I wonder if we may be selling our churches short. That is, by buying into the idea that Christian unity is built around assent to a statement of fundamental truths and then pouring energy into not falling out over non-essentials. Perhaps there is something more, someone better, that we are missing out on through this kind of thinking. Click here to go to my post on the Cor Deo site.
Listener Levels: 7 Ways to Add Steak to the Diet
What if your biblical explanation is typically at a level lower than many of your listeners? What are some suggestions for adding steak to the diet of listeners that are needing it?
1. Pray – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.
2. Get feedback – It would be better to know what people think than assume they are needing weightier content. For instance, just because there are seminary professors in your congregation doesn’t mean they want to be “stretched” by your preaching. Good, solid, biblical and faithful preaching that is clear and applicable may be the highlight of their week!
3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at biblical exposition. What is it about their preaching that makes it effective? (You may find they are simpler than you at first imagined . . . our tendency is to think more info, higher vocab and greater complexity is the key to steaky preaching – not so.)
4. Make connections carefully – It doesn’t take any skill to string biblical proof-texts together. There is no licensing for tour guides in the “concordance safari” industry. It does take great biblical awareness to be able to make the links that are appropriate to a message. For instance, learn to look back in the canon and see what is feeding in to the passage (Kaiser’s “Informing Theology”). Learn to value other writing by the same author slightly higher than other writings. This is not as simple as a set of rules, it is an art form.
5. Devour your Bible as if God is worth knowing – To be able to help people make sense of biblical texts, there is no substitute for personal biblical saturation. I’d rather be fed by someone who really knows their Bible than someone who has crammed higher level commentary content in the last days of preparation. (This is not to deny the value of good commentary conversations.)
6. Well-cooked steak is seldom complex – I remember hearing radio ads for a steakhouse in Portland. I was in seminary so could never afford to go there, but it did sound good. What did I expect of a $75 steak? Not lots of extra ingredients and spice overload combined with complex cooking processes. I expected better quality content prepared simply. Same with preaching. When we think about preaching more steaky messages, we tend to crank up the jargon and lose sight of our message purpose. Don’t. Take the time to have better content, but don’t complicate, in fact, simplify sermon structure, etc.
7. The best “theology” is not on the cutting edge of speculation, it is pushing into the big and core questions – Don’t think that steaky biblical explanation comes from speculative originality, whether that be in sensational eschatology, or obscure theological novelty (save that for your PhD). The best steaky biblical explanation comes from showing how the biblical text drives us back to the core questions: who is God and what is He like? What does it mean to be human and made in His image? What is sin and how deep is the problem? What is grace and how does God solve the problem of sin in salvation and Christian growth? God, man, sin, grace and growth. Simple stuff, but if you can let the Bible probe these issues, your steak will be truly life changing.
Listener Levels: 7 Suggestions to Improve Accessibility
How can we improve at offering explanation that will help people at the lower range of understanding? Perhaps your preaching goes over peoples’ heads, but you want to explain the Bible in a way that is accessible to younger Christians or less biblically literate folk? Some suggestions:
1. Pray about it – Nobody cares about your listeners as much as God, so ask for His coaching.
2. Get feedback – Try to find out from people what is lacking. It could be that your vocabulary is obfuscatory, or your content is too dense, or your delivery is unengaging, or your words are indistinct and hard to catch, etc.
3. Watch and evaluate some great explainers – Watch a preacher who is especially effective at explaining and describing the biblical content and action. What are they doing well?
4. Vary the elevation of your helicopter – If everything is explained from 100ft, then your messages will be deadening. You need to be able to lift up to 5000ft for a brief overview of the Bible, and you need to be able to land the chopper when you are settling for a while in a verse. Too much content where you need to be flying higher will lose listeners in overwhelming detail.
