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“Master Class” Coming Soon

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So much is written about spiritual growth. Anyone in a relationship with God wants to grow spiritually, yet often it can seem so complicated! We can feel pulled between intellectual approaches on the one hand and the pursuit of mystical experiences on the other. One expert tells us to look back into the mists of time, while another tells us to look within, or to look at their list of how-to steps. In the midst of the notice, somehow Jesus can get lost. In this Master Class we will consider some simple biblical insights that will help us grow spiritually in a straightforward, practical, and Jesus-focused way.

Saturday 29th January, 15:00-18:00 London Time.

This online event is free, but registration is required. Please click here to find out more and to register.

Love Your Neighbour! How?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I am hearing a lot about how we Christians should love our neighbour as people discuss the cultural issues of our time.  We are told to love our neighbours with respect to tolerance, affirmation of declared identity, or various aspects of pandemic response.  If our society declares that it is loving to praise any angry youth for venting their angst, should we automatically join in? If our society determined that good people always wear a glove on the left hand, would that make it so? Now, I believe we absolutely should be loving our neighbour, but it is important to think through what that really means.

The default view of many, it seems, is that loving your neighbour means expressing kindness in the way our culture and the media has defined kindness for us.  The basic idea is that Christians should be leading the way in expressing kindness as it has been defined.  But how is the world’s track record at defining what is right or wrong?  We know the world doesn’t do well with defining wrong, so why should it be any better at defining right?  What if loving our neighbour is more complicated than we are told?

This matters and if we don’t think carefully, we can easily let faulty logic slip into our preaching. This only reinforces the error.

Let’s take a historic example.  Imagine that we are living during the so-called sexual revolution.  “Love” was a big theme for many at that time.  What if Christians were to “love their neighbour” according to the cultural expectations of the day?

We always have the option of loving our neighbours and participating fully in their world as they have defined it.  That was true during the sexual revolution, just as it has been true in the more recent variations of sexual identity and tolerance, or today, in our era of disease prevention.  So, during the sexual revolution, perhaps some Christians participated in the “loving” according to the expectations of the day – or if not full participation, at least by affirmation.  I hope you can see how that would not actually be loving!

The counterpoint always seems to be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction.  If Christians are not going to love as they are told to love, then they must be anti-love and pro-antagonism.  So, the logic goes, the only alternative to loving your neighbour is to criticise your neighbour, to be all about truth, to be relationally clumsy, difficult, awkward and unkind.  (Some Christians certainly have taken this approach, sadly.)

Surely there is an alternative?  We must let God’s values shape our view of right and wrong.  We don’t have to look just like the world, but neither do we have to look like the world’s caricature of Christians.  We can seek to live out that Christ-like combination of true love.  We can love our neighbours, understand them, be kind to them, care for them, show sensitivity to them, etc.  And we can do so while still valuing truth, and reality, sharing the true hope that is found not in their pursuit of love, or safety, or whatever else, but the true hope of love and life and happiness found only in Jesus.  It is not loving to perpetuate a lie to those around us.  In those revolutionary years, the lie of “free love” hurt many people.  The lies of our culture always do.

In a similar way, as a parent, I want to show love to my children. Do I always give them love on their terms? If not, is my only alternative a harsh unloving approach? Not at all. I want to love my children and it often requires prayerful consideration to know what that should look like in a way that will actually help them.

Today we are living in a confused world.  Is the answer to be all in with the world’s plan for showing virtue?  Just love your neighbour and be essentially indistinguishable?  Or should we awkwardly proclaim the truth without love? Or is there a better way?  There is. It is a way that is sensitive to their fears and concerns, a way that goes out of our way to demonstrate love, but at the same time lovingly speaks the truth and points to real hope.

Let’s be sure to love our neighbours, and let’s pray for wisdom to know how to do it.

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7 Ways Church Helps Healthy Thinking

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The last couple of years has created a whole set of experiences that were new to most of us.  Lockdowns, social distancing, virus testing, online church, and so much more.  Whatever we may think of the measures that have been taken by our governments, it is always good to evaluate the impact of circumstances on the health of the church congregation.

