Religion

Word Studies 3 – The Process

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Once you have identified a specific term that you want to study, what do you do?  There’s a short answer and a longer one.  The longer one will always feed your soul more, so go there when you can.

Short answer – Look it up in a dictionary.  Don’t use a contemporary English dictionary.  If you look up “glory” in Oxford or Collins you won’t quite get the nuance of “glory” in John’s Gospel!

Some Bible related dictionaries will give various aspects of meaning, along with various terms used in a translation.  Warning – do not dump all the possible aspects of meaning into the specific instance you are studying.  The word “chip” does not mean everything it could mean whenever it is used, it means something specific.

Other dictionaries will give much more information (some even have pictures!)  The point is, whatever you see in a dictionary is new information to bring back to the text.  But don’t stop thinking.  Think about how the word is being used in light of that potentially helpful (or potentially distracting) information.

Long answer – Do the work the dictionary folks should have done.  This means chasing the term through a set of uses to see how it is used.

1. Determine the underlying term in your focus verse.  Let’s take “glory” as a working example.  A concordance (or software) will help you discover that the underlying term is probably “doxa” or 1391 (in Strong’s numbers).

2. Find every use of that term in the surrounding context.  Be careful you don’t limit yourself to the English term because there may be some uses of “doxa” that aren’t translated as “glory,” or some uses of “glory” that don’t translate “doxa.”  The first choice of context parameters would be the book in which you are studying.  So let’s say you look at John’s Gospel.  Are there enough uses of “doxa” to give you a good sense of its use by John?  Yes indeed.  If there weren’t, then you’d want to go to John’s other four books before spilling over into other writers.  You might find John’s use of “glory” is slightly different than other writers.

3. Look at each use in its context and see what observations you can make.  Try not to import your preconceived notions of “bright shiny-ness” or “weightiness” or whatever.  You might find John uses the term in a slightly nuanced way!

4. Collect your observations of how the writer uses it, and write something of a broad definition.  This is like the options in a dictionary.  It gives a sense of the range of meaning.  Feel free to check with a dictionary or two at this point, but remember that they may not have better content than your work has produced.

5. Bring that understanding to the specific verse and see how he is using it here.  Don’t dump all the possibilities into the term’s use here, but recognize the specific aspect in light of the full range in his writings.

This longer approach takes time, but it is so enriching.  Try it with “glory” in John’s gospel and see what you find!  I love Bible software and thank God for the time it saves.  But not all time saved is good stewardship.  Be sure to soak in God’s Word and let this kind of chase mark your life and ministry.

Word Studies 2 – Identifying Key Terms

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week we are pondering the specific skill of word study in preaching.  Today I’ll focus on identifying key terms, then tomorrow we can consider the actual processes involved.

So how do you identify words to define more carefully?

1. Prayerfully read and study the passage.  Sounds silly, but until you get some decent familiarity with the passage, you can’t start identifying words.

2. Recognize that not every word is equal.  All words are equally inspired, but not all words are equal in a passage.  You might assume this is obvious.  After all, a weighty word like justified or righteous must be worth studying, while a normal word like in or of is obvious, right?  Sometimes wrong.  A “weighty” word may not be a key term in a particular passage (it may be given in the build up to the point of a prayer, for instance), while an obvious word may be the key to the whole section.

3. Recognize that your time is restricted.  It would be great to do a full chase on every term in a passage.  Actually, hypothetically it might be great in your study phase, if you had infinite time.  But in reality studying every word equally will distract you from the force of the passage in your study, and it will certainly confuse people in your preaching.  For instance, in Ephesians 1:15-23, I would cover the first 47 words fairly briefly.  Why?  Because I want the focus to be on the point of the passage, which is what Paul is actually praying from the end of v17 onwards.  If I give detailed explanations of faith, Lord, love, saints, prayers, God, Father and glory in my sermon, people will be numb by the time I get to Paul’s actual request.

So how to identify key terms?

A. Look for repeated terms.  In Ephesians 3:1-13, the term mystery is repeated and seems important. (Dynamic equivalent translations may hide repetition of terms, prefer formal equivalence for focused study.)

B. Look for structurally important terms.  Down in verse 8, grace was given to Paul with the results being the rest of verses 8-10.

