Expository Preaching

Points in a Narrative Text Sermon

/ Peter Mead / 14 Comments

There is a field of homiletics referred to as narrative preaching, but this post is concerned with the preaching of a narrative passage – eg. David and Goliath, Joseph in Potiphar’s House, Hannah & Samuel, etc.

In other posts I have encouraged the use of full sentence points, rather than descriptive titles that make the message outline look like a commentary synopsis.  The full thoughts help you communicate effectively, generally avoiding historical past tense sentences helps you not sound like a commentary recycler.  But it is worth clarifying a couple of points on points:

1. If the message structure reflects the story structure, then some points may be better stated in historical terms. What I mean is that in an attempt to be contemporary, we can end up making three or four life principles out of the developing elements of the story, rather than allowing the story to be told properly.  The problem then becomes a moralizing approach to the details of a story, rather than allowing the force of the story to stand behind the main point, which itself might best be the only focus of application.  Stories that are told effectively will hold attention, so it is not necessary to generate points of relevance or application throughout the detail of the story.  Pay careful attention to the introduction, generating a definite sense of sermon relevance there, then feel free to be in the world of the narrative for a large part of the message, continually building to the relevance that may only become overt in point 3 or 4 (i.e. whenever the main idea is revealed with its abiding theological thrust).

2. Shorter biblical stories may work best with a default sermon outline. Namely, point 1 is to tell the story.  Point 2 is to state and clarify the main idea of that story.  Point 3 is to reinforce and drive home the application of that main idea.  In this case point 1 is automatically historical.  Point 2 should be written in contemporary terms.  Point 3 has to be contemporary, including all sub-points.  Again the introduction is important, but I suspect that will be the case in almost every sermon that we preach (whether we give it the necessary attention or not).  This approach underlines the fact that the outline of a sermon is for your eyes only.  Once we realize our goal is not to transfer an outline, but to give the text in such a way as to clarify the main point and apply it, then we are freed from the burden of turning every narrative into a parallel rhyming assonated demonstration of guilded wordsmithery.

Purposeful Selection Then Forgotten

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The first logical step in preparing a message (once you’ve been asked to preach, which is presumed), is to select your passage(s) on which to base the message.  Sometimes the invitation comes with the passage, sometimes with a theme, sometimes an open invitation.  Select then forget.  What do I mean?

1. When you’re invited to preach with a passage assigned. You may be tempted to skip the Passage Selection phase of preparation altogether, after all, job is already done, isn’t it?  Well, not fully.  You need to double check that you are handling a full unit of thought (i.e. not half a story, half a proverb, half a psalm, half a paragraph, etc.)  Whatever you are asked to preach, you have to study the full unit of thought in its context, so there is a need to check the selection.  In doing so, especially if a title has been assigned, you may get a clear indication of what they are wanting from the message.  Great, a church or ministry being purposeful is a good thing. But for the study phase (stages 2-4), you need to forget that purpose and seek to dwell in the text.  Reintroduce that purpose in your thoughts for message purpose, stage 5.

2. When you’re invited to preach with a theme assigned. You go on the hunt for an appropriate passage on which to preach that theme (or a combination of passages).  Once you’ve selected your passages, forget the theme for a while.  The text has to be free to speak for itself.  Any imposed message makes it something other than truly biblical preaching.

3. When you’re invited to preach and free to choose. This is hard work.  You can easily waste a lot of time pondering where to go.  You may go where you go for a variety of reasons, but once you’ve gone there, forget your motivation (for now) and allow the text to speak for itself.

What if it is different? At times I’ve been faced with a passage that doesn’t do what I thought it would, or doesn’t do what a title suggests.  Well, then, either preach the passage or pick another.  Simple really, but vital.  When we are studying passage (stages 2-4), we need to let the text be boss, and then let that authority linger through the message formation phase of the process.

