Preaching Story: The Challenges of the Old Testament

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / 11 Comments

Are there specific challenges with preaching Old Testament narratives? I think there are a few points worth pondering here:

1. Typically we have less familiarity with the broader flow of the Old Testament and may be tempted to only preach the familiar handful of Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Goliath, Jonah, Daniel narratives. Take a look at some of the lesser known stories. I am willing to guarantee that if you study an obscure story you’ll want to preach it. More than that, if you really wrestle with it in its context, then you’ll probably preach it well!

2. Not only do we have less familiarity with the Old Testament world, but so do our listeners. This means being sure to take some time to orient them to cultural features of the world in which the story is set. For example, we have to help listeners understand what it was like to live in the world of the ancient near east, where the plurality of the gods of the nations made every battle into a playground tiff among the gods (and what it meant therefore to be defeated by a foreign power, and worse, exiled by them).

Typically I think a lot of the challenges here are in respect to two issues:

3. Recognizing the elements of continuity. Even in a radically different world, we can resonate with ancient biblical narratives because human nature doesn’t change, and neither does God’s character. The latter offers another set of issues since many are convinced by the Marcionite confusion that leads to Christians pulling away from the God of the Old Testament. We have to help people see the fullness of who our God is, which isn’t always easy.

4. Recognizing the elements of discontinuity. A lot has changed since back then. For instance, their hoped for deliverer has now been and gone, more than that, he went to the cross, rose again, sent his Spirit, is building his church, etc. So we have to figure out how to preach the text so that we see it in its fullness back then, as well as in its fullness for us today.

Old Testament narratives aren’t always easy, but they are so worth it. Let’s not reduce them to illustrations or children’s talks, but preach them as well as we can!

Saturday “Short” Thought: Thesaurus Needed

February 18, 2012February 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

These last weeks I have been blogging about preaching story – a vital skill in preaching, and sadly too easily neglected (either by avoidance of narrative sections, or by preaching as if they weren’t narrative.) In Cor Deo this week we were looking at a monumental passage in the Gospels – John 5.

John is at the same time both the easiest writing to follow (thinking in terms of the Greek especially), and some of the most profound content to grasp. What makes him “easy” to read includes his consistent use of recurring terminology, but this doesn’t make it easy to hear read.

For example, think of the places where Jesus gets going with a “me in you and you in me and us in them that the world may know…” rhythm. Easy words, but not easy to hear read and make sense of it though. Or the example this week in John 5 where Jesus uses the term “witness” about ten times in one paragraph. Even the more formal translation committees were probably relieved to offer two glosses for some variation – witness and testimony.

So what happens when the listeners hear such overwhelming repetition? Do they track with it, or do they roll their eyes and start to wonder when in church history the thesaurus was invented?

In the Gospels Jesus had continual run-ins with a “city gate legal system” over everything from Sabbath misdemeanours to blasphemy. In that system anybody of standing could initiate proceedings, but this didn’t mean constant frivolous charges. So the Jews were not longing for an official trial. They were looking for a charge that would stick, followed by the witnesses to make the charge stick. In that system the key issue in prosecution was not so much the evidence (forget CSI), but the credibility and social standing of the witnesses.

So Jesus made a claim to equality with the Father. That was a more serious charge (blasphemy) than the preceding sabbath breaking charge. Now, witnesses. They had their human witnesses, but what about Jesus, who could he call on? How about the Father, and John the Baptist, and the works themselves, indeed the very word of the Father, speaking of which, how about the Scriptures, Moses? Witness, witness, witness, witness, witness, witness, witness!

They didn’t get a conviction that day. The chess game continued.

So what does this mean for the preacher? Somehow you need to orient the listeners to the culture, the situation, the motivation, etc, and then they can hear the text singing instead of grating. Whether you read it straight through or in bits with explanation, well that is a matter of preaching strategy, but please don’t just read it so their eyes are rolling and they look down on the writing ability of John and the Spirit!

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Next week: I’m enjoying this too much, so how about a record breaking series extension?

Preaching Narratives – I’ll look at some of the issues in different parts of the Bible and even suggest that narrative might be in a class of its own as a super-genre!

Top 10 Mistakes Preachers Make Preaching Story – Part 2

February 17, 2012February 17, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I offered five common mistakes made in the preaching of Bible story, let’s finish the list:

6. They come up with a list of “principles.” A story isn’t given in Scripture to make masses of points (some preachers see launch points for pet thoughts throughout a story). To nuance this error further, stories aren’t given in Scripture in order to offer seven principles for a successful business venture, successful pet ownership or successful anything else. This is not some ancient text currently in vogue because of its timeless wisdom for living life. It is a story about people living under the question mark of God’s Word to a fallen world – will they trust Him, or not? Will we?