Last week I listened to a discussion between two scientists and a clinical psychologist.  One of them raised the issue of churches and “faith communities.”  In a society marked by social isolation, a widespread lack of meaning, lots of anxiety, increasing aggression and polarized society, he noted the potential benefit that participation in a church might have for the thinking of the congregation.     

Without getting “too psychological” – here are seven ways that church participation can help people to think well and live life in a healthy way:

1. Preaching: The Anchor – Preaching is not merely an educational exercise, although good preaching will help people learn, of course.  Regular Biblical preaching also functions as an anchor in the storms of life.  People are bombarded with intense messaging all week, but when the Word of God is preached, they are reminded of ultimate realities.  Everything else may seem upside-down, but that only reinforces the value of preaching as reminding.  God is still God.  God is still good.

2. Singing: The Crowd – After the disruption to congregations meeting, or being able to sing together, I hope that we have all recognized just how significant corporate worship is in the life of a healthy believer.  Whether the “crowd” is twenty people or a thousand people, it does us good to stand together and sing out our worshipful response to God’s goodness.  When that is taken away, believers suffer in numerous ways.

3. Fellowship: The Family – So many in society suffer from having no meaningful relationships.  The statistics are staggering.  Being part of a local church family is incredibly significant with respect to our sense of sanity.  The regular interactions, the sense of belonging, the familiarity of weekly connections, even the warmth of a handshake or hug . . . it all makes a difference.  During the first half of 2021, churches here were allowed to meet.  While others chose not to do so, our church continued to meet. I am sure this made the negative impact of lockdown far less significant for our church family, even if there were numerous inconveniences along the way.  Who can measure the negative impact of isolation psychologically, relationally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually?

4. Service: The Role – Healthy thinking does not simply flow from good teaching input.  Serving refreshments every third Sunday, greeting people on the welcome team, participating in church set up, hosting a homegroup, teaching the 3–6-year-olds, etc., all these specific roles in the life of the church make a difference in the life of those serving too.  When that is taken away for a season, some will struggle with a reduction in their sense of meaning.  It is personally healthy to be contributing to the life of the community.

5. Unity: The Conversation – When people are forced apart, they will tend to lose a sense of conversation and perspective.  Some may lose touch with anything outside their family unit.  Others will keep the TV news on for constant company.  Still, others will select a small set of voices to hear, or distractions to enjoy.  But the church is not a social club uniting like-minded people.  God has a way of bringing different races, different interests, different political views, etc., into one gathering of people.  We need to be engaging with and hearing from each other to help us have a healthy perspective.  Solitude is not God’s design for the primary context in which we should think.

6. Pastors: The Shepherds – Christians need each other’s gifts to stay healthy and to grow spiritually.  And churches also need the feeding, leading, caring, protecting and mentoring of the shepherds too.  The example, the teaching, the perspective, the courage, the gentleness, and the faith of the pastors all have a tangible impact on the members of the flock.  Sometimes this may be felt in a direct and personal challenge, but week by week exposure and encounter is also highly beneficial.

7. Weekly: The Rhythm – How many churches are struggling because the normal schedule was disrupted for too long?  Maybe for some people, the rhythm of life has shifted and they now need to reconsider how healthy it is to try and do life without meaningful church involvement.  Maybe for others, the fear of Covid is still keeping them away from the many healthy benefits of church participation.  After significant disruption, it might take some deliberate effort to re-establish healthy habits as far as the priority of church involvement.

I am making no comment here on what churches should do regarding safety in these Covid-sensitive times – that is another discussion for another day.  I am making a big comment that the church itself is incredibly important for believers to be healthy in every regard. 

The discussion I was listening to was focused on human thinking.  I hope that as we take stock after two years of Covid-19 disruption, we will see how local church involvement is critical for all aspects of a healthy life: mental, psychological, emotional, social, relational, even physical, and of course, spiritual.

What have the last two years taught you about the value of the local church?

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Join me for a journey through the Psalms! One detail to help us read the Psalms Today, and one detail to help us apply the Psalms Today. Hopefully, you will want to then read the Psalm and share your highlights with someone else!

7 Things the Prophets Might Say To Us

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

The Old Testament prophets are a fascinating collection of books. From the majesty of Isaiah, through the agony of Jeremiah, and the visions of Daniel, to the conversation of Habakkuk, and the brevity of Haggai . . . all of them are magnificent books to read, to study and to preach today.

