Expository Preaching

Intersecting “Life Experiences” – 2

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Continuing on from yesterday’s post.  How can we who struggle with generating “illustrative” materials do better in this regard (to keep preaching from being historical lecture)?

Prepare Messages with Personal Sensitivity – As you prepare a message, look at your own life.  Where do you see the sin, the struggles, the doubts, the hopes, the joys, etc. in your own life, in your own heart? In the past there was an emphasis on trying to keep yourself out of the sermon.  I suppose the prayer we sometimes hear, “May the people not see me, but Jesus.”  Very well intentioned, but people are seeing you, and hopefully more.  Preaching is, by the Brooks’ definition: truth through personality.  All that to say, without being a superstar or a buffoon, let listeners see you as a real, genuine, authentic and appropriately vulnerable communicator.  This means being sensitive to how the text works in your life, before preaching it for the sake of other lives.

Prepare Messages with Congregation Sensitivity – The better you know the people you are preaching to, the easier it is to intersect biblical truth with present experience.  This doesn’t mean preaching a message at someone in particular, nor divulging confidences, or causing embarressment in illustration specificity.  However, your listeners are not the same as mine.  Tim Keller’s crowd is not the same as Andy Stanley’s.  Preaching usually calls us to pastoral care of our listeners, which means knowing what their life is like.  Being a student of people needs to combine with being a student of the text in order to preach effectively.  This does not require us to make every Biblical text into a mundane how-to list, but rather to help humans love, know and respond to a God who chooses to engage with us.  (If you are new to the site, I’d encourage you to click on Audience Analysis in the categories menu to the right and see previous posts related to really knowing to whom we preach.)

Rather than looking through endless lists of “potential illustrations” in books or online, we have very fertile ground in our own lives and in the lives of our listeners.  We should being looking there with real sensitivity in order to find the points of intersection that will help give our messages a contemporary and relevant feel.

More practical thoughts tomorrow, but feel free to add your thoughts . . .

Intersecting “Life Experiences”

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Thanks to Sarah for commenting on the post about Illustration Saturation.  As I mentioned in the post, many of us struggle with finding and using “illustration” material.  Sarah asked how to improve at intersecting life experiences with the text.  Here are a few random thoughts to get us going.  Certainly this is no developed strategy, but it is a start:

Read Bible With Sensitivity to Humanity – When studying the Bible, it is right to be theocentric in our reading because the text itself is theocentric.  God is the main character of the Bible and should be the central focus of our preaching.  However, some preachers preach as if humans are irrelevant to the Biblical story and all we need to preach is God / Christ.  The reality is that the Bible is all about God as He interacts and engages with humanity.  Consequently, as we read any passage, we will also catch continual glimpses of human reality.  Bryan Chappell refers to the Fallen Condition Focus.  Are the characters doubting or trusting, in what, why?  Are they loving or hating, who, why?  What is the effect of the Fall in these people, what is God’s provision, what is their response?  These kinds of questions help us to look at people in the text and see that they are people like us.  Once we see them as real people rather than flannel-graph characters, then it is easier to highlight intersection between the characters in the text and our own life experiences.

Read Life with Biblical Sensitivity – As a preacher you are not always reading the Bible.  Once in a while you do other things too.  Whether it is watching the news or entertainment, people watching at work or in the store, enjoying the joys of parenting or whatever . . . try to read life with a sensitivity to what the Bible teaches.  Why are they acting this way?  What is this attitude called biblically?  What character in the Bible does this person remind me of?  We need to read the Bible as it is, real and living revelation of reality.  We need to observe life around us as it is, a living out of the Biblically described reality.

More thoughts tomorrow.  Feel free to comment, this issue could be addressed from many angles.

It’s Not Always The Environment

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It can be the environment.  It can be the seats and their position on the relative scale of personal discomfort.  It can be the ambient temperature.  It can certainly be the noisy and distracting child (parents should never underestimate the distracting power of a noisy child!)  The environment can certainly be a key factor in the clock-watching, shuffling, fidgeting, sighing and window gazing.

