Preach to do More Than Satisfy Curiosity

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

The Bible was not given to satisfy curiosity.  It is truth that always intersects life in some way.  Consequently as preachers we must not pretend that arms-length analysis is sufficient.  We have to wrestle with how to help our listeners experience the truth that is being preached.

Haddon Robinson has pointed out that for many people, most of the preaching they have heard has satisfied only to the level of meeting some level of curiosity.  Sadly many in our churches have had years of Bible studies that are not dissimilar to filling out a crossword or Sudoku puzzle.  You get all the parts in the right place, get the thing completed and then feel satisfied.  But the Bible does not work merely at a curiosity level.  It digs deeper, intersects more fully with life.

Haddon was interviewed in 2001 by Preaching magazine.  In his words, “I think God’s truth is always designed to challenge us and change us.”  Let us pray that we never settle for satisfying curiosity when we have the privilege of being involved in transforming lives.

Don’t Shoot the Wheel-Nut

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Today in the news there is a story of a man who got frustrated trying to loosen the wheel-nut on his car and decided to try blasting it from close range with a shotgun. The ricochet of buckshot and debris peppered him from ankle to abdomen.

While not wanting to make light of his severe injuries, I would like to draw an analogy for our thinking as preachers. Use as much force as necessary to achieve each goal in a sermon, but don’t exert excessive force that will backfire on you. Here are some examples of backfiring preaching techniques:

* Overstating the introduction. Don’t promise to solve all the problems of the world in your introduction if your message only addresses some of the problems. If the goal is modest, then strive to create a thirst for the message, but a thirst that will be quenched. It is easy to take onboard the importance of surfacing a need and then over-promise. It will backfire.

* Overbearing illustrations. Perhaps you come across a moving story, or have a powerful experience that fits with your message. Be careful it is not too powerful or you might overwhelm the message. Illustrations and stories should drive the idea forward, not overtake it. Even if it happened to you, even if it is all true, even if it agrees with the text . . . if it is too strong it may backfire.

* Over-the-top word choice. Sometimes shocking a congregation can be effective, but you must plan carefully. Just because Tony Campolo once swore at a congregation does not mean we should all try it. For effect or shock value or even for a laugh, it is tempting to go too far. Don’t. It will backfire.

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Being Natural Often Feels Unnatural

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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.

Plan to Pause

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A pause is a simple concept.  Stop for a moment.  A non-preacher might assume it would be easy to stop talking, especially since most people would rather not talk in front of people anyway.  But no, pauses are hard to do.  Almost a constant piece of constructive feedback to beginning preachers is “a few pauses would help.”  I still find it difficult to pause enough after almost 15 years of preaching.

A pause is a very powerful weapon in the preacher’s arsenal.  After a pause, studies suggest that listeners are alert, attention is high and they listen well.  This increased focus will only last for a few sentences before fading to a more relaxed state again.  This means that after a pause we only have perhaps three or four sentences to establish what we’ll be saying next.

Be sure to pause between the chunks of a sermon.  Give listeners that opportunity to be fully with you as you set off on the next chunk.  Then be sure to start the chunk clearly.  Think through those first sentences and be sure that everyone will be onboard before the relaxation of attention.  If we really think through the power of purposeful pause, we’ll be motivated to pour over our outlines or manuscripts and carefully select key moments to stop.  Plan to pause.

Remember Your First . . . Sermon?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Yesterday I had the privilege of evaluating fifteen sermons at the end of a preaching course.  For five days the students had been working through an introductory course in preaching at Tilsley College, many of them never having preached before.  I’ve heard negative comments from preaching instructors before about having to listen to student sermons.  I have to be honest, I enjoy it.

Nerves sometimes show, some mistakes may be made, but ministry happens.  Even though in every case there are helpful suggestions made by the listeners to improve in the future, at the same time there are positive affirmations and encouragements also shared.  I may sit there with my evaluation sheet and be making notes, but still there are moments of real encouragement, real conviction, and real ministry in my life.

There is something about the in-class preaching experience that I wish could be experienced in the church too.  A sense of excitement, of openness, of camaraderie.  A lot of that has to do with the attitude of the listeners.  Perhaps we need to consider training our listeners how to listen to sermons.  At the same time perhaps we need to make sure we have not lost that sense of dependency on God, that awareness of someone evaluating what we do, that sense of relief at the end, maybe even a momentary inner cry of “I did it!” which quickly gives way to “thank you Lord, we did it!”

If you are married, it is healthy to think back to that first date, first kiss, first sensation of being in love.  If you are a preacher, think back to that first in-class message.  Not as romantic, but it may stir some helpful feelings though!

Prayer, Preaching, Professionalism?

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

 

Is there any stage of the preaching process that we should not be bathing in prayer? When people are first exposed to training in homiletics there is often an initial concern. Is this “process” reducing a highly spiritual ministry to a series of stages, techniques and professionalism? That would depend on the instructor, but I’d hope the answer would be no.

We should be praying at every stage. We should prayerfully select the passage and make sure it is a true literary unit. We should prayerfully study the passage and determine author’s purpose and idea. We should prayerfully consider our congregation and determine appropriate sermon purpose, idea, strategy and details. We should even pray about delivery, and of course we should be praying for the people as well as ourselves throughout the process.