But I wonder what they would say if they travelled through time and visited our churches today? What would they say to us preachers? Here are seven quick thoughts to ponder, feel free to add more.

1. Get something from God and give it to others. The prophets were burdened by God with a message that they had to share. For some of them, we only know about a small handful of those burdens. But what they had from God was so heavy, so important, it had to be communicated. Maybe they would be confused by our frequency of preaching, but perhaps our paucity of conviction in preaching? If you get to go before God and prepare a message from Him, based on His revealed word, for your listeners this week – then give it everything you’ve got.

2. Why don’t you grab attention and hold it? Assuming you have God’s message to communicate, why wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to make sure people are listening? These were messengers who smashed pots, buried belts, lay naked, bought back their straying wife, etc. I wonder if they would find our approach to preaching God’s word entirely too casual?

3. When did popularity become the measure of success in ministry? Speaking for God can mean being thrown in a well, imprisoned, even sawn in two. Surely the prophets would scratch their heads at a world where preaching prowess is determined by popular acclaim on social media? And what about preaching that is designed to keep our congregations happy so that we won’t stir upset among our listeners and “weaken the church”? Did Jeremiah determine his impact by the number of books sold?

4. When did now become God’s timeframe? While it would be simplistic to characterise the prophets as mere predictors of the future, we can’t get away from how much they did speak of the future in God’s plans. I wonder if they would be confused by how much we speak about today, and how little we speak of that day?

5. Why are you so afraid of speaking to the specific issues of today’s culture? Even though our preaching may lack the future perspective all too often, it is also a common feature to not really hear anything about today’s world in any penetrative and incisive way. The church pulpit has largely retreated from its civil function of providing conviction and clarity about contemporary culture. Too often sermons can feel like a presentation to a special interest society that deliberately does not target the world beyond its four walls. And if we claim that our society is no longer listening to the church? I can imagine an awkward raised eyebrow from a prophet, or a quizzical look from Jonah and Nahum and others who spoke to totally pagan cultures with God’s message.

6. Where is your confidence in what you are saying? Perhaps the prophets would be buoyed by centuries of celestial reflection and rebuke us for a total lack of confidence in God’s word to change lives and empires.

7. Keep going! Or perhaps they would remember their own struggles and sympathetically urge us to keep going. They knew what it was like to see little fruit and to feel like their efforts were wasted. Proclaim the word of God, muster a strong “thus says the Lord,” but keep going – it is worth it!

It would be interesting to study a specific prophet and do this post again. Specific points, rather than general reflections. What do you think they might say? Any prophet in particular, or all of them combined? Put your thoughts in the comments below.

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Join us for Psalms Today, a new series of brief videos from Cor Deo Online. Each video contains one detail from the Psalm, and one point of application for today. Watch the video. Read the Psalm. Share what encourages you with someone else in conversation, by text message, in the video comments.

Distinguish Details

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

One of the big differences between preparation and presentation relates to details. Every preaching text is made up of numerous details: nouns, verbs, adjectives, participles, grammatical notables, other Bible quotations, allusions, etc. It doesn’t matter what kind of text you are preaching, the building blocks of that text are details.

Sermon Preparation – When we prepare a sermon we should be like detectives with those details. Every detail is important and needs to be handled appropriately. We want to make sense of each detail in its context. What is there? What is missing? How do they work together? Our focus alternates between details and the big picture in and beyond the text. And as we study, it will become clear that there are some key details that carry significant weight in the passage. Every detail matters, but there are always some heavy lifters in a passage that we have to really wrestle with in order to grasp the meaning of the text. We have to work with all of them to figure out which ones are weightier, and then those weightier few should consume our energy for a season of preparation.

Sermon Presentation – When we present a sermon we are restricted in time and purpose. Our purpose is not to present every avenue of inquiry that consumed us at our study desk. Our purpose is not to download all of our acquired knowledge in a rapid-fire data dump. Our purpose is tied to our main idea and its application in the lives of our listeners. So for the sake of time and focus, we cut out unnecessary explanation of textual details. This is why it is vital that we identify the heavy lifting details in a passage – those that are necessary to feel the force of the text. As I have put it in the classroom, it is unlikely that the seven “ands” in the passage are the key detail to present.

