Some Spurgeon Preaching Thoughts

August 2, 2018August 1, 2018 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I’ve recently been reading Michael Reeves’ excellent book, Spurgeon on the Christian Life: Alive in Christ (Crossway, 2018). As you would expect, Spurgeon said a lot that can be helpful to preachers. I’d like to share some quotes and chat about them, but be sure to buy the book and have a helpful read!

“Great hearts are the main qualifications for great preachers.” (p28) Too often we fall into thinking that a great preacher is made by great learning, or great skill, or great presentation, or even great personality, but Spurgeon is pushing deeper here. He is pointing to the relational core of the preacher and saying that to be a great preacher, we need to be in a very healthy relationship with Christ, with self, and with others. The problem is that many preachers have character issues that others excuse as personality quirks. Great learning, great skill, great force of character, and so on do not compensate for problems at the core of a person. Hear more of Spurgeon:

“A man must have a great heart if he would have a great congregation. His heart should be as capacious as those noble harbors along our coast, which contain sea-room for a fleet. When a man has a large, loving heart, men go to him as ships to a haven, and feel at peace when they have anchored under the lee of his friendship. Such a man is hearty in private as well as in public; his blood is not cold and fishy, but he is warm as your own fireside. No pride and selfishness chill you when you approach him; he has his doors all open to receive you, and you are at home with him at once. Such men I would persuade you to be, every one of you.”

We live in an age of perpetual noise, of constant distraction, of increasingly accepted narcissism. The 21st century is not the ideal time to grow the kind of heart that Spurgeon describes here, but we must. Perhaps it is time to put our phones on silent, turn off the social media, and invest time into private prayer, personal enrichment and enriching fellowship. Have a conversation. Read a book. Intercede for dear folks in your church.

We cannot be corporate managers of churches and expect spiritual results. We are in the business of heart change. May our hearts lead the way.

The Reformation and Preaching

October 27, 2017October 27, 2017 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I invited my good friend Dr Mike Reeves, president of Union School of Theology, to speak in the Bible Teachers Network at the European Leadership Forum back in May. Here are some nuggets on preaching and the Reformation for us.

What did the Reformers believe about the power of preaching?

How did the Reformation change our view of the content of preaching?

What can we learn from the Reformers about the goal of preaching?

(The videos are courtesy of foclonline.org, Mike is President of Union School of Theology)

My Highlight Books of 2012

December 26, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

It seems fashionable to offer a list of the best books of the year during these days. I can only offer some of the highlights in terms of what I’ve read. Consequently, not all these books were published in 2012, but they were read by me in 2012! I won’t include any of the books I am currently reading, even though there are some real gems, with bookmarks in them, next to my reading chair.

To be effective preachers we need to be readers. Readers for the sake of our preaching, our biblical studies, our theology, our cultural awareness, our personal spirituality and our growth in all aspects of ministry. So here are some books I’d encourage you to get hold of if they weren’t in your stocking yesterday or on your shelf already:

Best Theological and Spiritually Stimulating Read of 2012: The Good God, by Michael Reeves. This book is appearing on lists far more comprehensive and purposeful than mine. Hopefully people will get the point – this delightful book is well worth reading! It is rich yet accessible, theological yet heart-stirring, historically alert yet relevant and enjoyable. (It was released in the UK in March 2012 by Paternoster, and in the US in the fall by IVP under the title, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. Click here to buy the book in the UK.)

Other Theologically Stimulating Reads in 2012. These are not new, but worth grabbing if you get the chance. Holmes Rolston’s John Calvin Versus the Westminster Confession is very thought provoking. Janice Knight’s insightful analysis of the Antinomian Controversy in New England in the 1630’s is a golden piece of work (at a golden price, it must be said). The contrast between a God obsessed with His own power and a God who gives of Himself in love is as fresh a discussion as any from all those centuries ago. Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism – buy or borrow if you can. (To buy in the UK, click here.)

Best Freely Accessible Historical Document of 2012: I have thoroughly enjoyed time with both Luther and Edwards this year. Edwards is not always the most accessible, and Luther is not always the most consistent, but both are worth some reading time! For starters, why not try The Freedom of a Christian, by Luther (aka Concerning Christian Liberty – easy to find online, but why not get The Three Treatises on your shelf – to buy in the UK, click here.)

Biblical Studies Book of 2012: Jesus on Trial: A Study in the Fourth Gospel, by A.E.Harvey. This is an older book, published in the 70’s, but worth its weight in gold. This book helps make sense of the continual legal tension between Jesus and his accusers. I will long remember reading this by flashlight in the sleepless nights after our youngest was born – she was worth being awake for, but this book only made it even better!

Not Overtly Christian But Well Worth Reading Book: C.S.Lewis’ Experiment in Criticism is a delightful read on literature and how it engages people. Instead of evaluating readers by what they read, what if we evaluate literature on how it is read? This is well worth pondering on a spiritual, as well as on a literary level. (To buy the book in the UK, click here.)

Insight Into Human Psyche Book of the Year: A New Name, by Emma Scrivener. – This was published this year. It will make a mark on you if you read it. Autobiographical, profoundly vulnerable and deeply gospel-centred. This journey through the agony of anorexia gives insight into a world many of us know practically nothing about (but many in our congregation do). (To buy in the UK, click here.)

Friday Quote – The Bible Bit of Biblical Preaching

August 19, 2011August 19, 2011 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here are some paragraphs that I read yesterday in Michael Reeves’ excellent book, The Unquenchable Flame (pp182-3). Enjoy:

Erasmus was only ever able – and only ever wanted – to sponge down the system he was in. He could take pot-shots at bad popes and wish people were more devoted, but because he was unwilling to engage with deeper, doctrinal issues, he could never bring about more than cosmetic changes. He was doomed ever to remain a prisoner of where the church was at. And so it must be in a world conquered by him. For as long as doctrine is ignored, we must remain captives of the ruling system or the spirit of the age, whatever that may be.

Yet is all this fair to Erasmus? Was he not the one who made the Greek New Testament available, so providing the coals for the Reformation? Certainly he did, and yet his possession of the Scriptures (and his deep study of them) changed little for the man himself because of how he treated them. Burying them under convenient assertions of their vagueness, he accorded the Scriptures little practical, let alone governing, authority. The result was that, for Erasmus, the Bible was just one voice among many, and so its message could be tailored, squeezed and adjusted to fit his own vision of what Christianity was.

To break out of that suffocating scheme and achieve any substantial reformation, it took Luther’s attitude, that Scripture is the only sure foundation for belief (sola scriptura). The Bible had to be acknowledged as the supreme authority and allowed to contradict and overrule all other claims, or else it would itself be overruled and its message hijacked. In other words, a simple reverence for the Bible and acknowledgment that it has some authority would never have been enough to bring about the Reformation. Sola Scriptura was the indispensable key for change.

However, it was not just a question of the authority of the Bible; the reason Luther started the Reformation, and Erasmus did not, was the difference in what they saw as the content of the Bible. For Erasmus, the Bible was little more than a collection of moral exhortations, urging believers to be more like Christ, their example. For Luther, this was to turn the gospel on its head: its optimism displayed its utter ignorance of the seriousness of sin. As he saw it, what sinners need, first and foremost, is a saviour; and in the Bible is, first and foremost, a message of salvation. As Richard Sibbes lamented, a century after Luther, it was all to easy to lose that controlling focus on Christ and his gift of righteousness, and yet that was the very heart of true reform. For all that theBible was opened, without the message of Christ’s free gift of righteousness, there could be no Reformation.