Communion Cups and Oceans

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

ocean2Almost twenty years ago I was serving on one of the Operation Mobilisation missionary ships.  During one month-long visit to a port I met a volunteer who later became my wife.  We had a few conversations and it was obvious that there was a genuine and mutual interest.  When I flew home from the ship my family wanted to know all about her.  I told them what I could, of course, but actually I didn’t know that much.

If we fast forward two decades the story is different.  After 17 years of marriage, 6 children, 5 homes, and lots of different shared experiences, I have more to say about her.  If someone genuinely wants to hear about my wife now, I can share a lot.  I can share facts, but I can also share what I appreciate about her character based on these years together.  And I imagine that if God gives us another few decades together then I will have even more to spill should anyone ever ask.

That’s the reality of close relationship. Over time the amount we have to say multiplies.

Lately I have been pondering this on the spiritual level too.  When we first respond to the Gospel we probably don’t know too much about Jesus.  Maybe as a young Christian we know a few facts that form the skeleton of Jesus’ story: He is the Son of God who came to Earth; He taught, healed, died, rose and returned to His Father in heaven; He is there now and will come back again.

Essentially this basic skeleton of the Jesus story, with some variation, will be the basics known by beginners in the faith.  These facts could be written on a piece of paper and stored in one of those tiny communion cups that some churches use.  These facts are amazing, and for many of us our lives and our eternities were transformed by trusting Christ based on this level of knowledge, so we should absolutely worship God in light of this.  Nevertheless, this is a very limited awareness of Christ the person.

Here is my point in this article, and one of my greatest concerns in life: I have sat through too many sermons and presentations where it feels like the preacher is drawing from not much more than a communion cup full of information about Christ.  Sometimes it has been preachers who have preached for decades, but still seem to have very little to say about Christ Himself.  Sometimes it has been ministry leaders who are significant in their own area of expertise, but still seem to have very little to say about Christ.  This concerns me for them, and it concerns me for me.

If Christianity is about having a relationship with Christ, then it seems reasonable to expect that over time that relationship will result in an increased reservoir to draw from as we speak of the person we love.  Years of communication and of shared experiences should significantly increase what we have to say about our spouse – both in a human marriage, and in our relationship with Christ.

A while ago I was reading one of the Puritans and I was struck by how he could go on for page after page about the character of Christ.  He was prompted by some detail in John 14-16 as Jesus cared for his disciples, but he obviously had pondered long over the character of Christ as revealed in the Gospel stories.  Suddenly I was struck by how little so many preachers actually have to say about Christ the person.  Surely as life progresses we should have more and more to share about Him?

Was it Spurgeon who asked, “Where are all the divines?”  That is, where are the men and women who are so close to God that it really shows?  If that was a concern in the 19th century, are things any better in the 21st century?

Here are a few quick thoughts that may provoke some prayerful pondering on this issue:

1. It is possible to take the benefits Christ offers us, but not realize that He genuinely wants a two-way relationship with us.

2. If we can talk long about a dear friend or spouse we have known for years, how much should this be true of us when we have walked with Christ for years?

3. Christian ministry will always be limited when our relationship with Christ is limited.

4. We will grow in our knowledge of Him as we communicate with Him over the years – years of reading the Bible, years of prayer.

5. We will grow in our knowledge of Him as we share life’s experiences together – praying our way through the exciting, the exhausting, the painful, and even the boring bits of life.

6. There is more to Jesus than just a set of facts: born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, “son” of a carpenter, etc.  We can know Him personally: His character, His values, His heart.

For me, one last thought reveals both a great fear, and a great thrill as I move forward in life:

7. Christ has, for all eternity, thrilled the infinite heart of His Father.  What we can say about Christ should not be limited to what can fit in a communion cup.  By the time the years have passed, surely we should have much much more to say of Him who is really more than an ocean full of wonder?  My prayer is that we all will.

____________________________________________

Could we with ink, the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the oceans dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

(The Love of God, by Frederick Lehmen)

The Power of an Applicational Phrase

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

mirror1bIt seems like a lot of people want to hear practical and applicable teaching.  This is understandable. If the alternative is impractical and irrelevant messages then by all means sign me up for the former option.  The problem is that application in preaching can so easily direct our gaze in the wrong direction.