How To Not Preach Like a Commentary

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

It’s easy to preach like a commentary.  Either you lift content out of a commentary and preach it, or you write your message like you were writing a commentary.  It leads to a set of headings superimposed on the text, and sometimes superimposed on a projector screen too.  The Problem of Prayer, The Power of Prayer, The Perspecuity of Prayer.  Or perhaps, Saul’s Condition, Saul’s Conversion, Saul’s Conviction.

This kind of outlining might suggest that the preacher thinks the greatest goal in preaching is to offer a set of memory aids to help the listener hang their thoughts in a biblical passage.  It suggests that historical and biblical information is the key ingredient for life transformation.  It suggests a lack of awareness of the possibilities for more pastoral care in and through preaching.

A couple of suggestions:

1. Try changing your view of “points” from titles to full sentences. A full sentence requires a verb and will more actively engage the listener than a title can.

2. Try writing your sentences in contemporary rather than historical terms. Whenever possible it is worth taking the opportunity to speak with relevance to the listeners.  This can be done at the end, of course, but also in the introduction, in every transition, within each point, and also within the phrasing of each point.  Make the point applicational and then support that from the text.

3. Don’t pour your energy into creating a memorable outline, but into effectively conveying the message of the text. When alliteration and parallelism falls into your lap, great, consider using them.  But actually our energies will often be better invested in thinking through how to reconvey the already powerful message of the text, rather than trying to help people remember an outline.  Lives are changed by the text, by the main idea, by the application of the passage, by connecting with God and with the speaker.  Lives are not changed by outlines.

Falling Short of Unity, Order and Progress

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Can I offer three ways in which we can have unity, order and progress, yet still fall short in each area?

Unity – We often fall short when we just tie together the sections of the text by means of a keyword or subject.  In many passages it is relatively easy to make the two or three or four points somewhat parallel and addressing aspects of a subject.  I’m being hypothetical now, but the type of outline that goes through The Problem of Prayer, The Power of Prayer, The Perspecuity of Prayer.  (Commentary labels fall short on numerous levels, perhaps another post for that one!)  Did the writer really intend a list of fully parallel and equal thoughts?  Or was the writer actually building a case to say one main thing?  Unity should be pursued at the level of main idea (subject and complement) not just at the level of subject.

Order – I think we fall short of a well-ordered message when we simply progress through the text in the order it is found in Scripture.  Often this is the most effective order to present the passage, but why?  Is it purely for ease of following?  If the writer had shuffled the pack of paragraphs, would it have been the same another way?  If not, if there is a development of the thought, or a progression toward a climax, or an addressing of objections, etc., then let’s recognize and reproduce a more deliberate order than just, “now onto the next verse…”  (Again, often the order is a good order to preach, but ask yourself why?)

Progress – We fall short when our progress is simply a moving toward the end of the passage.  Listeners will generally feel relieved when they get that sensation of nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean the message has moved anywhere, or moved them at all. Progress should give a sense of moving forward, going somewhere, building, arriving, etc.  Consider how the thought in the passage does more than just slide past, but actually engages the reader, creates tension, resolves it, anwers concerns, etc.

Preacher’s Block

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Years ago I read Heralds of God by James Stewart.  I just read a response paper sent to me by a friend.  It’s time I read the book again. He reminded me of Stewart’s advice regarding preacher’s block, or those times when artistic inspiration simply is not flowing, but discouragement is pouring in like a flood.

It is too easy to listen to our moods.  It is too simple to await the great thoughts before we begin.  Stewart quotes Quiller-Couch, “These crests [of inspiration] only arise on the back of constant labour.”  How true it is that moments of inspiration tend to reflect hours of perspiration.

I have a lot of preparation to do this week.  How easy it is to allow the flesh to control the process and wile away the hours with relatively meaningless tasks while awaiting some flash of divine enablement.  Can I trust the Lord to enable me as I graft at the preparation?  Bend the knee and pray.  Pick up the book and read.  Take up the pen and write.  Stretch out the fingers and type.  Simple really, but how easy to justify another path.

