Religion

The Struggle for Reference Simplicity

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Yesterday I was sharing about the issue of complexity in explanation.  Another aspect of complexity is that of over-cross-referencing.  I have addressed this issue before, but it is worth another take.  The danger is two-fold.  First, that too many cross-references will mean the preaching text is lost.  Second, that too many cross-references will mean the listeners are lost.

1. Lose the motivation to overwhelm.  That might seem strange, but some preachers really do seem to love cross-referencing.  For some, the practice was learned by observation and they have never seen any different.  For others, the practice is the fruit of a yearning to impress people (after all, more verses referenced means more kudos for me as a Bible person, right?)  But if asked outright, I suspect none would affirm the desire to overwhelm listeners, so for that reason alone, it is worth diminishing this desire.

2. Gain the motivation to preach your passage.  This is the other side of it.  We don’t want to negatively overwhelm folks, but do we really want to preach our passage?  Some preachers will cross-reference liberally to fill time since they feel like they have so little to say on the actual preaching text.  It is really hard to know what you don’t know, but take my word for it, it is possible to understand a passage better.  As a result, it is possible to preach without filler material.  More than that, it is possible to be in a text and the text to get into you in such a way as you can’t wait to preach this particular passage to the listeners.  Once your motivation is positively stirred by the passage, you’ll be less desirous of canonically wandering eyes.

3. As a default, stay put.  I suppose it is like saying that when you are riding a bike, as a default, look in front of you.  There will be times to do something else, but make it a standard practice to be where you are in the Bible.  Once you are more settled there, then you’ll be less likely to stray into safari mode without good reason.  Speaking of which…

4. Select cross-references hesitantly and carefully.  There are some good reasons to cross-reference, but not too many.  If your passage is relying on an earlier text either by quotation or by thematic development or by theological reliance, then maybe it is worth going there.  If your passage sets up a later development in the canon, then you might choose to take a sneak peak.  Or if your passage yields an idea that seems to be anti-biblical, then it might be time to wheel out the proof that other writers are saying the same thing.  Otherwise, more or less, stay where you are.

I believe these four steps would bring a helpful simplification to some sermons.  More than that, it would allow for some genuine profundity to flourish in place of the Bible sword drill!

The Sweetest Agony

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Since we are in the midst of packing up and leaving the US to return to the UK (we being a family of seven!), I have decided to re-post an expanded piece from almost five years ago.  Apologies if you’ve recently read through the whole site, but I suspect most people haven’t joined you in this quest!

Somebody said that preaching is the sweetest agony.  It is sweet when lives are changed.  And it is agony all the rest of the time!

There is nothing as rewarding as seeing lives changed.  Sometimes this can occur through a one-off sermon.  Typically it occurs over the long haul.  Sometimes it is hard to measure.  Sometimes you receive a note that overtly expresses gratitude for the change that has occurred.  Often you hear nothing.

Since preaching is often more agony than sweetness, it is a good idea to keep some reminders of the sweetness of lives changed.  A drawer where those periodic notes or letters are dropped in, then sit there awaiting a time when you need a reminder of the sweetness of the preaching ministry.  A folder in your email entitled “Encouragements” that you can go back to when the inbox is overwhelming and discouraging.

I have written before of how we shouldn’t be overly encouraged by post-sermon politeness, but we should take note of feedback that comes after some time has passed.  After a sermon, people will usually be polite, and sometimes their politeness can stretch your confidence in their credibility!  I’ve seen genuinely poor preachers pressing on in the face of polite comments, as though these words are the very affirmation of gifting for which they had prayed.  But when someone comes to you months later with meaningful follow-up to a message, do take note.

In fact, make a note and stick it in your encouragements drawer.  There will be a time when you need it!

Tomorrow I’ll probe some of the other sweetnesses of the preaching ministry.

Where’s Your Drain?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I’ve written about things that make us tempted to half quit.  Some things make us want to totally quit.  Other things just drain energy away without us really noticing.  I have to be honest, I am kind of glad I am not preaching this week.

