility is a powerful cocktail.

I will leave it there, just in case blogging about an anonymous individual is more annoying than helpful!

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 2

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In this series of posts I am reflecting on Bible teaching I had the privilege of sitting under last week.  It was some of the most stirring and powerful ministry I have heard in a long time.  I won’t name the speaker, for I suspect he wouldn’t appreciate that, but I hope my reflections on this ministry might be a stir to us.  Yesterday I wrote about his masterful handling of the text … something that reveals hours, even years, of hard work.

Today I am struck by another labour intensive feature of the messages:

Brilliant and On-Target Application.

A. The speaker was sensitive to the specifics of a very mixed crowd.  I heard him speak from Daniel almost twenty years ago.  It was powerful then because it was targeted to a the group of young people of which I was a member.  This time the messages were different.  Part of that was the difference in audience.  This was a mixed group with a variety of ministry roles from across the continent.  Yet the messages were so pertinent to people living as a small minority in difficult anti-Christian cultures.

B. The speaker honoured the intelligence levels of those present.  This was a gathering of people that included a significant number of the highly educated.  The messages were not elitist at all, but the speaker was sensitive to the intelligence levels in the room.  Nobody would have felt patronised, nor would anyone have felt untouched by the ministry.

C. He obviously invested significant time in preparation.  The level of relevance and applicational targeting in these messages would not come from a quick scan of old notes.  The speaker evidenced a real love for the listeners by the level of specificity he managed to achieve in his thoughtful applications to the audience.

Tomorrow I’ll add one more post, on the issue of the speaker’s credibility.

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 1

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last week I was at a conference, enjoying it both as a participant and as a presenter.  I was particularly struck by the main Bible teaching.  I have been pondering what made it so effective and will offer my reflections in three posts.  I know the speaker is not a limelight seeker, so I won’t name him, but I trust these reflections will be provocative for us.

Observation 1 – Masterful Handling of the Text

In four messages we were taken through the entire book of Daniel.  Not the easiest book to preach, nor the least controversial.  How was the text handled so effectively in the course of four one-hour presentations?

A. The speaker was sensitive to both the literary and historical context of the book.  He knew his Babylonian and subsequent world empire history and demonstrated a keen awareness of the various disciplines needed for pulling together the complexity of Daniel.

B. He was deeply aware of the literary structure of the book.  Layer upon layer of structure was masterfully woven together as the book was presented, leaving the listeners struck by the artistry of the writer.

C. He showed a remarkable ability to summarise the content of multiple chapters without losing the essence or the core intent of the passages.  The teaching had integrity, even when a chapter was surveyed only briefly.

D. The speaker was as bold as a lion, yet as winsome as a lamb.  In a mixed crowd of people from multiple denominations and disciplines, it would be tempting to try to please everyone with a sort of neutered presentation.  Not here.  There was a stunning level of courage in this presentation.  He knew that many would disagree on various levels, yet he was unashamed in his presentation of the book. I think this kind of courage required both a genuine winsomeness and an authoritative mastery of the book’s contents.

I was challenged by the obvious passion for the Word that showed in this series of talks.  But there was more to it than that, tomorrow I’ll look at the issue of targeted applications…