Some of these factors can be changed or avoided.  Some can’t.  But there is another factor that is not the environment.  This one can be changed.  You.

The preacher is a massive factor in levels of distraction.  Are people gripped and compelled to listen by well-planned, well-told, well-described, well-applied preaching?  Or when you preach are you background noise?  Most people (apart from children) will sit politely and many will even look in your direction, but don’t assume that means they are listening.  A significant factor in whether people sit gripped by the preaching or suppressing yawns and shuffling to see the clock is you.

Be sensitive to attention levels while preaching.  Listen and observe.  Perhaps even ask a few people if others around them seemed to be listening or not.  Then perhaps some tweaking of your preaching may be necessary.  It’s not all down to the preacher, by any means.  There is a massive Holy Spirit element that must be considered, even if this post is not focusing on that aspect of preaching.  So it’s not all down to the preacher, but it’s certainly not always the environment, either.

Illustration Saturation

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I’d like to ponder those things generally known as “illustrations.”  I tend to refer to them as “support materials” to recognize their function.  Or even better, I prefer to call them what they actually are, either “explanations” or “proofs” or “applications” since that forces me to be purposeful in how I use them.  Notice I don’t call them “fillers” or “entertainers” or “treading waters” or “favorite anecdotes” or whatever.  They are there either to explain, prove or apply what I am saying, otherwise they are not developing the thought or moving the message forward.  Anyway, back to the point of the post – there seem to be two types of preachers when it comes to “illustrations.”

1. There are those who struggle to find, record, keep, select and use illustrations. After all, it does seem to take quite a discipline to create, use, maintain and then access a personal illustration library or database.  I take my hat off to all who achieve this and use it well, but I know that many preachers are like me – illustration strugglers.  Generally speaking, and this is very general, people in this category should probably do better with illustrations.  Having said that, and it was only in general, but nevertheless, there are other ways to “illustrate” a message than the standard array of notes, quotes, anecdotes, personal experiences, etc.  But that is for another post.  For now, this category could probably increase the frequency and quality of their illustrations.

2. There are some, perhaps a select few, who seem to constantly overflow with illustrations. Every way they turn there seems to be three or four brief illustrations or passing comments that relate to the word currently before them.  While it may be superficially something to envy for the majority of us in the former category, I would like to offer one observation to illustration fountains.  It is possible to achieve illustration saturation.  Sometimes in the preponderance of “interesting” materials the text itself can be lost.

Some struggle to illustrate.  Others struggle to stop illustrating.  Remember the goal of preaching is to effectively and faithfully explain and apply the Bible passage(s) for life transformation.  The goal is not to bounce from important term to important term, filling the gaps with a string threaded with pearls of interest and offset with other biblical quotes in order to illustrate the gospel . . .

Some of us, perhaps not many, but some, need to be very wary of illustration saturation.

U.O.P. – Onus On Us

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Unity.  Order.  Progress.  Three essentials in effective communication of a message.  Yet it strikes me that we can sometimes take these for granted when we are preaching on a single passage.  Unity?  One passage.  Order?  Moving through the passage.  Progress?  Getting closer to the end.  If this is all we have, then I suspect our preaching may be bordering on boring, among other things.

Unity.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. After all, the content of a message “united” by a single passage can be totally random in examples, references, illustrations, etc.  If we work at grasping the distilled single sentence main idea of the passage, then there is hope of unity in the preaching.  But if we simply bounce off the text and go where our thoughts lead us, then there is no limit to the disunity that can result in our preaching.  How often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage that seem to feel compelled to refer to fifteen others?

Order.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. For example, if you are preaching a ten-verse chunk of text, simply moving from the first to the last does not guarantee a sense of order.  If we fail to wrestle with the text and grasp the essential flow of thought in the passage, then we may simply jump off apparently disconnected thoughts in each successive mini-chunk, resulting in an apparently disordered collection of thoughts.  Surely the biblical writers were not presenting disconnected mini-thoughts?  Yet how often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage, yet at the end we as listeners have little grasp on the flow of thought in the text, little sense that the passage itself actually makes sense?