So, in the study, diligently analyze the details. In the sermon, remember that some details need no more than a passing comment, while others might even be clarified simply by our tone in the reading. Other details, however, are critical and central to the passage. These call us to highlight them, clarify them, and make sure that our listeners feel the force that they exert within the passage to make it unique in meaning and unique in its potential life impact.

Back to Basics

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Happy New Year!  As we head into 2022, I imagine we are more aware than ever that we don’t know what these next months might bring.  We may face worldwide challenges and global concerns.  We may face changes closer to home that we did not anticipate.  We may thrive, or we may struggle.  How should we head into the unknown?  It is always a good idea to check our foundations and get back to basics.

In 1173, they laid the foundations for the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral, Italy.  This freestanding structure took quite a while to complete.  Within five years, the building was up to the second level, and it was already leaning.  The foundation was the problem. Construction was delayed for most of the next century, but by the 1270s, the builders were up to the higher levels and were trying to fix the noticeable tilt by building one side higher than the other.  The tower was finally completed in 1372.  It has survived four earthquakes, and scientists believe it may stand for another two centuries.  But the issue remains – the building is tilted, and the foundation is the problem.

The same is true for us in our Christian life.  We tend to make tweaks at higher levels of our spiritual life.  Perhaps a sophisticated theological nuance, or maybe a clever new personal discipline will fix the issue?  The reality is that whether we have been a Christian for decades or for only a short time, the foundation is the place to make adjustments.  Whether our struggle is overtly spiritual or seems to be disconnected from our personal spirituality – I am thinking about marital issues, relational struggles, emotional stress, etc. – whatever the problem, we always do well to take a look at our foundations.

So what are the foundations of our faith?  We need to evaluate how we answer four basic, foundational questions:

1. Who is God?  The God revealed in the Bible, the Trinity, is different to and better than any other god that humanity has ever imagined.  And yet, how easily our view of God shifts from the biblical revelation of the unique glory-giving, relational, Triune God to a more generic power-God or a more mystical experiential-God.  Too often, we fall into inadequate views of God that diminish the impact of knowing Him in our daily lives.

Thankfully, we can remember that if we want to know what God is like, we need only to look at Jesus.  Jesus came to reveal God to sinners and to rescue sinners for God.  Our struggles in life should push us back to the fundamental reality of spending time growing deeper in our relationship with Jesus.  Making tweaks at level 7 or 8 of our life will not help us anywhere near as much as time spent with Jesus as he reveals God’s heart to us.

2. What is a human?  The Bible reveals to us the wondrous complexity of humanity.  From the beginning, it points to our image-bearing relationality, creativity, and diverse abilities.  It goes on to emphasize our inherent value and worth.  It also underlines our fallenness, as we will see in the next question.  One of our significant problems is that the cultural “water” we swim in every day seeks to blind us to the relational dynamic hard-wired into our very core.

Our world bombards us with the message that our value and worth come from accumulating wealth, knowledge, achievements, capacity, or influence.  So we play the game by the world’s rules and wonder why we struggle and burn out.  Yet deep down we resonate with the idea that our greatest joys and our greatest struggles all happen in the context of our relationships.  Don’t pursue a sophisticated solution to life’s struggles when getting back to basics often helps so much: invest in your walk with the Lord, love your spouse, play with your children, laugh and pray with your friends.

3. What is our problem?  We live after Genesis 3.  The world as we know it is a fallen world.  There is no single moment of our day that is not pulled down by the gravity of fallenness.  And yet, so often, we live and think as if the Fall didn’t make that much difference.  We spot sin in others but believe ourselves to be untouched by so much of it.  Sometimes we become experts at acting like the older brother in Luke 15, condemning the sins of our younger brother while not recognizing how deeply infected we are, too.

How easily we blame circumstances for our struggles.  If only my spouse would change, or the government, or the media, or my church.  If only, if only . . . and yes, there certainly are problems in all of these people and institutions.  But are we dreaming of changes at a higher level of the tower while missing the most profound issue of all?  Sin is the problem, and I am not immune to it!  When we stop to remember how desperate our need is, it drives us back to the foot of the cross, broken and needy.  That is actually a great place to be.