Truly transformational preaching will always point us toward God for the transformation.  It is as we encounter God’s self-revelation that we will feel genuine conviction.  It is as we look to Christ that we will find genuine transformation.  Of course we are either responsive or unresponsive to the work of the Spirit in all of this, but if we are not careful we can easily leave God out and look to ourselves for change.

One phrase that I’ve heard Andy Stanley use a few times is potentially very powerful in this regard.  More than once I’ve heard him say that such and such a sin won’t be visible in the mirror.

Our fallen tendency will be to look at ourselves, self-evaluate with a liberal dose of self-justification and rationalization, and thereby skirt around any sense of conviction.  The whole process of conviction-repentance-transformation is thereby cut off before it even begins.

I have seen this in my own life and I am sure you have in yours too.  I have seen this in otherwise very mature believers.  Somehow we seem to be wired not to see certain issues in the mirror.  This means that we cannot simply rely on God for the transformational help at the end of the process.  Instead we have to look to God for the conviction to begin with.

Before we even preach to others lets be sure to ask God to help us see our own blindspots – those issues that we have been rationalizing and covering for too long.  As those who are genuinely learning, let us then preach to others, reminding them that their own self-evaluation will be flawed and blind, since certain sins “will never show up in the mirror.”

One Critical Conviction

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

conviction2A preaching ministry is built on a whole set of convictions.  Convictions about God, the Gospel, about people, about ministry.  It is right that we let these convictions grow over time as we spend time in the Bible, and learn from mentors, from experience, from life.  In this post I’d like to flag up one of these convictions.

Here it is: God is a good communicator.

This seems so obvious, but so many build a preaching ministry without this conviction in place.  Here are some implications of this conviction to ponder:

1. No matter how clever you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say.  So do your best to preach what the text is saying.  Do your best to let the details, and also the form of the text influence how you preach it.  Try not to just say what it says, but also to do what it does.  Seek to re-create the effect and the affect of the text!

2. Our job is not to make the Bible interesting.  Whatever other good reasons there are for using “illustrations” in your preaching, this is not one of them.  We should seek to explain, prove and apply as well and as interestingly as we can, but first of all we must be gripped with enthusiasm for God and His Word if we are to communicate it with any contagious influence.  Simply trying to add interesting material like spicing a bland steak is not our calling.

3. We do not make the Bible relevant, we demonstrate and emphasize its relevance.  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful.  All of it.  Our task is to help people see that.

4. Reading the Bible is not a curse.  Forget preaching it for a moment, some of us seem intent on convincing Christians that reading the Bible is a negative thing.  I’ve heard well-meaning Christians teach that it is hard to enjoy the Bible, so just go for the smallest goals possible.  If we give the impression that reading the Bible is a drudgery that can only be achieved by courageous acts of self-determination, then let’s not be surprised if people don’t spend much time in it.

God is a good communicator.  That conviction is critical for effective preaching.

Love Your Church

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church fuzzy2To be an effective preacher you need to love your local church.  It is not enough to love the church in general.  Even if your ministry takes you to other places, still it is healthy to love your local church.  (I know that it is not our church or my church, it is Christ’s, but let’s go with this terminology for the sake of this post.)

It is the people in your own local church who know you, who pray for you, who know your family and care for them.  It is the people in your own local church who will sense when something is not right in your life.  It is these people who will speak the truth to you, even when you don’t want to hear it.

Of course, there are complexities.  The local church can become an antagonistic environment.  It can become both a source and a threat to your livelihood.  Receiving a salary from your local church means that you can be fired, or opposed, or any number of other challenges.  Nevertheless, it is important to love your local church.

It is not enough to love the church in general.  It is unwise and ungodly to love the income, the respect you get, or the power you develop. It is possible to use your local church position to get power or respect both within that church, and more widely.  We have to be wary of using the church instead of loving it.

So we need to love our local church.  Why? Because God loves it.  This is the local expression of the Bride of Christ and God is at work there.  This is the local gathering of believers that need not only your gifting, your time, your contibutions and your energy, they also and preeminently need your love.  You can work fifty or sixty hours per week, preach and lead multiple meetings, visit people in their homes or in the hospital, give of your time, gifting and energy, but if you do not have love you have nothing.

Maybe it is really obvious. Or maybe this has become your greatest challenge in ministry.  Maybe you are feeling loved and encouraged, or maybe you are feeling beaten up and ready to quit.  Whatever the circumstance, it is vital to look to Christ and to love your local church.