Progress.  It takes more than simply having a single preaching text. As we preach, listeners should be moving with us through the combined explanation and application of the text in the experience we call a sermon.  There should be a start.  Then there should be the sense that we’re heading toward a finish.  If we fail to wrestle with the text enough to grasp the movement and purpose of the passage, if we fail to craft the message into a plot or journey that goes somewhere, then what happens?  We end up with a pedantic and plodding presentation.  How often do we hear preachers supposedly preaching from one passage, yet all around we sense that others are looking at the text, as we are, to see how much more of the message there is still to come?  These things ought not to be!

Unity, order and progress.  These are evident in each unit of biblical text.  But the onus is on us as preachers to make sure they are clearly present in our message on that text – the text alone will not guarantee it!

Why Preaching is Weaker Now – Cont.

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Continuing the list begun yesterday from the preface to Al Mohler’s 2008 book, He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World.  Six reasons why preaching has been undermined in the contemporary church and is weakened at this point in time.  Here we go:

4. Contemporary preaching suffers from an emptying of biblical content. When preachers do preach a text, they often empty it of its content, choosing not to wrestle with the meaning of the text, but rather to use it as a point of departure for their list of pithy points.  Not only does this fail the text itself, but it also fails to present the text in its broader context, thereby not presenting the broader scope of God’s message.

5. Contemporary preaching suffers from a focus on felt needs. Following the course charted by Harry Emerson Fosdick, many contemporary preachers seek to counsel the perceived needs of contemporary patients in the pew, rather than addressing the real needs of sinners.  So, consequently, much preaching is concerned more with career advancement or financial security, than it is with the real need of sinners before God.

6. Contemporary preaching suffers from an absence of the gospel. Too much preaching fails to stand up as Christian preaching.

While Mohler does recognize and affirm a contemporary resurgence in expository preaching, both in younger generation preachers, and in some seminary programs, he remains deeply concerned about the general trends in contemporary pulpit ministry.  Is his evaluation accurate?  Is it complete?

Why Preaching is Weaker Now

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

In the preface to his 2008 book, He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World, Al Mohler lists six reasons why preaching has been undermined in the contemporary church and is weakened at this point in time.  Let me list the reasons with brief explanation:

1. Contemporary preaching suffers from a loss of confidence in the power of the word. People today are bombarded by more words than ever before.  Words have become very cheap and are increasingly replaced by the use of images or sound tracks.  Generally people have lost confidence in the power of the spoken word, any spoken word.

2. Contemporary preaching suffers from an infatuation with technology. Well intentioned moves to incorporate visual media technology have inadvertently changed the core shape of the message – a message intended to be heard rather than seen.

3. Contemporary preaching suffers from embarrassment before the text. With the ongoing and repeated attacks on the biblical text from all sides, not least the current politically correct climate, many preachers are hesitant to preach the whole Bible since some parts are so offensive to contemporary sensitivities.  Consequently many stick to the more comfortable, palatable and non-confrontational passages, while shuffling nervously around the rest.

Tomorrow I will finish the list.

Is Our View of Preaching Too Small?

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

As John Broadus once wrote, “Preaching is characteristic of Christianity.  No other religion has made the regular and frequent assembling of groups of people, to hear religious instruction and exhortation, an integral part of divine worship.” This is fine, as far as it goes, but I would suggest this quote alone does not go far enough.