It is just a stubbed toe (swollen, painful, etc.)  But that is enough to be a distraction and make concentrating a challenge.  At the same time I am looking forward to preaching next week.  What is draining you?  It could be something physical, it could be a family relationship, or a soured friendship, or an ongoing challenge in the church, or, or, or…

There are any number of potential energy drains.  Maybe it is just me, but there’s this weird inconsistency.  Sometimes something is going on that drains energy and becomes the central focus of my prayer life.  Other times I seem to just try to cope.  What is that all about?  I haven’t really prayed much about the toe, I suppose it doesn’t seem important enough.  But what if my energy is sapped, my concentration is broken, perhaps my attitude is a bit more negative, etc.?

I suppose this isn’t too profound a thought, but I wonder if something is draining you, and I wonder if you are trying to cope in your own strength?  Let’s be sure to be fully abiding in the vine as we head into another Sunday, whether we’re preaching or not.

The Long Term Half Quit

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There are ups and downs in ministry, often from week to week and even day to day.  But there is another danger too.  It is the long term half quit over the years or decades.

Ministry is not automatically rejuvenating.  Over the years we can find our motivation and attitudes wearing down.  What can cause this?  Here are some factors to get us started, a list of seven:

1. Church Battle Scars – Church ministry can be a real battle ground, sometimes out in the open, often under the surface.  For some reason people seem to choose the church as their venue for political significance and they can really go after those who have any up-front ministry.  Gossip, slander, attack, critique, and so much more.  It shouldn’t be, but it too often is.

2. Spiritual Warfare Fatigue – There is a spiritual warfare dimension in ministry.  The enemy loves to attack those with any prominence.  We should not be unaware of his attacks, and over time we may well feel worn by the experience.  There are times when stepping out of the ministry feels genuinely tempting.  The half-quit is the more acceptable option that too many fall into.

3. Emotional Drain – Someone said that preaching is the closest thing men come to giving birth.  I’ve been at a few births and I wouldn’t want to push the analogy, but there is something to it.  We give of ourselves in preaching, and then again, and then again.  It can be emotionally draining to pray so intently, hope so absurdly, preach so intensely and then go at it again.  Over time the drain can leave us functioning in second gear through the whole process.

I will finish the list tomorrow…

Speech: More Than Pragmatic

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

I wonder if some of us are missing something deeply significant?  Preaching involves spoken communication, but what is that spoken communication?  Is it a tool we use to transfer the information that we need to get across?  Or is it profoundly more than that?

I’ve heard preachers who preach as if their speaking is about the information transfer, but little more.  So that sense of personal detachment, or coldness, or distance . . . is that just a matter of poor delivery, or is there something more going on?

What I want to scratch the surface of is the nature of speech itself.  Here are some quick thoughts on why speech itself is more than a pragmatic tool:

1. The Bible doesn’t treat human speech as just a tool.  There is a massive emphasis on hearing God’s Word.  Our response to what we hear defines us.  Our integrity of action to what we confess is critical.  The tongue is a powerful organ in the body.

2. The Bible is a story of “did God say?”  The serpent offered humanity an autonomous alternative to trusting dependence on God.  We can be our own gods.  Why would we want that?  Because of a distrust in God’s spoken word, which is a distrust of His gracious character.  Ever since then the hiss of the lie has been an ever-present.  And the question has always been, who will trust the word of God’s promise?

3. The Bible presents us with a God who speaks.  Why don’t we see more from heaven?  We can’t fathom that perhaps our eyes are not the senior sense.  We fell by distrust of speech, we are invited to trust based on God’s Word (and He even made His Word visible to us in a Person!)  But this isn’t some pragmatic condescension of God for our sake, He is eternally a speaking God.  What constitutes the reality of the Trinity?  We would do well to let go a little of a metaphysical conversation of substance, and ponder more the biblical revelation of a God in eternal communion.

4. The Bible seems to see speech as central to what it is to be a person.  Now we’re probing a bit more.  For centuries we’ve been caught up in the idea of personhood as being about rationality, will-power and individualism.  We’ve seen it as an issue of separation, of hierarchy, of a will to power.  What if what we are is not best defined by our CV/resume (skills, capacities, education, even references from the most impressive people we know)?  What if what we are is defined by who we have true relationship with?  We inherently sense that reality, but our world denies it.  And what if relationship is, at its core, a matter of speaking and hearing, of a mutual indwelling through communication?