10 Pointers for Preaching a Touchy Issue

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

10 target 8bSometimes we have to preach something that is potentially controversial or that may not go down too well.  Here are ten pointers to help when that is necessary.

1. Know yourself.  Some preachers like to ruffle others all the team.  Other preachers never ruffle anyone.  Know your default and beware if you are at either extreme.

2. Be so biblical the argument is with the Bible, not with you.  It is tempting to make polemic statements, but there is much greater authority if you present a solid biblical case.

3. Look for ways to deconstruct first so that the Bible answer is needed.  On the other hand, it is tempting to blast with the Bible, but it is better to show the need for the biblical case before presenting it.

4. Use story to get past defenses.  When a subject is potentially hard to take, take a lesson from Nathan’s approach to King David.  He was able to present painfully personal conviction without a defensive reaction through the telling of a compelling story.  Remember that effective use of narrative can bring down the defenses of your listeners.

5. Love the people.  When you bark at them, they sense you don’t love them.  Then the issue will not be your content.

6. Build connections.  Jesus had some tough things to say to several of the seven churches in Revelation 2-3.  He did not jump straight into rebuke.  He built that on a foundation of “I know you!”  This can be relational, or it can be manipulative.  That probably depends on your motivation.

7. Drip feed whenever possible.  Does the issue have to be hit head-on this Sunday?  As someone wisely said about preaching in general, ‘we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in one message, but underestimate what will be achieved through five years of biblical preaching.’

8. Understand why they are where they are.  It is relatively easy to go after an issue, but to be effective in this pursuit we have to understand why people are where they are.

9. Don’t do everything from the pulpit.  A lot of issues in the church are complex, but we can easily fall into thinking that our only output is from the pulpit.   Could you gain more traction in a one-on-one conversation?

10. Pray.  The most important in the place of final emphasis. There is a lot that can be done outside of preaching – conversation, interaction, etc. But the greatest element of any change will come not from our confrontation of it, but from our expressed absolute dependence on God to bring about the change.

Here are some other 10 Pointer posts for you to check out:

Younger Preachers / Older Preachers

Seminary Trained Preachers / No Formal Training Preachers

Evangelistic Preaching / Special Occasion Preaching

Planning a Preaching Calendar / Planning a Preaching Series

Why We Pray

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

PrayingHands5The church is the greatest news story, even though it is never reported.  Lives are changed, peoples are united, society is helped, and preaching is at the heart of all of it.  But preaching is not inherently powerful.

The church is not a society generated by, united through, and stirred to give of itself by human social engineering.  It is possible to produce something by the skill of natural man as we exhort, encourage, celebrate and direct from the front.  But ultimately preaching is not the true story because the church is not about sales technique, social engineering, or motivational speech.

The true church is supernatural and therefore the true story of the church is the story of God at work. God opens blind hearts to see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  God unites believers as the Spirit unites their spirits with Christ and with each other.  God’s love spills over from churches that are loved by Him so that His love can make a mark in society through social care and moral influence.

Preaching the Word of God is at the heart of the life of the church, but preaching in and of itself is not powerful.  And that is why we pray.

The Story of 3 Great Unions

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Union with Christ is becoming a fashionable term in church world.  Some are recognizing the significance of the term, seeing it as the framework in which all of salvation theology makes sense.  Others are using it because others are using it.

Yet the term is used in a variety of ways.  Some will speak of an ecstatic union where the human soul ascends into some sort of beyond revelation intersection with an unspeaking God.  Others will use union with Christ as a label for the legal position achieved by the atonement wherein the sinful soul is counted free and just through association with Christ.  Still others will speak of a true union where the believer is truly united by the Holy Spirit to Christ in a marital relationship.

While the term may be used in these three different ways with varying levels of merit, there are actually three unions we should ponder biblically:

1. The union of God with God. The Bible gives us a glorious glimpse into the Trinity, the perfect union of Father and Son by the Spirit that overflows in creation. When the Fall follows we naturally ask what will this God do?

(The Promise – This God promises to defeat sin and death, to send a deliverer who is the Son, and ultimately to achieve a marriage-like connection with humanity.)

2. The union of God and man in Jesus.  God sending His Son is the great hinge of history. The Son of God remained fully God, while becoming fully man.  This perfect union of God and man in the person of Jesus means that he is fully God, fully man, fully one, forever.  In this person we see humanity rescued and drawn to God at the cross of Calvary.