Why might we suggest that Christianity is almost preaching-centric?  Not because preaching is somehow an end in itself, but rather because Christianity is Theo- and Christo-centric.  And what is the critical feature of our God that enables us to come to Him in relationship and worship?  It is that He communicates.  God speaks.  God’s speech is action.  He has acted through His Word written and He has acted through His Word incarnate.  God’s saving work has been fully accomplished in the person of His Son, His final revelation and message.  Consequently we gather together in worship and response to a communicating God.  Preaching is not mere instruction and exhortation, on a par with a guided tour of a museum, or a journalist’s report of an incident, or a teacher explaining a theory, or a lecturer sharing their insight, or a coach rallying a sports team, or a motivational speaker stirring salespersons to do better, or an actor reciting a poem, or a judge reviewing the facts of a case, or a politician restating a promise, or a comedian drawing a laugh.

Preaching is unlike any other speech, either instructional or exhortational.  When we preach, our goal is to preach the Word, so that the Word of God itself speaks.  When the Bible speaks, God speaks.  When God speaks, He is at work.  Preaching is not just talking about God at work.  Biblical preaching is God at work.  Perhaps we need to rethink our view of preaching, for too often and too easily, our view of preaching is much too small.

Preach for Faith

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Probably it’s a combination of attending an apologetically driven conference and being scheduled to preach on faith this Sunday, but I’m pondering preaching for faith.  I suppose that is always close to the heart of the matter in Christian preaching.  Anyway, here are a couple of thoughts, although this could be a series of posts for the rest of the month.

The critical role of God’s Word. Right back in Genesis 3 everything “went wrong” when?  When they doubted God’s Word and listened to another “authority.”  Surely God’s Word couldn’t be trusted since this impressive creature had disobeyed it and yet still lived?  So they ate and they died spiritually, they began to die physically and the whole creation began to suffer death.  From that decisive moment on, the Bible is full of narratives, all of which have a big question mark hanging over them like an unfurled banner – “will people trust God’s Word or not?”  Interestingly, when God’s Son steps into the world to make a path back to deep relational intimacy with God, He comes as God’s Word.  Will he be trusted?  Doubting God’s word in the first place led us away, now there is a symmetry in the remedy in that we are asked to trust God’s Word (incarnated and inscripturated) in order to be brought back.  Consequently Paul writes to the Romans that faith comes by hearing, so the Word of God must be preached.  Peter tells his readers that they were born again through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and through the living and enduring Word of God.  Hebrews urges the believers to remember their leaders who spoke the Word of God to them, and thereby imitate their faith.  In John 17, Jesus prays concerning the Word of God that He has given to His followers, and prays that they will be sanctified by the truth, which is the Word.  I could go on pulling example after example, but the point is critical – the preaching of the Word of God is absolutely central to the purposes of God in redeeming a lost world.

So the simple question is this – as you look at your message this Sunday, what is the appropriate faith response to God’s Word as preached in your message?  Is it clear?  Is it central?

In the next post I’d like to share some provocative thoughts on faith from Dr John Lennox.

Preacher Say Something

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday my wife had to spend the day in the hospital having blood taken every hour.  So I received regular updates by text message (SMS).  She was listening to some CDs she’d been sent.  Teaching on the subject of the family.  I received a sort of running commentary by text message.  The bottom line?  This preacher had taken a long time to say nothing.  Sort of a safari through Scripture making passing observations about families in the Bible (“Oh look!  There’s another one!”).  A great opportunity, but he’d essentially just filled time.

I am not one to spend hours trying to fix a broken pipe.  I tend to think that if I can afford to have someone else do the work, then I will, because my time is also worth something (and because I’m rubbish at fixing things and will end up paying anyway!)  If I spend four hours to save fifty pounds ($75), have I really saved any money?  Likewise, when we are preaching, we are asking people to sit and listen to us for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, however long you preach.  Please don’t just fill time.  Say something.  Study the text until you grasp it, until it grasps you, then say the text’s something.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to scan over this Sunday’s message once it is ready to roll out.  Is there any filler?  Is there any pointless meandering?  Is there any “saying something and nothing?”  Why is that line there?  And that paragraph?  What about that illustration?  In the past I wrote a post entitled “Please only powerpoint on purpose.”  I suppose I could steal my own line to conclude this post – please only produce preaching prose on purpose.