Expository Preaching

Mindset Switch on Texts

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

The traditional approach to preaching a Bible passage is that it is a collection of data, probably in an antiquated form.  So for many preachers, coming to the text is coming in search of sermon content – data to be transmitted, information to be mined and presented.

In recent years awareness has increased significantly in regards to the inherent strength and function of Bible texts.  They are not collections of data presented in incidental forms.  Rather, it is becoming clearer to many that God speaks through the texts as texts.  God speaks not only through the information contained in a text, but also through the way that the text itself functions.  God did not only inspire the content, but the genre and form of the passage.  Poetry is poetry for a reason.  Discourse is discourse on purpose.  Prophetic writing is that way for a reason (this being a positive reason, not just an excuse to dismiss any content that doesn’t fit with your theology, as I see an alarming number of people doing these days).

If you are still of the mindset that a Bible text is a collection of data to be mined for personal edification and sermon preparation, please consider this switch.  Treat a text as a piece of purposeful communication.  The genre matters.  The form matters.  The function of the text is a key factor to consider in understanding the text.

Contemporary Sermons – Ironside

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Wiersbe’s brief five-page biography of H.A.Ironside is an enjoyable read.  He writes of the man’s passion for the Word, passion for souls, personal spirituality, and deeply valued ministry.  I like this brief section:

Some have criticized Ironside for preaching through Bible books instead of preaching “more contemporary messages” in such a strategic pulpit.  But time, I think, has vindicated his ministry.  His expositions are as fresh and meaningful today as when they were preached.  I have many books of “contemporary sermons” in my library, and they read like old newspapers in comparison.

It is easy to pit one against the other, but surely our goal should be expository preaching of the Word of God.  By definition this should include a sense of contemporary application since we preach to specific people at a certain time.  Yet too often we fall into one or the other approaches.  If you can’t figure out how to combine both effectively with the Bible pre-eminent, then just preach the Bible, I suppose!

Let me just quote Wiersbe again, his final comments on Ironside:

Ironside was not a dazzling preacher; he did not aim to be sensational.  He stepped into the pulpit with exclamation points, not question marks.  A generation of preachers that has tried every gimmick available to get people’s attention would do well to become acquainted with Harry Ironside and to learn afresh the meaning of living by faith and preaching the Word of God in simplicity and love.

When Do Listeners Switch On?

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

You know what I mean.  People are sitting and listening, sort of, until you say a key phrase, then suddenly everyone is really listening carefully.  Let’s make the assumption that having people really listen is a positive thing.  Now let’s consider some examples of “switch on” phrases and consider the implications for our preaching:

“How does this apply to us?” – People do tend to listen more when the message is about them, their lives, their needs, etc.  We could critique that theologically and point to the self-obsession of humanity.  Or we could be thankful that all Scripture is both God-breathed and “useful” – i.e. life changing.  And then we could stop leaving application to the last three minutes of a message and look for ways to include it throughout.  Compare and contrast an introduction infused with relevance and applicational preparation for the message to follow, with the standard switch off phrase “Last week we were deep in 2Chronicles 17, please turn with me to 2Chronicles 18 . . .”

“Let me tell you a story . . .” – People of all ages love a good story.  “Once upon a time” does wonders for children of all ages.  This kind of phrase is much more of a switch on than “let’s talk about the story.”  I’ve said it before, when the passage is a narrative, tell the story!  Even when it is not, how can the message be engaging and interesting, rather than mere lecturing and information transfer?

“Here’s how I struggle with this . . .” – People are always interested in appropriate vulnerability from the preacher.  Haddon Robinson urges preacher to neither be the hero, nor the jerk, in the stories they tell by way of illustration.  He is right, but he is not saying be absent from your illustrations.  People are far more interested in you as a real person, than they are in Napoleon or Lenin.  It is good to personalize aspects of the message, as long as it doesn’t make you look too good, or too much of an idiot.  Credibility and interest can increase or crash with personal stories.  Choose wisely, but choose some.

Some things switch on listeners, but integrity demands that we don’t use them.  Over-promising and then under-delivering, offering success guarantees in a messy world, promising healing or wealth when the text doesn’t support that application.  We must have integrity so that we’re not mere pragmatists.  However, it is easy to go to the other extreme and fail to learn from the reactions of listeners.  What other phrases switch on the listener?  What might be the implications for our preaching?

Mentor the Odd Scholar

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I suppose actually there are some odd scholars.  But that is not my point.  As preachers we tend to focus most, if not all, of our ministry attention on local church ministry.  This is good as the local church is God’s primary means of reaching the world with the gospel.  However, let’s not fall into the trap of ignoring or despising scholarship.