Down, But Not Out!

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

I have been reflecting recently on what regular up-front ministry involves.  Whether one is a youth leader, a church leader, a regular preacher, a Sunday School teacher, etc, these and other ministries share something in common.  I’ll use preaching as the example for this brief post.

After preaching, if you are like most preacher’s, you probably don’t feel great every time.  It is nice, but it doesn’t always help to receive the positive feedback from folks.  Even with all positive feedback, it is easy to come away discouraged and drained, often self-evaluating and majoring on the minor mistakes made.

To go through this on a regular basis can lead to higher level (or should I say, deeper) draining.  Some of the great preachers of history struggled with depression.  Many of us also face the energy sapping that comes from regular ministry, whether or not it gets to that level.

I don’t want to use Paul’s words in 2Cor.4, because that would be an insult to the persecution he faced (and many of our brothers and sisters today).  However, in a very scaled down version we do need that same sense of being knocked down, but not knocked out.  Sunday comes, we give.  Monday comes, we may be drained and discouraged.  But Tuesday comes and we must stand up and press on!  How?  Only by keeping our eyes on Him who doesn’t change and is the same Sunday, Monday and Tuesday!

One Simple Truth, One Wonderful Christ

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I am sitting in the airport waiting for my ride home, so this will be a short and jet-lagged post (or perhaps a long and jet-lagged post since shorter is always harder!)

How easy it is in preaching to give too much information and not enough of the Lord.  Listeners are more easily overwhelmed with information than we realize.  We have processed information and refined it, allowing us to present a lot of information in a short amount of time (shorter than it took us to understand it!)  So it is very easy to overwhelm our listeners with more than they can take in while trying to listen at the same time!

We can easily pack sermons with information, with background material, even with the often lauded illustrations and applications, but still make very little of Christ (or of any person in the Triune God we worship).  So easy to default into speaking about us, but not really offering Him to our listeners.

While every sermon is different, somehow we need to present one simple truth, an understandable principle, while at the same time offering the compelling and captivating God of the Bible (lest we turn His self-revelation into a mere manual for effective living).

Application Is Not Always Pragmatic – 2

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Yesterday I suggested that preaching with applicational goals is entirely appropriate.  Furthermore, if done appropriately and sensitively (not to mention specifically), application that is very pragmatic certainly has a place in our preaching.  But we have to see the rest of the list too:

2 – Belief (the head) – It is important to recognize that behaviour is driven by belief.  If we only ever seek to fix behaviour, we will be frustrated because of the influence of underlying belief.  If a message calls for thinking a certain way about God, about life, about salvation, about conflict, about ministry, about whatever . . . then don’t feel bad about applying accordingly.  Sometimes a message transforms lives without a call to action, but with a call to respond in belief, in changing perspective, in thinking well about something.

1 – Affection (the heart) – If behaviour and conduct is driven by belief and thought processes, then it is important to recognize what drives our thinking and belief . . . the affections of the heart.  It is the heart that supplies values which function like software in the mind.  It is the hardening of the heart that stood at the root of the wrong thinking and bad behaviour of “the Gentiles” Paul wrote of in Ephesians 4.  And it is a new heart that is so transformative in the new covenant.  How easily we try to live new covenant Christianity as if we still have hearts of stone!  Applicational preaching needs to reach deep into the hearts of listeners and not settle for pragmatics or information transfer alone.

I know it is the work of God’s Spirit to change hearts.  But isn’t it only the Spirit who can truly influence thinking and action too?  Apart from me you can do nothing, Jesus said . . . so we must lean fully on the Lord as we preach His Word, but part of our task is to emphasize the relevance of the preaching text; the relevance to our conduct, to our beliefs, to our affections.