7. They make it into a human level story – be good, be better, be like. Don’t be blind! The Bible is not just about humanity. There’s a constant theocentric, christotelic, eternal and heavenly dimension. Whether God is overtly stated or not, the Bible story you are reading is written with at least an implicit assumption that these characters are living their lives, making their choices, facing their struggles in the context of response to God. Preach the story theocentrically, not anthropocentrically (i.e. it is God that is the main character, not just a human).

8. They treat it as a context-less moral lesson. Okay, I’m repeating the moral lesson bit to make a point, but actually the error here is to miss the context of the story. Not only does it have a historical context, which the preacher must plumb to make sense of it and preach it well, but it also has a written context. Why did the author choose to put it here in this sequence? It is both historically accurate and artistically presented to convey a theological point. You typically need to observe context to spot this.

9. They don’t apply the main idea of the story. Either they apply every sub-idea along the way, or they don’t apply at all. Stories mark and change lives. Help listeners to see what that might look like as the story preached is translated into their life lived. Never assume people will take general truths and apply them specifically. Never assume that application is automatic. Never believe that positive statements of gratitude from listeners equate to application. Instead, be overt and be specific.

10. They avoid preaching it altogether and stick in discourse sections. This is a mistake. Maybe they think stories are for children, or they think stories aren’t theologically rich enough, or they think that churches only need to be fed the food of epistolary discourse, or they think that they aren’t any good at preaching story, or for whatever reason, they avoid preaching story. This means somewhere between 50-70% of the Bible will remain unpreached in their ministry. I think it was Tozer who said that nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

There are lots of other things that could probably be listed, some of which are specific to certain sections of narrative. But let me make the unstated assumption stated – stories are good for preaching, good for listeners and good for the church. Go for it, preach stories and preach them well!

Top 10 Mistakes Preachers Make Preaching Story

February 16, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 8 Comments

As we come toward the end of this series of posts on preaching Biblical narratives, let’s have a list post (they’re always popular!) How about the top 10 mistakes preachers make when preaching stories?

1. They don’t tell the story! They refer to it, they draw lessons from it, they theologize all over it, but they omit to actually tell the story. Big oops! The story is not there to be exhibit A in your demonstration of your theological acumen. The story is there to change lives, so tell it!

2. They don’t tell it well. I don’t like adding to the sin lists already in existence, but making God’s Word boring or telling a story poorly must surely qualify as a transgression or iniquity on some level. God has given us everything necessary for a compelling message – tension, characters, movement, progression, illustrative materials, interest, etc. To tell it poorly is to miss an open goal with the ball placed carefully at our feet and thirty minutes to take a shot!

3. They think their thoughts are better than God’s inspired text. I’ve blogged before about the nightmare I suffered when a preacher read the story of Jesus turning water into wine, then said, “you know the story, so I won’t tell it again…” then proceeded to offer us his fanciful imposition of a theological superstructure all over the text. The text is inspired, it is great, God is a great communicator (so please don’t think God is desperate for you to add a good dose of your ideas to His – please preach the Word!)

4. They spiritualise details into new-fangled meanings. Suddenly listeners start thinking to themselves, “I never would have seen that!” or “I never would have made that connection – the donkey represents midweek ministries, brilliant!” Actually, they never would have seen it without you, not because you are God’s gift to the church, but because your fanciful insertion simply isn’t there. Preach the text in such a way as to honour it, not abuse it. And can I be provocative? Sometimes people force Christ into passages in ways that seem to undermine the whole richness of the text in its context – just because it is Christ doesn’t make it right.

5. They don’t let every detail feed into the powerful point of the main idea. Every detail counts, but it counts as part of the writer’s strategy to communicate the main point of the story. A story doesn’t make lots of points, it makes one point. Develop a sensitivity to the role of details in the communication of the single plot point.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with another five…

Bible Story: Read or Tell?

February 15, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Let’s assume that the reading is taken care of, and as I suggested yesterday this might not mean the reading of the text itself. Now, what to do with the telling of the story? Should we just read it, or should we tell it? I say we should tell it, and we should tell it well (and typically in the telling of it we may add detail not included in the text). Typically we will tell it with certain sections, or even the whole text, read along the way. Why tell and not just read?