4. What is the solution?  If the ultimate issue in this world is sin, and it is far worse than we have ever grasped, then that means the solution must be far better than we tend to think.  Our problem is not only our guilt and shame but also a hard, stony heart that rebels against God, and the total absence of the life of God through the Holy Spirit.  In the Gospel, we have a complete solution!  By God’s grace and through the death of God’s Son on the cross, we have sins forgiven, a new heart bursting with love for Him, and the Spirit of God pouring out God’s love into our hearts.

May we never think ourselves too sophisticated to celebrate the good news of God’s love for us in Christ.  May we never lose the wonder of the cross.  And as we live the Christian life, may we continue to live it by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.  So make sure that you allow the Bible to be a relational nudge that leads you towards a deeper relationship with God.  Make sure that you allow church fellowship to be that relational nudge, too.

Whether we have been following Jesus for eight weeks or eighty years, it does us good to get back to the basics.  Instead of adjusting the building project at level 7 or 8, let’s get down to the foundations and make sure our view of God, ourselves, sin, and living in response to God’s grace is all as biblical as it can be.  We naturally drift away in all of these areas, so let’s be sure to invest in the foundations of our faith for greater spiritual health and ministry fruitfulness this year.

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The Shepherd-King

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

It is almost time for Micah’s annual mention.  For a seven-chapter book, Micah probably does not get as much attention as his book deserves.  He was a contemporary of Isaiah and his writings overlap nicely with his more renowned prophetic colleague.

Micah’s seven chapters begin with a bang, end with a symphony of God’s goodness, and progress through three cycles of justice and hope.  He spoke of justice because his society, and its leadership, were dangerously unjust.  He spoke of hope because that is how God’s heart of kindness manifests itself to sinning humans.  And throughout this little prophetic book, with a powerful prophetic punch, Micah keeps pointing to God’s good Shepherd-King.

The first cycle of justice and hope takes the reader through chapters 1 and 2.  Micah begins with a powerful theophany to launch the book – a description of God stepping into the world and everything melting before him.  The overwhelming impression is that we must take God seriously.  This thought continues as Micah lays out how this awesome God judges sin.  He judges the sin of not taking Him seriously, not taking His people seriously, and not taking His truth seriously.  And after two chapters of divine justice, we are uplifted by two verses of divine hope.  God will gather his people with the heart of a shepherd, and he will lead his people with the strength of a king (2:12-13).

The reference to God as the leader moves Micah into his second cycle of justice and hope in chapters 3-5.  Again, he begins by condemning the injustices of his society, focusing now on the leadership who abuse their position, proclamation, and privilege.  Micah was surrounded by corrupt speakers who spoke according to their paycheck.  Micah, in contrast, was filled with the power of the Spirit of God to speak against the sins of his society (see Micah 3:8). Almost three millennia separate Micah’s culture from ours, but the similarities only demonstrate the consistency of human fallenness.  We cannot expect human leaders to be all we need, and we should not be surprised when human leaders are profoundly corrupted.  What we need is God’s good leadership.

This thought is developed in the hope section, now not just two verses, but rather two chapters long!  Micah paints a glorious picture of a future golden age.  Opinions differ as to when that age fits into the timeline of history and eternity. Still, it reveals God’s desire as He leads: He plans to unite peoples, to transform them by His teaching, to reconcile them to end their fighting and to love the weak and broken.  While the immediate future looked bleak, with a prophecy of exile in Babylon to assure them of God’s longer-term trustworthiness, Micah then comes to chapter 5.

If what we need is God’s good leadership, then who will be God’s good leader?  God promised His eternal ruler to the little town of Bethlehem.  Micah 5:2 is quoted every Christmas as King Herod tries to work out where a new king would be born.  But we should keep going beyond that one verse.  A couple of verses later, we get some description of this coming King.  He would be a strong shepherd, strengthened by God.  He would bring global security (something never achieved in our world even up to today).  And He would be their peace.  Back in Micah 3:5, we read about false teachers offering a message of peace only if they are paid for it, but this coming Shepherd-King will bring genuine peace to the world!