(The Promise fulfilled – God said He would deal with sin and death, and He did.  So now we can experience the first phase of the fulfillment plan:)

3. The union of God and man in the Spirit. The Son of God didn’t just become one of us to die for us, He also became one of us to enable us to be united to Him in a spiritual marriage.  Now we can taste something of the wonder of being made one Spirit by the Spirit – one with Christ.  One day this spiritual marriage will be consummated at the end of human history!

When we preach, let’s not fall into a mere status presentation of the Gospel, nor a hypothetical ideal version of ecstatic union with God.  Instead let’s keep front and centre this glorious progress of three unions that tell the wonderful story of God’s great plan.

WEST-Union-SliderSince this post made much of the theological theme of Union with Christ, I thought I’d take the opportunity to push your attention towards the growing resources available at Union.  Please be sure to take a look at UnionTheology.org for some great resources, as well as Union School of Theology if you are considering pursuing further education.

7 Ideas for Creativity in Series Planning

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Number7bI believe in preaching series through books of the Bible.  I do it.  I teach others to do it.  But I think we could all do with some extra creativity when it comes to planning a series.

Andy Stanley makes the helpful point that many messages should in fact be series.  That is, we can try to cram too much into a single message.  This is only compounded when we try to preach a series through a whole book.  After all, we will typically end up with substantial length texts each week.  For the listener this can be both overwhelming and potentially repetitive.

But there are other potential issues too.  Think of preaching through Habakkuk for an example.  It naturally falls into three parts – a question with God’s answer, followed by another question with God’s answer, and then Habakkuk’s final declaration of trust.  But there is a possible problem here.  The first question and its answer is frighteningly negative.  It prompted Habakkuk to respond.  It will prompt us to respond as we hear it. So do we then sit and stew on this for a week before part two of the series?

Keeping with Habakkuk as a focus, how might we do a series with some creativity?

1. Preach the whole in one.  This can make a good introduction or conclusion to a series.  Help people to see the whole picture and not just the parts.

2. Dwell in a specific section.  In Habakkuk you could take the woes of chapter 2 and see them play out in several messages, always rooted in Habakkuk, but letting them probe our world as well as his with more penetration.

3. Chase the use.  Habakkuk is used in some key moments later in the canon of Scripture – not least the quotes of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews.  Why not take a message or two to chase how Habakkuk influenced the rest of the Bible?

4. Dig into the sources.  What earlier Old Testament texts form the “informing theology” of Habakkuk’s book?  Perhaps it is worth digging a bit and seeing what could be done with a chase upstream through the Bible to see what fed into his thinking?

5. Place the book in a broader biblical theology.  Habakkuk raises issues about suffering and divine providence.  Perhaps it is worth seeing where his contribution fits with the other key building blocks – the story of Joseph, Job, Romans 8, etc.  This could help listeners place the book in a larger framework.

6. Preach in first person.  Sometimes this is the best way to demonstrate how alive a text is.  Maybe take the audience back there to his world, or bring him to today to make careful commentary on ours.  First person preaching is not easy, but when done well it is also not easily forgotten.

7. Trace a theme or two.  As well as working through a book chunk by chunk, it may be helpful to trace a key theme through the book, and then another week trace another key theme.  Help people to see the beauty of single grains as in a plank, as well multiple grains in the cross-cut text.

With a prayed-through blend of creativity and traditional single passage exposition, Habakkuk could become a more compelling and effective 6 or 8-week series than it might have been as a traditional 3-week walk through.

Rigor and Response

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

hardwork2Last week I had the opportunity to interview John Piper.  At one point we were talking about the preacher’s emotional response to the text.  I appreciated John Piper’s perspective on this.

Gordon Fee, as well as others, have pointed out that we don’t want the people in our churches having devotional engagement with the Bible that is not exegetically on target.  And that our people don’t need preachers who are exegetical without being devotional as they study the Bible.  All true biblical interpretation should be devotional as well as exegetical.

But John Piper’s perspective was helpful to me.  Absolutely, the preacher should have their heart stirred in the study.  However, he said, there will be times when the exegetical rigor is not heart-stirring.  You may be wrestling with technicalities in the Greek construction of a sentence for a couple of hours.  You may be wading through technical commentaries weighing up interpretive options.  The exegetical rigor may not be heart-stirring during the process, but the fruit of it had better be heart-stirring!

Do we make sure we are not transitioning into message preparation until we are not only thinking clearly of the passage, but also feeling deeply moved by it?