Okay, enough for today, but here’s the thought I’m nudging us toward.  What if preaching is profoundly more about speech than we’ve ever realised?  Our God is a God who speaks.  A God who has spoken.  And at the centre of Christianity is our heart response to what He says?

Pointers for Preaching Epistles Effectively – Pt.3

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Continuing the list of pointers for preaching epistles effectively, since they aren’t the automatically easy genre to preach well!

11. Preach, don’t commentate – Don’t offer your listeners either a running commentary or a labelled outline of the text.  Make your points relevant to today, put them in today language, then show that from the “back then” as you explain the text.  Don’t preach “back then” and then offer token relevance once people are disconnected and distracted.

12. Describe vividly, engage listener with letter – If you can do a good job of painting the original situation, the emotions of the writer, the potential responses of the recipients, etc., that is, if you can make it seem full colour, 3-D and real, then your listeners will engage not only with you, but with the letter.  Suddenly it won’t seem like a repository of theological statements, but a living letter that captures their imagination and stirs their hearts.  The theological truth will hit home when it is felt in the form God inspired!

13. Be sensitive to implicit imagery – Often the writer will subtly or overtly be using imagery to explain himself, pick up on that and use it effectively.  Our first port of call for illustration should not be external to the text (i.e. the books of supposedly wonderful illustrations – they are the last resort option.  Start with the text, then move to the experience of your listeners trying to combine the two.  Go elsewhere only if necessary.)

14. Keep imperatives in their setting – Some of us have a tendency to use an imperative magnet.  We cast our eyes over the text until we spot a command, and bingo!  Now we think we have something to preach.  We don’t.  Not until we get a real sense of how the whole passage is working.  It doesn’t take much skill to turn every epistle into a command collection.  Certainly don’t avoid the instructions, but don’t ignore everything else too.

15. Tune your ear to the tone of the writer – This is so important.  Some tone deaf preachers make every instruction, implication, suggestion, encouragement or exhortation into a shouted command.  I think Paul and company would look on with consternation if they heard how their letters were preached by some.  Be sensitive to the writer’s tone and develop sensitivity in your own tone.

Tomorrow we’ll touch on another, well, five, of course.  Add your own by comment at any time – the list is not intended to be exhaustive!

Preaching, New Covenant and Sin

/ Peter Mead / 6 Comments

Sometimes we need to be contradicted.  For instance, we assume that if we are going to take the issue of sin seriously, then we need to give some significant attention to it.  Perhaps by implementing some self-controlled, self-disciplined approach to sin control in our lives.

On the contrary.

Hang on, am I suggesting that we shouldn’t take sin seriously?  Am I suggesting that we should go and sin freely?  Of course not!  Why do some people automatically assume that a turn from focusing on virtue is to turn in pursuit of vice?  The opposite of moral effort may not be immoral action.

I would suggest that the New Covenant takes sin more seriously than we do or think we do.  God takes sin seriously, which is why He promised the New Covenant.  Jesus Christ takes sin seriously, which is why He inaugurated the New Covenant with his own blood.  The writers of the New Testament took sin seriously, which is why they pushed the New Covenant so strongly.

And we need to take sin more seriously.  We need to stop thinking it is something we can handle by our own effort, our own discipline, our own practices.  This is true for the not-yet-saved, and it is true for the believer.  The foundation of the New Covenant is sin forgiven.

Sometimes it is hard to realize just how much we don’t grasp something we think we’ve known for so long.  Take grace, for instance.  At the core of God’s dealings with us is this issue of grace – His character, His glory, His self-giving.  Yet we turn grace into a commodity and preach grace-plus, or grace-but, or grace-however.  We don’t need to preach some sort of grace-balanced message.  We need to present to people, believers or not, the wonderful glorious extravagant imbalanced grace of a God who gives himself to deal with our sin.

If our listeners think that grace means license to sin, then we haven’t preached grace clearly enough.  Maybe we’ve offered a halfway house kind of grace, a grace that addresses guilt but doesn’t capture the heart.  A grace-as-thing that pays for guilt, but not a grace-as-person that captivates our hearts.

The solution to a license type of response is not to balance grace with guilt, pressure, codes and laws.  The solution is to do a better job of preaching grace.