Micah’s third and final cycle of justice and hope stretches through chapters 6 and 7.  Again he returns to the corruption of the city and its leadership.  God had only required that they do justice (in their dealings with one another), reflecting the loyal kindness of God’s heart, and do so in humble dependence upon God.  (Micah 6:8 is the other verse that gets a mention now and then!)  But the leaders, and the people, lived out a non-Micah 6:8 kind of lifestyle that was worthy of God’s discipline.  The whole of that society seemed rotten to the core, but Micah, in contrast, looked to the Lord and waited for his saving God to hear him (see Micah 7:7).

Micah’s first cycle urges us to take God seriously.  The second cycle encourages us to see our need for God’s good leadership.  This final cycle underlines that our hope is in a God who is faithful to His promises.  As justice yields the stage to hope, Micah calls for God to “Shepherd your people . . . as in the days of old.”  He looks back to how God shepherded his people out of Egypt and in the wilderness (see Micah 7:14-17).

Micah began with a bang as the awesome God stepped in and mountains melted like wax.  But now, he ends with a symphony celebrating God’s goodness.  We live in cultures that are often as unjust as in Micah’s day.  We live with national leadership that is often as corrupt as those that Micah renounced.  We also live in a sinful world that deserves divine justice, so we need to look up for the divine hope – hope promised long ago, hope that broke in that first Christmas in the person of Jesus, and hope that can see us through whatever still lies ahead.  So, as 2021 draws to a close, let’s allow Micah’s climactic symphony of God’s goodness to resonate in our hearts and lives:

18   Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

and passing over transgression

for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

because he delights in steadfast love.

19   He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins

into the depths of the sea.

20   You will show faithfulness to Jacob

and steadfast love to Abraham,

as you have sworn to our fathers

from the days of old.

Pleased To Dwell: A Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation is a great read in the build-up to Christmas. 24 short chapters make for a healthy heart preparation during the days of Advent. To get your copy in Europe click here, or in the USA click here.

The History-Changing Power of Questions

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Martin Luther wrote many books, preached many sermons and left many marks on this world and eternity. His German translation of the New Testament shaped the German language. His dispute with Rome fashioned the Protestant Reformation. And it all began with questions. Martin Luther’s famous 95 Theses Against Indulgences was originally a written list academic conversation starters.  It was not his first list of theses (you would do well to read through his 97 theses against Scholastic theology over your next coffee break!) However, it was the list of 95 nailed to that church door in Wittenberg, 31st of October, 1517, that caught everyone’s attention. For example, number 82 on the list says something like this:

“If the Pope can empty purgatory for the sake of money to build a church, why does he not empty purgatory for the sake of holy love  . . . ?”

His questions and statements were like a string of tweets ahead of their time. They were dismissed by the authorities as errant, dangerous and divisive.  However, they struck a nerve with common folk and soon started to trend across Europe.  Instead of just beginning a debate with a fellow academic or two, those questions went viral and played a key role in launching the Protestant Reformation – a theological revolution in Catholic Europe.

At that time there was a prevailing narrative and a dominant force controlling the narrative of religious Europe.  God used Luther’s biblical and theological enquiry to drive truth into error and to start a much-needed revolution. 

There have been many times throughout history where a dominant force controlled a prevailing narrative.  That force may be religious, political, ideological, or some combination of the three.  When something is not right, many will quietly comply with the expected thought processes. Many will avoid the risk of upsetting others or putting themselves in the sights of the thought police. But some will dare to ask questions.  And when someone asks a question, they will always be told to stay quiet and not to swim against the tide.  It was true in Luther’s Germany.  Four centuries later it was true in Hitler’s Germany.  And it is still true in our world today.  Questions get shut down, because questions unveil truth.

So, if you ask a question today, you can expect to be urged to stay quiet.  Perhaps your concerns will be “fact-checked” or perhaps your concerns will be labelled as “conspiracy theories” and summarily dismissed.  If you share those concerns on social media, you may find yourself not only criticized by others, but censored by the platform itself. As pastors and preachers we cannot be naive and think the current censoring trend will stay in the political realm. More conservative religious folks, such as people who believe the Bible to be God’s Word, are increasingly being targeted in our times.

