Ramesh Richard – Incarnation and Preaching

October 14, 2014 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Ramesh Richard serves as leader of Ramesh Richard Evangelism and Church Health, as Professor of Global Theological Engagement and Pastoral Ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary, and as General Convener of the Global Proclamation Congress for Pastoral Trainers, DV, June 2016, Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Richard’s Preparing Expository Sermons was named in the top 25 most influential preaching books of the last 25 years by Preaching magazine. I am thankful to Ramesh for this thoughtful contribution to the Guest Series on the Incarnation – what is it that distinguishes the Christian preacher?

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How (and more importantly, why) is a Christian preacher different from preachers in non-Christian religions, especially those of other monotheistic faiths?

All preachers tend to moralism—the preaching of behavioral expectation—in sermon application. Christian preachers share this penchant with rabbis and imams. Without a grace-based foundation and environment to preaching, moralism turns into legalism, radicalism, and terrorism. Have divine demands already been met which can overflow into a grateful, responsive life-style or should divine pleasure be manipulated by human application of moralistic sermons? What would move people from moralism to a grace-infused living?

Preachers also lean toward principilization—preaching around, above, under, even beyond a text that seems theologically distant or deemed culturally irrelevant. Indeed we are forced to principilize in some way, when a plain reading of the text calls for a response antithetical to contemporary ears (e.g., stoning homosexuals, or beheading infidels). So less orthodox rabbis and less conservative imams have to make their texts more suitable by preaching the principle of what the author is supposedly doing with his text. But then they severely compromise what the author is proposing in the text. Why would Christian preachers preserve the primacy of preaching the text itself, and only secondarily subsume its theological meaning as it forms and informs the central proposition of the text?

Finally, any faithful preacher wants to get across the message of their respective gods and books to their audiences. And yet their pontifications are as lofty like their heavenly gods. Their gods sit in their heavens and write prescriptions for the human race without having experienced the earthly, existential realities of their followers. How would Christian preachers mitigate and overcome this one-dimensional, theoretical stance of heaven toward earth?

May I suggest that the inclinations of moralistic, principilized, one-way behavioral expectations of God (and His preacher) are substantially eradicated by embracing the Incarnation model for hermeneutics and homiletics? The Lord Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth. The incarnation is not an abstract, theological idea, but is a uniquely, specifically, identifiable, in-flesh proposition; and further, the incarnate One built the bridge from God to humanity, between the extremes of the soteriological and communication-divides, as both faithful and relevant mediator.

All Christian preaching then should be spiritually speaking, grace-based; hermeneutically speaking, traceable to a historically unique text; and homiletically speaking, bi-dimensional and cross-cultural, all because of the incarnate One we proclaim.

Time To Process?

October 2, 2009 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I have been enjoying listening to Howard Hendricks lately. I’d like to intersperse some of his comments with my own. It’s almost like an interview, except that I’ve never met him and it doesn’t quite work as a pseudo-interview. Nevertheless, his words are in “quotes.”

“My great concern for my students is that they don’t have enough time to process what they’re getting at seminary . . . the firehose.”

This is a good point, for any seminary students reading this site, be sure to carve out some half-days or full-days during the year to reflect, to journal, to process, to pray, to think. I’m not saying all of this can be done on a few days spread out through the year, but I am saying it cannot be done simply through daily devotions and journaling when the pressure is on, when the hose is blasting!

But what about the preacher? Do we have preachers preaching when the well is dry? What would Prof.Hendricks like to do for preachers and pastors?

“After every seven years, I would invest to have you come back to seminary for one year. We’ll pay all the costs, transportation, food, etc. You don’t have to pass anything, you just have to process. I think we could transform the ministry!”

I tend to agree, although I haven’t found the seminary offering this form of sabbatical program yet.

“Because we’re not doing it, and that’s why we’re suffering. We’re dumbing down the gospel, we’re dumbing down the Word of God. Every year the basic knowledge drops. Our churches are not teaching Bible.”

That’s a bit of a generalization, how do you support that?

“Their product is demonstrating that they’re not teaching the Bible. Because people need time to process what’s going on, and what are you planning to do about it.”

Ok, good point. This means we have gone from seminary students, to pastors, to people in the pew. Are they getting time to process what they receive? Is there space to process during the service? Is there space to process during the church week? Do we jump from one message to another, from one passage in preaching to another in home groups? Where’s the time to process?