C. Look for key connections or little words.  In this passage, the as, of verse 5 feels significant when the passage is read carefully (even better, when the passage is broken down to a phrase by phrase structural outline, or disagrammed if you have that skill from Greek).  Incidentally, once you start looking at the structure of epistle text like this, a good formal translation needs to be the working text, not a dynamic equivalent text.

D. Look for key terms in the wider context.  A term may only be used once in the passage, but be critical in the flow of the book.  For example, stewardship in verse 2 is important in the flow of Ephesians 1-3.

E. Look for key terms that are missed by the other guidelines.  Here’s the catch all.  It forces you to keep looking and observing the text.  In this case, it allows you to notice that glory in verse 13 is massively significant.  Doesn’t look it structurally, but actually Paul digressed in verse 1, so completing that thought in v13 is a big deal here.

Preaching and Word Studies

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

These things tend to go in cycles.  For preachers trained in one era, preaching almost amounted to communicating the fruit of word studies.  Some years later and there is almost no evidence of skill in this area.  Let’s ponder some issues of methodology and implementation.

1. Word study is only one part of the passage study process, which is only one part of the message preparation process.  That means that we shouldn’t see preaching as a sequence of interesting definitions.  “…the next word I want you to notice is the word rock in the third verse. The word rock that David uses here means…”  This is not really preaching.  We need to thoroughly integrate our word study insights into our understanding of the passage as a whole, which then needs to be shaped into a message as a whole.

2. Word study matters because words matter.  We need to keep this skill in context, and we also need to keep it in view.  That is to say, as a student of the Bible, I need to take every word seriously.  In bibliology we may refer to “verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture.”  This means that we affirm God’s inspiration of the words (verbal), all of them (plenary).  To dismiss word study in favour of discourse analysis is to swing the pendulum too far.  To dismiss word study in favour of not studying the passage indicates a deeper issue in our view of God and the Bible.

3. Words hunt in packs.  To put that another way, a word on its own is not that helpful.  It has been fun to observe my children learning to read (and helping, of course).  Once they are set loose into the world of books there is no limit to what they can learn.  But suddenly they get past the “Bobby hit the ball to Suzie” stuff and start to meet words they’ve never met before.  “Daddy, what does snuff mean?” or “Daddy, what’s a cue?”  Like all good parents, my response is  to ask a question in response: “Can you tell me the whole sentence?”  This context allows me to make sense of that word for them in that place.  As we study individual words , we must always remember that we are studying them to make sense of them in a particular sentence, in a particular paragraph, in a particular unit of Scripture.

Tomorrow we’ll get into some more specifics on the how-to side of things . . .

Heartfelt Explanation – Preaching to the Heart

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A common mistake is to assume that the explanation of the text will be dull, but the application should make up for this by riveting relevance and powerful personal punch.  An alternative, but sibling error, is to think that the illustrations will be the source of heartfelt energy, while the text explained remains dull.

Some preliminary thoughts on preaching to the heart:

1. The text is a heartfelt composition, it makes no sense to sterilize it.  Sometimes we need to re-tune our theological ears so that we hear inspired human communication, rather than just theological proposition transfer embedded in inspired packaging.  If you don’t hear a heart beating in the Psalms you are really in trouble.  And what about narratives written by someone who cares deeply that the story be heard?  And even the epistles are far more rich in tone than we tend to make them sound.

2. The text communicates to the heart, don’t neutralize it.  Epistles don’t just inform, they were written to stir, to encourage, to rebuke, etc.  Poetry, almost by definition, is meant for pondering and heartfelt response.  Narratives, by nature, will captivate, characters drawing us in to identify, or causing us to disassociate, tension in the plot gripping the listener for more than just a statement of truth, but for truth dressed up in real life.  We have a habit of disengaging truths from the packaging in which they come.  This is not to minimize the importance of truth, but to recognize that God’s choice of genre packaging was intentional and effective for life transformation.

3. God reveals His heart in the Word, don’t hide it.  The Bible is, supremely, God’s self-revelation.  But we’re often too quick to cover over that self-revelation.  Oh, that’s just an anthropomorphism (using human form descriptors to communicate about God who is Spirit and absolutely nothing at all like us), or worse, an anthropopathism (same again, this time removing any possibility that God might have any passions at all)!  Really?  God only pretending to have emotion?  Our theological assumptions can quickly override the plain truth of Scripture and leave us with a God so distant and uncaring that he might as well be the god of the Greek philosophers, and a Jesus only feeling and loving and dying “in his humanity,” and other such confusion.