5. Surrender prideful vocabulary – To put it simply: your mission is not to impress, but to communicate. Relegate your original language vocabulary, your technical grammatical vocabulary, your systematic theological terminology and any other impressive jargon to your study. Know it, understand it, and sometimes, if necessary, explain it, but generally speaking it is best to leave it behind when you go to preach.
6. Achieve more by preaching less and driving it in more – Speaking of leaving things in the study, try leaving more of your message there. Often we confuse people by trying to achieve too much education in a single sermon. Andy Stanley says that many sermons would make great series. Try to cover less and you will have time for clearer explanation.
7. Improve your outlining – A lot of messages are complex because the preacher hasn’t thought themselves through to a point of clarity. I typically point to the main idea at this point, since a clear main idea will create clarity throughout the message. So true. But also give some time to evaluating the outline. Is it as simple and clear as can be? Is each part of the message doing something specific? If at a certain point in your message you don’t even know that you are trying to explain, nor will your listeners!
What else would you add?
Listener Levels
Preaching involves explanation. That is, when we preach, we need to offer some explanation of the passage’s meaning. But it needs to be more than that. We need to offer explanation of the passage’s meaning at a level appropriate to those who are listening.
Imagine a scale of zero to one hundred representing the level of complexity. A class of three-year olds might need an explanation in the zero to five range, and would not do well with a doctoral seminar in the 80’s and 90’s. This range difference may seem obvious. However, it seems that sometimes we forget the range within a normal church service.
In a normal church service, there will be a range that must be considered for effective preaching. If we don’t consider to whom we are preaching, then we will probably settle into a range. Some of us may be naturally 30-40 explainers, while others of us may be 60-70 explainers. Which is the right range? Whichever range is before us.
We need to assume that there may be unsaved listeners present. Then the range of explanation needed by the believers may be 10-40 or 30-70.
A little exercise for us. Why not take a couple of minutes and pray for wisdom in evaluating the following:
1. Which range will I naturally settle into if I don’t consider my listeners?
2. What is the approximate explanation range of my usual congregation?
3. Where do the first two answers differ? That is to say, do I need to put some prayer and work into offering more accessible explanation, or into offering some richer meat?
Why God Still Works Through Poor Preaching
Last time we noted how Paul preached Christ and Him crucified. Paul understood that people are fully subject to their heart-level desires. They will only ever “choose” what they want to choose, but cannot choose what it is they want. The heart is the issue and the gospel preached must offer a love so compelling that people will be drawn out of the deathly prison of their self-love.
However, a lot of preaching looks like this:
The preacher feels the need to twist the arm and will of the listener into conformity to some set of Christian values. After all, if only people and society were more responsible, then we’d be in a better place! The emphasis on duty and morality and law all add up to a big dose of pressure. If you’ve really tasted of the gospel, this has a very empty feel to it. Yet many of us are so used to this kind of preaching that we assume this is proper Christian preaching. Bible texts become launch points for moralistic tirades.
Somewhere in the mix, however, the preacher inserts a “Jesus bit” . . . typically with some reference to the cross. In terms of the biblical portrayal of the triune God and His mission in sending His Son, it is sometimes paper thin and desperately under-developed.
So let’s say that a life is marked by this kind of preaching…what happened? Actually, many lives will be marked by this kind of preaching. They will be marked by confusion over the gospel, external conformity to legalistic pressure, and there will be significant inoculation against the transformative power of grace. Yet there will be genuine fruit. Why? Because of the pressure and arm-twisting and guilt trips? No. Because “Christ and Him crucified” was preached. God works despite us and our preaching (and we need to be thankful for that!)
But surely this should make us want to undilute our preaching? Why mix the good stuff in with a poisonous and distracting set of added ingredients? Why play into the hands of the fallen condition by promoting self-reliance and self-righteousness? Wouldn’t it be better to preach Christ and Him crucified, spelling out the implications by way of invitation to those changed by the transformative grip of God’s grace?