It is true that every Christian is involved in theological education by being part of a local church.  However, there is a need for good evangelical men and women in academia too.  Peter Williams, of Tyndale House, Cambridge, made this very important point at a recent conference.  If we leave academia and scholarship to non-church attenders, then we’ll soon end up in a very negative situation.  Specifically, we’ll have no study resources that aren’t attacks on Scripture.  Anti-christian scholars aren’t going to note the kind of details we’ve touched on in the last couple of days.

So, in your church, is there an individual you could encourage into quality Christian scholarship?

We should be mentoring preachers.  We should be discipling/mentoring believers in all aspects of spirituality and ministry.  Perhaps we should look for someone to mentor and encourage toward solid evangelical Christian scholarship – for the sake of future preachers!

Highlight the Apologetic Value of Details

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Sometimes in preaching we will cover details that have apologetic value.  This will probably not be the main thrust of the passage, but if time allows, why not note the inference that can be made so that our listeners are strengthened in their view of the accuracy of the Bible?  Our churches would be stronger in this day and age if more believers had a fact-based robust evangelical bibliology.  We don’t have to wait for the next DaVinciCode-esque attack on the Bible, we can be reinforcing a proper view of the Bible through our preaching.

Consider, for example, Mark’s accurate knowledge of names and languages. The more we study, the more we discover that the gospels have exactly the pattern of names and languages we would expect them to have if they were true.  The more common names in Judea/Galilee at the time of Christ have qualifiers added to help the reader know which John (brother of James / son of Zebedee, or the baptizing one) or which Judas (brother of Jesus, Iscariot, or son of James).  On the other hand, no information needed to identify the Thaddeus (39th most popular name), or Philip (61st).   This may not seem that significant, but at that time, the 2nd most popular name among Jews in Palestine was 68th most popular in Egypt.  The writers (especially Matthew and Mark on this issue) demonstrate real accuracy in their choices of names and when to add clarification details – was this sophisticated research leading to accurate fiction, or was it just plain accurate history?

For another example, consider Mark’s knowledge of local languages. In 14:70 he knows local differences in accent.  In 5:41 he gives the correct Aramaic for that time and place (see also 7:11; 7:34).  In 11:9 he gives the right pronunciation for the locals saying “Hosanna,” rather than the Old Testament “Hoshiana” (in the Talmud the Rabbis apparently complain about the local crowd mispronouncing the “sh” as “s”).  Yet at the same time, Mark knows accurate Roman Latin – see 6:27 (speculator); 15:39 (centurio); 12:42 (quadrans) . . .  all details, but the kind of evidence you’d expect for an eyewitness testimony written in Rome.

As Peter Williams of Tyndale House, Cambridge, recently stated, “The gospels have exactly the pattern of names and languages we would expect them to have if they were true.  The pattern is too complex for an ancient forger to reproduce (it would be a level of sophistication never seen in antiquity!)”

(Thanks to Peter Williams for his great teaching on this subject, and he would point to Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses as a key source.)

Notice the Details

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When you are studying a text and preparing to preach it, make sure you notice the details.  No word is there by accident.  As I sometimes say, the writers of the Bible were neither drunk nor wasteful.  Not drunk means that they were coherent and deliberate in what they wrote.  Not wasteful means that papyrus was expensive, so they didn’t waffle for a paragraph or two before getting into it.

Sometimes the details in a passage are helpful theologically.  For example, why does Mark tell the reader that the grass was green when Jesus fed the five thousand?  Is this mere ornamentation?  Or is it part of a larger package of details and tone that are suggestive of Jesus bringing something of the eschatological feasting and abundance?  It can be hard to discern the difference between allegorical misreading of Scripture and sensitivity to the original writer’s intent.  The goal is not to make it say something Mark didn’t know, but to recognize what Mark intended to communicate both overtly and subtly.

Sometimes the details in a passage are helpful apologetically. In a day when the Bible is roundly mocked, we have listeners who need their trust in the Bible bolstered by our preaching.  Thus it is worth noting apparently incidental details that actually under gird a robust evangelical bibliology.  For example, notice the difference between names used in speech quotations and the same names used by the narrator.  Jesus was the 6th most common name in that part of the world at that time, so naturally in speech his name would be qualified, such as “the Nazarene, Jesus” (Mark 14:67).  Yet in the narration, Mark doesn’t need to identify which Jesus he is writing about, so it is just “Jesus” (eg. Mark 14:62, 72).  Mark could easily have had the servant girl referring to “Jesus,” but he didn’t.  Was Mark phenomenally accurate in making up the story, or is he in fact quoting speech with word perfect exactitude?  (Compare the narrator with the speech quotations in Matthew 14:1-11, for another example of this.)

Tomorrow I’ll share a couple more examples of textual details that offer apologetic value for our preaching.  (I’m indebted to Peter Williams of Tyndale House, Cambridge, for these apologetic examples.)