Feel the Force: Discourse

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This is where we sometimes struggle the most.  When preaching the epistles (less so the speeches of Joshua, Jesus, etc.), we can easily fall into logical information transfer and presentation of facts.  But the fact is that all discourse is set in a narrative context.  How do we make sure listeners feel the force of the discourse sections of Scripture, especially the epistles?

1. Be sure to set the scene contextually – the text is a glimpse into a narrative. It is when we treat the epistles as timeless statements or creeds, rather than letters, that we lose sight of the specific situations that sparked their composition in the first place.  Help people to feel the emotion of Paul writing his last letter to Timothy, or his anger at the corrupting of the gospel in Galatia, or his connection with the Philippian church, or his passion for the unity of the churches in Rome.  It takes effort and skill to effectively set a text in its historical context, but it must be done for listeners to really feel the force of the text.

2. Consider how to appropriately target the message to the listeners. If we are facing similar problems today, then perhaps the text can be preached with a sense of directness, rather than held at arms length as an exhibit from the ancient world.  Perhaps the Galatian error hasn’t been introduced in your church (although perhaps contemporary churchgoers are closer to that than we’d like to think!)  So if the original purpose and thrust doesn’t quite fit, would it work to imagine how it might and then preach directly?  Somehow we need to hear what God is saying to us, now.

3. Build on the imagery included in the text. The epistles are not pure logical argumentation.  They regularly refer to people, incidents, imagery, examples, rhetorical devices, etc.  As a preacher we can build on these to make sure our preaching of that text is not mere lecturing on the facts with tacked on application.  Most texts are far richer in imagery or wordplay than we tend to think.  Not only in poetry and narrative, but also in the epistles, the text will often yield plenty of “illustrative” material if we observe carefully!

4. Build a sense of progression into the structure. How easy it is to simply produce a parallel set of points that do not build, do not progress, do not intrigue and do not pack a punch.  A good outline is not only somewhat symmetrical (and not always that), but reflects the progression and punch of the text.

As we preach the text, let’s make it our goal to help listeners to feel the force of the text.  Understand it, yes.  Apply it, yes.  But more than that, feel it (for when the force of the text is felt, understanding and application will increase!)

Feel the Force: Narrative

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday we touched briefly on poetry and noted how easy it is to preach without conveying the force of the text.  Today let’s have a brief reminder regarding narrative.  If the “force” of poetry lies in often emotive imagery, the “force” of narrative rests in the lack of rest, the tension necessary for a story to be a story.

1. We mustn’t sacrifice the tension for other details. It is easy to preach a story in component parts as if it were merely an illustration of propositional truths.  I certainly am not prepared to give up the reality that a single story will be held together by a single sense of purpose, tension and thus, a proposition.  However, preaching story requires telling story and feeling story.  It is not enough to break up the text into segments and describe each as if we were writing a commentary.  For the force of the story to get across, the listeners have to be aware of the tension in the story, more than that, they need to feel the tension.

2. We mustn’t lose the resolution in the rhythm of the message. If the story really becomes a story by the introduction of tension, then the story is rapidly approaching the end once that tension is resolved.  It is in the resolution of the story that we usually have the key to unlocking the purpose and meaning of the whole.  How is the prodigal brought into the family?  (And interestingly, why isn’t the tension resolved for his older brother a few verses later?)  What is God’s evaluation of the two men praying in the temple?  Who demonstrates neighborly love to the injured man by the road?  If our message is not built around telling the story, then it is easy for the resolution to be lost in the detail of our structure.

3. The text is lean, but effective engagement requires the forming of imagery. The Bible does not give much detail in the telling of most of its stories.  Every detail counts and should be studied carefully.  However, the listeners are not studying the text at length, they are listening to you preach it.  So for them to be able to engage with the text, to be able to identify with central characters, to disassociate from others, to wrestle with the tension, they need effective and developed description of the events.  It takes time for the mists to clear on the screen of their hearts so that they can feel the force of the narrative!