Paul’s Preaching Genius
Paul finished his epistle to the Romans with a doxology highlighting his gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. He affirmed the “foolish” preaching of Christ crucified to the Corinthians in the first chapter, coming back to it in the opening verses of the second chapter . . . Christ, crucified . . . combined with personal weakness rather than eloquence and oratorical power. In Ephesians 3 he describes the grace of God given to him to preach to the Gentiles the riches of Christ. In Galatians chapter 3 he summarizes his ministry among them as a public placarding of Christ crucified.
So was Paul dull and predictable, or did he grasp something profoundly significant? I vote for the latter:
1. People are dead in sin, which means they are inwardly curved in on themselves. They can’t “uncurve” their souls, and we certainly can’t prise open this deadly incurvature. Only by the attractive force of a greater love can this self-love be captured and drawn out. Jesus came and told us plainly that when he is lifted up, he will draw people to himself. The drawing force of Christ and Christ crucified is therefore critical and central.
2. Preaching that promotes christian living, but doesn’t offer Christ, is not helpful at all. If we simply instruct people how to behave and act like christians, then they will co-opt and corrupt that instruction to serve their incurvedness. “If that is what it takes to get the benefits of church community or eternal heavenly blessings, then I will do what you say, in my independence from God.” This is the danger of not grasping the heart-centred nature of humanity and the gospel.
3. Paul knew that true relationship with Christ is about transformative response, not pressured responsibility. He was distressed that the Galatians had gone off after another gospel, which was no gospel at all. He had preached and presented Christ crucified and they had responded. But now they were being pressured by the law-preachers. Paul didn’t call this a marginal mistake or a slightly wrong emphasis. He called it deserting God! Amazing statement. How can taking the Law more seriously be akin to deserting God? Let me urge you to read through Galatians and take a fresh look at this critical issue. Paul offered a response-based gospel of the Promised One and the Spirit who brings us into intimate relationship with Abba and transforms our character as we walk with Him in relationship. This has New Covenant stickers all over it, but if we get our eyes off Jesus and back onto ourselves, then we turn from God’s provision back to the self-orientation of our old “life” . . . a bad move in every way. (And this is why Paul would keep coming back to preaching Christ and Him crucified, not christian values and us pressure-fied.)
Sanctified Sin
Could it be that a lot of our Bible teaching is simply feeding the flesh of our listeners and not helping them at all? This is a huge question well worth visiting . . . click here to go to this post on the Cor Deo site.
Preaching Seen
When we preach, we must aim beyond mere comprehension. Making understandable truth statements is important, but it falls short of the ultimate goal.
Our goal in preaching is not to offer a verbal form of written commentary – principles and doctrines and truths. Our goal is to go beyond that to the level of helping listeners engage with the text and the God of the text. This requires various things beyond the reading of a commentary, including relevance and targeted communication for the specific listeners before you. And it requires our aiming beyond mere comprehension.
How do we preach so that listeners not only comprehend cognitively, but also engage affectively? After all, every encounter with a person goes deeper than understanding what is said to a heart-level response to the person themselves. We always know whether we are drawn to and repulsed by any individual we meet. We always have a “first-impression” that takes some work to overcome with comprehension and thought processes. And since preaching the Bible is not merely about transferring information, it follows that we need to preach for more than mere understanding.
How do we do this? There are many factors, but let me share one:
Preach so that images form on the screen in the hearts of the listeners. When preaching narrative, do a good job at describing the characters and the action so that listeners can be drawn in and identify with the characters in their encounter with God. When preaching poetry, do a good job at describing the imagery and emotion of the writer so that listeners can be drawn into the situation of the poet and engage with them and their God. When preaching discourse, do a good job at describing the situation and the tension so that listeners can be drawn in and feel the force of the communication from the person presenting God.
Adequate preaching presents truths like a teleprompter. Great preaching makes the truth felt as it becomes clear, lucid and vivid on the screen in the listeners’ hearts.