Preaching to the heart is not primarily a matter of homiletical technique.  It is an issue of our theological assumptions and the accuracy of our exegesis.  Tomorrow I’ll add another three thoughts.

Effective Explanation: 15 Suggestions

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I am pondering the issue of explaining the biblical text.  This is one of the staple ingredients in all true biblical preaching.  I wouldn’t like to taste omelette made without eggs, or preaching without explanation.  But doesn’t explanation get a bit dull?

It certainly can.  Read a verse, say what it means, read a verse, say what it means.  This can be dullness personified in a pulpit.  But it doesn’t have to be dull.  Actually, it has to not be dull, otherwise we’re boring people with the Bible which has to be wrong.

So hear are some brief suggestions on ways to explain a biblical text.

1. Don’t think that the context isn’t critical.  It really is.  Neither short-change the historical situation and setting so that the text feels like a random set of statements, nor overkill the historical background so that the listeners feel like they need to lie down before they’ve even met the text you’re preaching.

2. Do set the scene with the written context.  Even if it is only a few sentences, help orient listeners to what has come before, or how this text fits into the whole passage.  Remember that most books/letters were written to be heard as a whole.

3. Don’t forget that length of explanation may influence order of content.  In a single sentence, the order of thought may work in a way that it won’t when developed into a sermon.  The same is true of some Bible texts.  For instance, here’s a random sentence: “I am going to town, to go to the electrical store, to replace our dead washing machine.”  That makes sense, but what happens if I “sermonize” it?  “I am going to town: not to the country, nor to a suburb, but to town.  Specifically, the town of . . . “  Suddenly it feels a bit random and aimless.  The sentence wasn’t, but the explanation is.  Maybe I need to clarify the goal earlier in a developed sermon on that sentence – “our washing machine has died and so I need to replace it, here’s the plan…”  (Not compelling sermon material, but illustrative nonetheless!)

4. Do weigh words appropriately.  Or to put it the other way around: don’t treat every word as equal.  It can be dull beyond words to hear an explanation of word after word in a text.  Take, for example, Ephesians 1:15 and following.  It would be easy to explain great words like faith, Christ, love, saints, glory, etc., but lose people before they get to the main thought of the sentence – the end of verse 17 onwards.  Put energy into the main words, not equal energy into all words.  They all matter, but some are pushing you toward others.

5. Don’t treat a verse as a unit of thought.  This is the same as above.  It is tempting to go verse by verse, but sometimes a verse is half a sentence.  Don’t feel bad about summarizing chunks effectively in order to emphasise the main thoughts in a section of text.

Tomorrow, another five.  Meanwhile, any thoughts on these?

Explanation: Indispensable Ingredient

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

When you boil it down, preaching involves quite a bit of explanation.  The Word of God is read out, but then we also have this tradition called preaching.  Why bother?  Isn’t the Word read, enough?

Part of the reason for preaching is because listeners need the text explained in order to actually hear it.  The Bible isn’t some sort of religious ritual, a magical incantation that will somehow change lives merely by being “under the sound” of it.  The Bible is communication.  It is breathed out by God, inspired communication that, well, communicates.

At the same time, the Bible is two to three and a half-thousand year old material that was originally written to communicate in a different culture, different language, different situation.  There is a huge gap in terms of religious and political culture, geography and topography and technology and familial structures and so on.  Explanation is about helping listeners hear the message of the text.

This is why explanation matters.  It isn’t enough to hear the words of the Bible and then attach some contemporary relevance or personal twist and then preach a Christian sounding message.  Actually, that isn’t just not enough, that is downright dangerous!

No matter how clever you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say.  We must be honest and try to communicate the text accurately, or else it would be better not to preach at all.

So a big part of preaching involves explaining.  We explain what the author meant at that time in that context to those people.  We explain what prompted the writing, what earlier Scripture was feeding into this passage (informing theology, in Walter Kaiser’s terms), as well as how this passage fits in the canon as a whole.

Preaching stripped of explanation is not somehow more relevant preaching.  It is not preaching at all.  It is confusion to think that we make the Bible relevant.  We show its relevance, in part, by effectively explaining it.  We’ll come back to emphasizing relevance later in the week.