Prayer does not result in a bypass around the work. Praying as we select the passage does not mean we will receive direct revelatory guidance about what to preach. Praying during passage study and sermon preparation does not excuse us from the long hours of wrestling with the text or the often grueling work of crafting the preaching idea, and so on. So we don’t pray begging for a hard work bypass. If we do receive an objective direct revelation then we should obey, but prayer is not primarily about that. Prayer is a lot about dependence, about humility, about asking for wisdom as we do our part of His work.

Let us be preachers who do not shy away from the work involved in our ministry, but let us also be preachers who never fail to pray at every stage in the process.

Preaching – Spiritual Gifts, Learned Skills And . . .? – Part 2

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Yesterday we considered spiritual gifting and learned skill. I would like to add two more elements into the mix today. Two things we should dwell on in regard to preaching:

Spiritual Element of Preaching – In the old days this slightly intangible element was called “unction.” Today many tend to refer to “anointing.” Effective preaching takes more than gifting and training. There is that intangible aspect closely tied to personal spirituality, prayer, and the mystery of divine enabling. Personal holiness should be above reproach. There are various factors in this, but no guaranteed recipe.

Personal Passion for Preaching – This is not a passion for personal glory or attention. Vanity and pride should be abhorred in pulpit ministry. But I refer to that burning in the bones, that deeply felt desire to study and communicate God’s Word. Perhaps this is partially a gift issue, or an anointing issue, but it is an issue worthy of consideration.

These four elements all beg further thought. Should you preach this Sunday? Should I? Can we not? Why?

Preaching – Spiritual Gifts, Learned Skills, And . . . ?

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Is it possible to have the gift and preach poorly?  Is it possible to not have the gift and preach well?  If I have a group of 20 students in a preaching class, should the gifted ones ignore the class because they have the gift, and should those without the gift ignore the class because they can’t preach anyway?  My question is not should everyone ignore me, that’s a different issue.  My question is about who should preach, what does it involve?

Gifting for Preaching – A good starting point is to note that the lists of spiritual gifts do not include a gift of preaching.  There is a gift of teaching, but is that the only gift that might be helpful from the pulpit?  What about evangelist, exhortation, leadership, pastor, etc.?  Many of the gifts can be a real asset to pulpit ministry.  I am certainly not saying everyone should preach, but perhaps an individual motivated to try preaching should not dwell primarily on whether they have the right gift or not.  There is more to it than that.

Skilled for Preaching – Whatever gifting one has, it is important to be a good steward of that gifting.  We should “fan into flame” what God has put in us.  This will involve not only use of our gifts, but also training, mentoring, personal discipline, reading, etc.  It is possible to be gifted appropriately but preach poorly.  So we should seek to develop our skills in preaching, but there is still more to it.  It is possible to have appropriate skills (perhaps from a secular work environment like teaching), but not be an effective preacher.  Why?  Maybe lack of spiritual gifting, or maybe . . .

Maybe there’s more to take into account.  In part 2 we will consider two more elements of the preaching equation.

Craving Authenticity

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Our culture has shifted and is shifting.  Certainly in the west there is now a deep mistrust of inauthentic communication.  For example the slick sales pitch of a car salesperson twenty or thirty years ago has largely morphed into a seemingly more authentic approach today.  In reality much of sales communication is learned pseudo-authenticity.  Nevertheless it reflects how things have changed.  People don’t appreciate spin, slick patter or unnatural performance.  This is also true in the church.  People do not respond well to, or respect, the pulpiteering style of previous generations.  Pulpit-pounding ear bashing does not stir as some suggest it did in the past.  So what are we to do?

Work on delivery so that the real you can come through.  Working on eye contact, body language, gesturing, inflection of voice and so on should be done not in order to perform, but to effectively be yourself.  Obviously we all have aspects of communciation style that could be improved, so we should do that.  However, our goal is not to learn a pulpit style or persona.  Our goal is to allow the real person to communicate really effectively.

Be in your message.  People want not only authentic style of delivery, but also authenticity in content.  That means we cannot hide ourselves.  We should wisely place ourselves with appropriate vulnerability into our messages.  As Haddon Robinson says, “don’t be the hero or the jerk” – it is not nice to listen to someone showing off, nor do we want to listen to someone without credibility.  So look for ways to show yourself, but carefully so you don’t overwhelm or undermine the message.

Expository Misunderstanding

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For many people the term “expository preaching” carries negative baggage. Often this baggage relates to some restrictive view of what is meant by it. Dry, dull, lifeless, canned – these are all possible, but not required. Irrelevant is also added to the list, but technically that is not even possible. John Stott notes that “all true preaching is expository preaching.” But he does not mean form, he means content. “In expository preaching the biblical text is neither a conventional introduction to a sermon on a largely different theme, nor a convenient peg on which to hang a ragbag of miscellaneous thoughts, but a master which dictates and controls what is said.” (Between Two Worlds)

Let us be clear that expository preaching is a philosophy of preaching, not a form of preaching. It is about the authority, centrality and influence exerted by the biblical text in the preaching process and event.

Our goal, as expositors, is to communicate the meaning of the text relevantly to our listeners. Biblical text, relevantly communicated. We can use whatever form we deem to be both appropriate and effective. Form is not the issue. There is great freedom, in many ways there are no rules, but we must seek to communicate the meaning of the text in a way that has applicational relevance to our listeners. Any definition of expository preaching that defines form is a misunderstanding.