Bibles Open
When you preach, how long do Bibles stay open?
1. Open until right after the reading. Perhaps your listeners know from experience that once the reading is over, the message will fly every which way and the text that was read will become a distant memory. They may open their Bibles for the reading, but once that is done, the Bibles are shut. So what are you preaching?
2. Open until disconnect is evident. Perhaps they will be looking at the passage and listening for a while. But after a while it will become evident that your message has no real connection to the passage. At some point some will close their Bibles in an act of quiet pew-level frustration and sit listening in anticipation of the closing hymn. Or . . .
3. Open as alternative to listening. Perhaps some will stay open so that the listener can occupy themselves while your message continues. For whatever reason, they have struggled to stay engaged and have decided that rather than being frustrated, they will read some Bible and make best use of the time!
4. Open until fingers grow tired. Here’s another possibility. Perhaps after the fourteenth cross reference, they get tired of searching for 2nd Hesitations and decide they’d be better off just listening rather than trying to keep up in the grown up sword drill for the initiated Bible handlers (or the folks with the indented pages for cheating in sword drills!)
5. Open until end of message. Perhaps people keep their Bibles open right the way through, frequently checking that what you are saying fits with the text. It is both textually accurate and personally compelling. When the message ends, the Bibles are closed by grateful hearts and helped lives.
6. “Open” even on the way home. Perhaps people close their Bibles with a finger in the text, because subconsciously they can’t wait to get back into that passage and pray through it some more at home. This would be a good sign of effective preaching!
7. Open all week. Perhaps you preach in such a way that listeners are motivated and stirred to keep their Bibles open all week. They want to read on, read around, read more. They discovered that the Bible was accessible, enjoyable and relevant to their lives. They can’t imagine not wanting to pursue the God you introduced on Sunday. Good preaching!
Good News and Good News
Biblical preachers have the best job on earth: we get to announce good news! So here’s a thought to ponder . . . do we preach good news and good news?
There is a danger that we will separate gospel proclamation from instruction for the Christian life. If we do, we will have problems. Consider the case of the two-sermon Sunday. Let me describe the downside of separating gospel proclamation from Christian life instruction:
Sermon 1: Gospel Proclamation. The preacher preaches the gospel. Good. Problem is, the vast majority of those present are already believers. He keeps telling us how much we need to be saved and how we cannot get there without God doing the saving. Fair enough, we agree. He preaches a message that would fit in a tent meeting, but seems entirely irrelevant to the congregation sitting before him. Everyone hopes that someone is present who is not yet a believer. It would be appropriate for them. The sermon ends and a significant number of people leave the church without being fed or helped in any direct way.
Sermon 2: Christian Life Instruction. The preacher preaches instruction for the Christian life. Good. Problem is, a significant number of those present in the morning sermon (Gospel) are not there in the evening. But for those who are, surely this is helpful? In some ways, yes. But the separation is problematic. Now we are told what our duties are and how we should handle the difficulties of life and what our thoughts and actions should be if trained by Scripture. The separation means that the preacher does not apply the gospel to the believer, but gives instructions to the insider.
There are problems with both of these sermons. Technically the preacher may be right in most of what he says. But the problem with the Gospel message in the morning is that he seems unaware of his audience. Most are already believers and the presentation treats them as “already in.” Consequently they can only hope someone is present who needs to hear the message. Yet the gospel should be relevant to believers too. In the gospel message the believers could and should be engaged by what is presented. In the Christian Life Instruction message, the gospel could and should be a defining feature. Do we think that having believed and entered in by faith, that we now will grow to maturity by our own diligent obedience? Check Paul’s thoughts on that approach in Galatians 3:1-3. No, the gospel is relevant to all and it is by faith from first to last.
Perhaps we need to grasp our privilege of proclaiming good news and proclaiming good news: gospel proclamation and gospel-shaped Christian life instruction!
Biblical Preaching 