Perhaps we should consider the processing space in our own lives, and in the lives of others in the church.

Put Your Feet Up?

September 19, 2009September 18, 2009 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Do you have a few teachers you would have been delighted to have studied under personally, but didn’t? I do, and near the top of that list would be Howard Hendricks. I’ve been blessed by some of his disciples, but at the moment am enjoying listening to some of his teaching. Here’s an old quote he used from the president of Yale addressing the board of the great institution:

Ladies and Gentlemen, if I don’t spend time every day with my feet propped up on the desk, dreaming about what Yale ought to be, you need to fire me because I am no longer the leader of Yale – I am simply a pathetic manager of the institution.

Please don’t get upset if you happen to like being a manager of something, but please get the point. Leaders need to spend time thinking and dreaming of what the ministry, institution, church, and even family, ought to be. I suspect that in the busy-ness of ministry and life many of us are falling considerably behind in our think-time, as Hendricks would put it.

Let’s be very wary of a preaching routine, and a ministry routine, that lacks time to think and dream. Sanctified prayerful dreaming is an element of true eternity-shaping ministry that I sense is lacking in many today. Let’s make space and dare to dream, then ask God. He is able to do abundantly beyond all that we ask or even imagine . . . with many of us that is not even half a challenge. Let’s consider putting our feet up so that we can be leaders, and because it’s exciting to see God being God!

Comment on Commentaries

April 10, 2009 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I’ve written on commentaries before, such as here and here, and even here. I was just prompted by something I read to point out something else concerning commentaries. As well as the standard sage advice to not overly revere the commentaries, but rather treat them as conversation partners; as well as the solid suggestion to not invite them into the conversation too early; one more suggestion:

Don’t only read commentators that are solidly within your own theological tradition or denominational stream. It is tempting, especially with limited resources, to always buy from the same denominational publishing house, or in a series that is largely of your kind theologically. Some people seem to only read Reformed Calvinists, others look for well-known Arminian theologians, others like anything connected to Dallas, others want Abingdon Press, others only John MacArthur, others only Tom Wright, others only buy UK/Australian authors, etc. Tempting as such an approach may be, you will find that richer insight is gained by engaging with a variety of voices. All of these that I have mentioned can be helpful, as can Roman Catholic commentators, or Jewish commentators, etc.

A couple of caveats (since I know some readers will take me out of context and write me off theologically for one of the items in that list, or perhaps for all of them – I could list more until I find your favorite!) (1) Just because it’s different, doesn’t make it right, any more than it makes it wrong. That is to say, whatever their tradition or theology, some commentators deal with the text better than others – you are still looking for good commentators. (2) Make sure you have some grounding yourself before you bounce around in other camps. Reading multiple voices is part of good seminary training, but be careful not to intellectually buy into anything and everything in print. (3) Don’t neglect quality commentators from “your camp.” They will probably form the “spine” of your collection. (4) It is helpful to know where a commentator is coming from. It helps to know that this guy always looks for an obscure position and takes it. It helps to know that that one comes from a theology that tends to read these kinds of verses in this way.

Finally, I’ve mentioned John Glynn’s helpful book in the past. I’d like to point you to a very helpful online resource strongly influenced by John Glynn’s book. Perhaps you have not come across it yet – bestcommentaries.com. I would not say that I always agree with the scores given to a commentary, of course, but it largely seems to be a very helpful guide. Take a look around it, you will probably be glad to add it to your bookmarks!

The Bigger Picture

October 9, 2008October 5, 2008 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

For most people in our churches today, the big picture is a mystery. Their experience in the Bible is like being dropped in a huge forest. They recognize some trees, they even like those trees, but what they know and recognize seems as random as trees in a vast forest. We should not take for granted that people understand the bigger picture, the broad storyline of the Bible.

This is why Walk Thru the Bible was such a huge success a generation ago. It gave people, in five hours, an overview of the storyline of the Old Testament, then later of the New Testament.

As preachers it is our privilege to help people understand how particular passages fit in the flow of the Bible story. We don’t help by giving obscure links to random and questionable types and shadows elsewhere (unless they are clear and legitimate ones), but we do help by placing texts and stories in their context in the broad flow of the Bible story.