1. The preacher’s task is to present the text by way of explanation. A big part of the explanation of the story is the effective telling of the story, and the effective telling of the story requires the preacher to describe the action, the scene, the situation in vivid colour so that the image can form in the hearts of the listeners.

2. The preacher’s task includes applying the story with contemporary relevance emphasized. A big part of the application of the story is helping listeners inhabit the tension of the story, identifying with the characters as they wrestle with life in response to the Word of God. A well told story carries a significant proportion of the explanation and the application of the message.

3. The preacher’s task includes not only saying what the text says, but doing what the text does. To put it another way, we need to honour the genre inspired by God’s Spirit. By telling story, we honour story as the genre of God’s own choosing.

4. The Bible text tends to be both lean and distant. It is lean in that every detail counts and every detail carries significance in the telling of the story. It is distant in that the original writers could assume awareness of culture, politics, history, geography, flora/fauna, etc. To simply read the text is, in some cases, to dishonour the inspired story by not allowing it to hit home in the imaginations and hearts of the listeners.

I could probably offer more reasons to tell the story and to tell it well, but I’ve gone long enough for today!

Bible Story and the Reading

February 14, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / 7 Comments

There are reasons why some churches have the reading of the text prior to the message or at the start of the message. There are reasons why I don’t like to do this when I’m preaching a narrative.

The reasons in favour of the reading include convention (it’s ‘cos we do!), declaration of the priority of the Word, trust in the public reading of the Word, etc.

The main reason against it, in my opinion, is that a story consists in the resolution of tension, so why give that away at the start? Even if people know the end, surely the re-presentation of the story is the place for the satisfaction of experiencing tension resolved?

When preaching narrative I tend to have a related reading to satisfy the hunger for a formal reading, but I prefer to keep this separate from the message. When the message begins, my goal is to win people to the text, rather than assuming they are ready for it and launching straight into the reading.

What do I mean by a related reading? It could be the preceding context in the flow of the book, perhaps ending with the introduction to the story. It could be a passage offering “informing theology” – a prior passage that in some way shaped the writer of the text. It could be a safe reading, such as a Psalm, that has more to do with the sung worship at that point in the service than in the message to follow.

I absolutely believe in the importance of the public reading of God’s Word. I’m not convinced we are obligated to the read our text then preach it though.

Tomorrow a related issue – should we tell the story, or should we just read it?

Preaching Story to Children and Adults

February 13, 2012February 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

As I was sharing about preaching Bible stories recently a friend jumped in and exclaimed their encouragement. “What you are describing as an approach to preaching to adults is what we do in the school ministry with the children!” What I had suggested was a basic outline from which to build. Here’s the outline:

Tell the Story
Make the Main Idea Clear
Apply the Main Idea

In a bit more detail, here’s my suggested “default” starter outline:

Introduction – whatever is needed to make people want to listen to you and to the passage and message.

Tell the story – tell the story so people can imagine it happening. Tell it accurately, tell it engagingly, tell it with energy.
Main Idea – make it clear what we are supposed to learn from this story. What is the main point the author is trying to communicate?
Application – take some time to describe the difference this idea could make, should make, to our lives. Be specific.

Conclusion – review the main point, encourage application, stop.

So here’s a question from Philip on this site the other day: What differences should their be when preaching narrative passages to an audience of children as opposed to an audience of adults? Will the differences be in the manner the story is told or taught? Or only in the truths the story teaches?

Difference in Manner? I would say not especially. While we might feel the need to be more exaggerated and “hyped” to keep the attention of children, I suspect they can be gripped by a well told story minus excessive clowning from us. On the other hand, perhaps we need to utilize more energy and motion in our story telling to adults!?

Difference in Truth? I would say not especially. We might state the truth more simply to children, but a story has one main idea. That is the main idea whoever the audience. A story isn’t theologically loaded for adults, but a simple moral instruction for children. What changes is how we present and apply that specific truth.

Difference in Application? Yes, this would be different. We don’t need to help children imagine trusting God’s goodness in the face of employment challenges. But the same truth is needed in their school and home experiences.

Difference in Awareness? Yes, this is the main thing that comes to my mind. Children don’t have the same historical and geographical/spatial awareness that adults tend to have. We need to beware of assuming too much knowledge with adults too (in an increasingly biblically illiterate society), but I think details in a text that may be fascinating to adults can be confusing to children.

Same passage, same truth, but differing levels of detail, and differing specifics of application.

What do you think?

Saturday Short Thought: What Do Stories Do?