Macro Framing

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As a preacher it is important to know the big shape of the book you are preaching.  It is also important to communicate it.  Too many Christians see the books of the Bible as a random assortment of random  chunks.  Our preaching should not exacerbate that lack of macro awareness.  While preaching a passage it is helpful for our listeners to hear how this piece fits in the whole message of the book.

We won’t agree on every attempt to “macro frame” a Bible book, but we should agree that people need to recognize the unity and flow of the books.

The first three chapters of Ephesians describe the calling of believers as church – a body united in Christ Jesus.  Then from 4:1 on the book is concerned with the conduct of believers as church – a body living out its unity in Christ Jesus.  Calling: Conduct.  Overly simplistic?  Maybe, but better than only having random details or a couple of favorite verses.

What about Mark’s gospel?  Two big questions.  Who is Jesus and what does it mean to follow him?  In 1:1 the reader is told who He is (Christ, the Son of God), but the characters in the narrative take a long time to get there.  The hinge of the book is in the middle of chapter 8, where Peter makes his “you are the Christ,” confession, only to then put his foot in it by rebuking Jesus for introducing crucifixion talk.  But the reality is that a Christ who is simply miracle-working man of power is an incomplete Christ.  You can’t have the Christ without the cross.  So in the next chapters Jesus keeps explaining and predicting the cross.  He came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.  The followers of Jesus are to take up their cross and follow Him.  Do they get it?  When will someone understand?  Perhaps once the Christ dies on the cross, and the climactic statement of the centurion standing close by, “this man was the Son of God.” (1:1; 8:27-34; 15:39).  Mark’s gospel has a profound flow to it, but how will people know this if we don’t let it slip out in our preaching?

Romans seems to move through four chunks of thought – Our problem (we lack God’s righteousness – 1:18-3:20); God’s provision (he gives us His righteousness – 3:21-8:39); God’s promise (we can trust His promise of righteousness – 9:1-11:36); Our practice (we live out God’s righteousness – 12:1-15:33).  Now I know that this righteousness emphasis doesn’t also point out the other core issues of God’s faithfulness and unity between God’s people that spans the book.  Perhaps we can present differing macro frames of reference for the same book to help people see the big picture?

We’ll leave it there for now, but as preachers, let’s not miss opportunities to help people see where a passage fits in the flow of a book.  Let’s do some macro framing!

Review – Preach By Ear, by Dave McClellan

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

DVD-cover-shot

Dave McClellan is a graduate of Grace College and Denver Seminary, as well as having a PhD in Rhetoric & Communication from Duquesne University. He is the pastor of The Chapel at Tinkers Creek.

What if there were a different way to prepare and to preach? What if we have learned preaching in a primarily literacy-based worldview? What if preaching were really an oral form of communication – not just in delivery, but in every respect? What if there were a genuinely oral homiletic? Preach By Ear leans heavily on Walter Ong’s work in respect to orality and literacy. Since the massive changes wrought by the printing press, we have gained so much. But Dave McClellan suggests we may have lost much as well.

He argues compellingly that preaching is intended to be genuinely from the preacher, rather than an external, arms length, process. Yet the effect of literacy is to separate thought from the person. Hence so much of today’s preaching is prepared via book study that is held at arms length, then delivered leaning on notes that keep the sermon separate from the preacher and completed before the event of delivery. McClellan suggests that while preaching has moved back and forth on the orality-literacy scale through the centuries, the 20th century saw the most extreme move to the literacy end of the scale ever.Homiletics was separated from rhetoric and the approach we are familiar with is not as balanced and effective as we may think it is.

As well as leaning Walter Ong, McClellan also looks to Quintillian for rhetorical input. The DVD’s contain a 7-part series of presentations, with each part ranging from 15-25 minutes in length (the final part – “homework” – is a bit longer).  On the one hand the full series is necessarily brief and lacking in the extra background and footnotes that a book might offer (as well as more worked examples to help the viewer see how Preaching By Ear can be genuinely expositional in practice). On the other hand, the series didn’t need to be any longer (it is up to the viewer to apply the lessons learned in a way that handles the text well).  It achieves its purpose of introducing an alternative approach to preaching and sermon preparation well. It may make you want to pursue aspects of the subject further, or simply start getting experience with this different approach.

This double DVD set is very well produced and enjoyable to watch. While it is not exactly “Hollywood” in production quality, it goes well above and beyond a video of a seminar.  The quality of production is clear in the clips available on the website – see below.  Anyay, in the 7-part series on the DVDs, Dave McClellan lays a foundation for an orality-based approach to preaching and then offers some instruction. The first three parts present the concept of orality and literacy, a theology of orality and a brief (but interesting) history of preaching. The next three parts are concerned with preparing the preacher, preparing the message and delivery. The final part offers a series of practical suggestions to help the viewer become better prepared for genuinely oral preaching.