At the foundation of the New Covenant is this wonderful truth that God has promised to remember sins no more, and that truth is presented like a vivid 3-d billboard to our hearts in the death of His Son on the cross.  It is there, in shocking shame and agony that we see God’s glorious grace made manifest to us.

Tomorrow let’s push this deeper and recognize the heart of the New Covenant.

Saturday’s Thought: Preaching for Response

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No preacher would admit to preaching in order to fill time, or to fulfill an obligation, or to fill a pulpit.  We say we preach for response.  After all, what other motivation could we cite?  I know, some will quickly rush to language of glorifying God.  But God isn’t pleased by time filling or untouched listeners.  So what do we mean?

Do we mean that preaching should get more than a polite thank you from the gathered listeners?  Sure.  Do we mean that preaching should get a positive or exuberant statement of reception from the listeners?  I don’t think so.  The Lord’s preaching certainly seemed to polarize rather than please all.  Some will be stirred and drawn, others will be offended and withdraw.

This is where it gets interesting for me, and here’s the thought for the day.  What is the division or polarization created by our preaching?  Simplistically we might assume that it is a sorting of sinners and saints.  You know, those in sin pushed away by how seriously we address sin and the godly encouraged; the culture upset and absent while the churchy folks pleased and present.  But that didn’t seem to be the result of Jesus’ preaching, did it?

What if we realize that the gospel is not about preaching a message of pressuring responsibility?  That is, what if we preach the glorious loving grace of God that stirs and warms and draws hearts to Christ?  Instead of whipping our listeners with burdens, what if we preach the One who was whipped for them?

This kind of preaching typically offends the religious who feel responsible for their own goodness.  These are the people who don’t see their own efforts and diligence and pride and self-centredness as being at all sin-stained.  This kind of preaching typically draws the broken and hurting and weak.

When we switch from preaching responsibility to actually preaching for a response we may find that the polarization both switches and increases.  When we recognize the difference between responsibility and response, then certainly our preaching will change.  It is so easy to preach to pressure people to be good.  It takes something more to preach how good Christ is, so that listeners might be drawn to Him.  What is the something more?

I suppose it comes down to me on my own with my Bible and my Lord.  Is it all about me?  Or about Him?  Is it about what I must do (responsibility)?  Or about what He is like (response)?

Preaching for response requires clarity on the distinction between response and responsibility.

Word Studies 4 – Using the Fruit

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week we have been pondering the importance of word studies.  It is vital that we take the words of Scripture seriously, and thereby make our preaching as accurate and effective as possible.  So let’s say we’ve identified key words in a passage, pivotal terms on which the passage turns, and we’ve studied them to get a good sense of what the author meant by choosing those particular terms.  How do we use the fruit of the study in our preaching?  Here are some suggestions:

1. Default to smooth integration.  The majority of word study work that you do in your study need not show in your preaching.  By show, I mean overt reference to it.  The default should be that the study you’ve done is hidden, but the explanation you give is accurate.  Sometimes I would even go for smooth integration when I think the translation isn’t the best.  So I will read it as is, and then subtly state a preferred translation.  No fuss, no critique, just staying on track for effective explanation.  I think this is a good default.

2. Underline word studies sparingly and strategically.  There are advantages to sometimes letting some of the word study show overtly.  Perhaps you go to a couple of familiar or enlightening uses of the term, to give a taste of the process and help people see why you explain it as you do.  If this is done too much it will lose its impact.  Choose to show the word study more overtly in strategic moments – perhaps when the term is critical to the passage as a whole, or at least to a major point in the passage.

3. Avoid original language flaunting.  I know it is tempting to let your Hebrew or Greek hang out.  And if you haven’t studied it, it may be even more tempting to show you’ve read heavy commentaries.  I also know that some people will shake your hand and thank you for the wonderful insight into the original language.  What neither of us know is how many in your congregation are sitting there feeling linguistically inadequate, assuming that you can find things in the Word they never could, and therefore feeling less motivated to read the Bible between now and when you preach again.  Typically there is no need to refer to the actual term, just say “in the original” or “the word Paul uses here . . . ”

Tomorrow I’ll finish the list with three more suggestions on using the fruit of Word Studies.