February 11, 2012February 9, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been sleeplessly enjoying Daddy-daughter time with Kaylah. It won’t be long before a well told story will engage her imagination, captivate her attention and shape her life. What begins in the toddler years doesn’t end. Stories are not just for children, but can continue to transform lives of all ages.

Steve Mathewson explains what good stories do:

Proclaiming a well-studied story in a well-prepared way will do what good stories intend to do: sneak past the listener’s defenses to penetrate the heart.

And I suppose this is painfully obvious, so please excuse my fatigued new-Dad-again state, but what we need to do as preachers is understand the stories we preach as well as possible, shape our messages as well as possible and then present our messages (including telling the stories) as well as possible.

Let’s hear a bit more from Steve Mathewson’s great book on preaching Old Testament Narrative (p157):

“Stories move. They have tension, movement, interaction, emotion. We cannot tell a story while standing like a four-storey building. We need to consider motion, body language, and emotion in voice, face and gesture. Consider how to physically and subtly represent the movement of the story on the platform. Don’t get stuck behind the pulpit (Spurgeon called it a “coward’s castle!”) Always point to Goliath in the same direction, generally let time flow from left to right from their perspective, etc. Stories move. Good storytellers generally do too. And the best storytellers move physically, in large gesture and with clear expressions in a way that is consistently natural! Being natural takes work!

Next week I want to probe preaching narrative a bit more. For the most profuse genre in the Bible, my sense is that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in many pulpit ministries.

The Bible Story – Preached with Power

February 10, 2012February 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

The Bible story you are looking at was inspired by God. Not only did He inspire the content, but He also inspired the form. God felt that having that truth clothed in the genre of story was the best option. Now you have the opportunity to preach it. How can you preach that story with maximum power?

1. Be sure to grasp and preach the main point. A story does not consist of details collected together to offer you numerous launch points for vaguely connected ideas and insights. The story consists of details deliberately chosen to help make the story work, to make the main point effective. Be sure to grapple with the main point more than you hunt for “preaching points.”

2. Be careful to honour the form as well as the content. Why chop it up and preach it as discourse when God made it a story? This means that the bulk of your message should involve the best retelling of the story that you can manage. Speaking of which, two critical elements of powerful story preaching:

3. Put your energy into effective description. Study hard so you can describe well. Build your sensory descriptive vocabulary so you can describe effectively. Read C.S.Lewis or another great fiction writer to get a taste of compelling description. Turn on your imagination again, because if you can see it, they will see it. Take enough time for your descriptions to form on the screens in the listeners’ minds. And pour similar energy into describing the application of your message too. Speaking of energy…

4. Present with energy through engaging dynamism. To be blunt, people don’t listen to dull stories. To be honest, we rarely tell dull stories in normal life. Ask me about my littlest girl’s birth last week and I’ll be engagingly dynamic. I need to let that version of me show when I preach a Bible story. When you preach a Bible story, remember that if you really care so it shows, they will care too.

I think these four suggestions are the very essence of powerfully preaching a Bible story. What would you add?

Saturday Short Thought: Fresh Over Abundance from a Can

February 4, 2012February 4, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

This week the blog has been pondering issues of recycling sermonic materials and also recycling other peoples’ materials. Meanwhile we’ve welcomed a healthy baby daughter into our home and we are both thankful to our gracious Lord and very tired! So just a short thought to finish off the week.

I understand the challenge faced by many preachers with other work commitments and family priorities. I understand the feeling that some express, namely, that without borrowing the outlines and sermons of other preachers from the internet, they would never be able to preach a sermon on a Sunday.

Just as we close the week out, I’d like to offer an encouragement. Even if you are limited for time and feel unable to do the work of fully developing a sermon for your listeners, consider not taking the short-cut of outline borrowing or sermon lifting. Even if you are only able to develop what feels like an inadequate sermon for Sunday, try it anyway (how about next week?)

I suspect your listeners would prefer to feed on the real food of your Bible study in preparation than the canned contents of some internet repository. Your intro may be weak, your conclusion may be unsophisticated, your illustrations may be lacking, your outline may be undeveloped and your main idea might be just plain, well, plain.

But if your heart has engaged with God’s in prayer for theirs, and you have spent time with the Lord pondering how to present this text with relevance emphasised, then your listeners will be better fed than if you offer a sophisticated super-sermon that is not your own.

When we have guests, it is always hard to serve less than an adundant feast. But the truth is, visitors would rather have home cooked food than an abundant but canned meal.

You will also find that with regular practice, the process becomes more manageable, even on a very limited time budget. Let’s go for fresh over canned, for the sake of souls: both ours and our listeners’.