I have not done a good job of asking questions of my world.

Sunday is coming and perhaps, like me, you need to be focusing on the sermon. Let’s pray that Sunday’s sermon touches hearts, but let’s also pray that God might use us to ask questions during the week. It could be that God uses something as insignificant as a question on social media, or in conversation, to put cracks in a powerful narrative, to put doubts in peoples’ minds, and to put the power of the gospel to work in our still fallen world.

Preaching in Troubled Times

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

“The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” (Psalm 9:9)

Troubled times can be caused by global pandemics, national disasters, or more local challenges on a city or church level. In this world we will have trouble. And when trouble comes, the preacher gets to point people to God’s Word to find the comfort and to stir the response of faith that is needed. The problem is, we don’t do ministry in a case study. People don’t tend to respond in a textbook fashion when problems come. Just a few verses after the one above comes Psalm 10:1 – “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” By definition, these seasons of ministry are not easy, but here are five important things to keep in mind:

1. The Preacher’s Relationship with God – Be Healthy. Maybe it is obvious, but it bears stating. You need to be in a healthy place to have the reserves to serve others effectively. Remember Martha. She was trying to do the right thing, but somehow she had gotten the two great commandments out of order. She was doing the classic evangelical mistake – “loving God by loving others.” It is unsustainable. Be sure to sit at Jesus’ feet and let him minister to you before you continue to minister to others. (And remember that being healthy is not just spiritual . . . what about sleep, exercise, diet? What about emotionally and relationally?)

2. The Preacher’s Relationship with Listeners – Be Sensitive. Remember that different people react in different ways to the same crisis. Listening to our culture it would be easy to only address the fear of dying in the current pandemic. But for some their concern is finance, employment, other vulnerable people, loneliness, mental health, etc. We need to know what is really going on with the people we preach to, and they need to know that we are real too. Be appropriately transparent. A crisis is a time to offer strength and stability, but don’t come across as Superman. You are allowed to struggle too, just invite others into a faithful response and share the journey together. When troubles hit, people tend to pull back. Be sure to pursue connections with people in your church. You may not see them on Sunday (or may not be allowed to meet in some strange circumstances), but you still have a phone. There are ways to stay connected. We need to do that if we are to preach effectively.

3. The Listener’s Relationship with Circumstances – Be Hopeful. In the midst of crisis people need to have perspective. It is not helpful to dismiss a crisis. I remember a lecturer on 9/11 being dismissive of the situation (it didn’t help!) But do offer perspective with gentleness. Remember also that people have troubles that are not “the trouble” too. I am waiting for someone to fix our hot water boiler right now . . . that is not a Covid-19 issue, but it is today’s issue in our house! People still have other health concerns during a pandemic, people still have marital struggles during a war, people still struggle with parenting during a natural disaster. In the midst of it all, cast a vision. Could God be teaching us to pray like we have never prayed before? Is God growing greater depth and dependence on him in our church? Maybe God is shaking the culture to wake it up to spiritual realities? (Don’t make prophetic pronouncements, just help people to look on their circumstances in light of Scripture.)

4. The Listener’s Relationship with God – Be “Evangelistic.” There will be people who are not yet believers and the crisis might be the perfect moment . . . point them to Jesus. There will be people who have been believers for years and they too need to be pointed to Jesus. Help people to know that God is who they need and he can be accessed through the Bible. That is, be biblical. Don’t jettison your biblical preaching in order to offer personal wisdom, or to drift into political proclamation, or to distract people with empty entertainment. You may need to preach from somewhere else in the Bible, but do preach the Bible.

5. The Preacher and Preaching – Be Adaptable. Your eight month series in Ezekiel may not be appropriate when a crisis hits. It is ok to suspend a series and be a bit more targeted when necessary. After 9/11 a significant proportion of preachers just continued their series. That was a big missed opportunity to show love, care and a word from God in a key moment. So you may need to adapt your content, and you may also need to adapt your approach. In the last year many of us have learned to use new technology, to preach to camera, to shift to a mixed setting with some people present and others watching at home. Crises, big and small, tend to invite adaptability. By all means do things differently, just don’t disappear.

What would you add? What things are helpful to ponder during challenging times?