I would encourage you to get hold of this DVD set and ponder its content. Perhaps you’re already kind of thinking this way. Perhaps you’re at the opposite end of the scale. Wherever you are at in your preaching, I think it would be worth adding Preach By Ear to the mix.

By the way, during July the DVD’s are on sale for 50% of the normal price. To see preview clips and order the DVD set, please go to PreachByEar.Com

We Don’t Need To De-Affect The Text

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

On June 30th I wrote a post on preaching as a matter of life and death.  For that post click here.  In the good discussion that followed I made this comment – God has communicated in His Word (and calls us to preach that Word), in such a way as to move the heart/affections, as well as informing the mind, urging the will and so on. Beyond Bluestockings asked the helpful question – If the moving of hearts and affections is the work of man (the preacher) then the results will surely be temporary?

Such an important question deserves more than a quick answer . . . so hopefully this is helpful:

Thanks for the comment and my apologies for the delay in approving it.  You are right that the moving of hearts and affections is the work of the Holy Spirit.  If we make that our task we can easily fall into manipulation and the achieving of temporary results.  What I am saying is that God’s Word is not simply an information transfer from God’s mind to ours.  Rather, God’s Word is that and so much more.  It was designed and written to move the affections, to captivate the heart, to instill values, to draw people to God, etc.  Since the Bible is not mere information transfer, but carefully written communication that functions on various levels (i.e. through word choices, sentence structure, genre decisions, etc.), our task is to faithfully preach the Bible text as it stands.  That means not flattening it into mere information.  (My parenthetical statement in the previous comment “and calls us to preach that Word” should probably be moved to the end of the sentence for clarity!)

For instance, a Psalm may be highly emotive, full of moving imagery, authorial passion, etc.  If we simply dissect that information and talk about it, then I think we are failing to faithfully represent the text.  Rather we should present the Psalm in such a way that listeners feel the full force of the communication that is there – the images, the emotion, the passion, the truth, etc.  Certainly there is explanation, but also more than that, there is something of experiencing the text as well.  Thus we are to say what it says and appropriately do what it does.  This does not take on the burden of transforming listeners, for that should always remain the work of the Spirit of God.  However, since God is not an “information only” being (as some seem to suggest by denying any genuine affections in God), then there is no reason why we should “de-affect” the text and make it information only.  Did God inspire the information in the Bible, or did His inspiration go much further?  That is, did God inspire every word, every genre choice, every tone, etc.?

I believe our task in preaching is to be genuinely and deeply faithful to the preaching text, “re-presenting” it to the best of our ability (study ability, message formation ability, delivery ability), while always resting fully on God to achieve any life change in the listeners.

The Hardest Genre? Part 2

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Yesterday we looked at just some of the challenges that come with preaching epistles, gospels and historical narrative. Now for the other four genre. Which do you find the hardest?

Poetry – Psalms and songs are readily leaned on in times of personal trial, but preaching them well is not so easy. The imagery is sometimes alien to us. The forms and structures are unfamiliar. The genre taps into the affections and emotions in a way that can be difficult to communicate. The temptation to dissect and turn the passage into an epistle is very real. As is true with every passage, but especially here, the passage does not give a complete theology of . . . whatever it’s about.

Wisdom – The Hebraic parallelism and other forms of wisdom literature are especially foreign to our ears. The wisdom literature often sits in the context of a covenant system that applied uniquely to Israel in relationship to God, so application can be treacherous territory if we’re not careful. The brevity of statement provides a different challenge than an extended narrative.

Prophecy – Written by a certain kind of person, to a certain people, at a certain time . . . none of which is the same today. It can be really challenging to enter into the historical context of the prophet, and also to enter fully into the written context of the book (where the start and end of each burden/oracle is often hard to discern). While the prophets reveal the heart and plans of God very boldly, there is plenty in form and content that appears obscure to contemporary ears and sensibilities.

Apocalyptic – Biblical apocalyptic is a genre that is challenging to contemporary interpreters. Many seem so quick to dismiss the content by reference to the genre that all meaning is apparently stripped from the texts. Then there is the conflict in the commentaries and even disputes in the pews over issues of eschatology that can quickly zap any zeal to announce an apocalyptic preaching text. As with prophecy, the challenges are there in terms of interpreting in context, and in applying to contemporary listeners.

Personally I would list the hardest for me as: 1 – historical narrative (Old Testament), 2 – wisdom, and 3 – apocalyptic (because of the potential problems from the pew, more than the interpretation of it). What about you? Let’s make sure we’re not avoiding some genre and growing complacent with others.