I suppose it is obvious, but in order to explain it, we have to understand it.  Is that a burden?  Often hours of brain-tiring work in careful exegesis . . . I don’t see this as a burden at all.  This is one of the great privileges of preaching.  Studying the Bible in order to actually understand it (rather than to find a preachable outline), this is one of the greatest privileges I know.  To prepare to preach is to enter into a personal audience with God in His Word, wrestling with the text while looking to the one who is such a master communicator.

Preaching requires explanation.  Explanation requires understanding.  Understanding takes time and effort in prayerful study of the Word.  There is nothing negative in this package!

Saturday Short Thought: Dangerous Preaching x4

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I recently heard Gavin McGrath speaking and he was asked what he thinks constitutes dangerous preaching.  I really liked his list of four off the top, as it were:

1. False teaching – of course.

But in good church circles, the other three would be –

2. The mocking or patronizing of non-Christians –  So easily done, so unhelpful to all.

3. Legalism and feeding religiosity – If you perform better then you will be a better Christian.  This leads to either pride or despair, but neither are helpful.

4. Formulaically simple preaching – Just follow this abc and you will have better life.  Problem is that the Bible doesn’t teach that, nor is it effective.

What would you add now that you’ve had time to think about it?

The Four Places of Preaching – 3

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So the preaching process starts in the study, then the preacher needs to stop and pray (in an even less distracted place), but then comes the third location.

Place 3 – Starbucks.  Huh?

Let me clarify before I start into this that I personally don’t tend to pick Starbucks (or pray in a closet, for that matter), but the principle applies.  I have a good friend, and a preacher I highly respect, who does literally go to a coffee shop for this phase of his preparation.

He takes five 3×5 cards and puts names on the cards – the names of individuals in the church, a cross section, essentially.  With his five listeners spread out on the table, and surrounded by real life and culture, he is then able to prepare the message.  He can ask himself as he goes, “would this communicate to Jim?”  or “How would Kerry take that?”

The goal in this place?  To prepare a message that will effectively communicate the prayed-through main idea of the passage to the particular listeners as an act of love for them and for the Lord.

The best biblical content will be wasted if it isn’t targeted appropriately.  Our task is not to make the Bible relevant.  It is.  Our task is to emphasize that relevance.  And by definition, something can only be relevant to specific people.  Relevant to this age.  Relevant to this culture.  Relevant to this community.  Relevant to this church.  Relevant to these individuals.

So John Stott was on target when he urged preachers to be at home not only in the world of the Bible, but also the world of the listener.  Haddon Robinson took the two worlds notion and expanded it to distinguish contemporary culture from the specific culture of the local church.  So we can misfire with  traditional presentations in a changing culture, as we can with postmodern engagements in a church that hasn’t gone there.

Whether we sit in Starbucks, or ponder the church’s phone list.  Wherever we spend time with church members and people from the community we seek to mark.  Somehow we need to make sure our messages are more than great biblical content.  They have to be on target, and to be on target, we must know the hearts we aim to reach.

The Four Places of Preaching – 2

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

After spending significant time in the study, without company, yet not alone, the preacher needs to move to the second location.  What comes out of the study is a deep awareness of the passage, its meaning, its intent, its contours and details, all summed up in a single sentence summary, and all held as a treasure in the heart because of the work of God during the time in the study.  Now to the next place:

Place 2 – Stop and Pray (The Prayer Closet)

In his very helpful book, Deep Preaching, J. Kent Edwards urges the preacher to take God’s Big Idea into the closet and allow the Spirit to work there for the sake of deeper preaching.  So true.

This place doesn’t need to be a closet (it’s hard to find one humans can fit in in some cultures!)  It does need to be a place without study resources and Bible software and shelves of books, not to mention phones and email and satellite whatevers.  It might be an extended walk in the woods, or a chair in the lounge, or even, one of my favourites, the empty church where the message will be preached.

What is the goal here?  The goal is to spend focused time in fellowship with God concerning the preacher, God, the passage and the listeners, in order to be able to then prepare a targeted message for them from that passage.

Where is the focus?  God was certainly involved in the study, at least, He should have been.  But it is important to recognize that the preacher is not primarily a purveyor of ancient wisdom.  The preacher is, or should be, in fellowship with the Living God.  So the step isn’t from commentary to outline, but from study to focused prayer.

1.  Preaching should involve enthusiasm for the text and what you have discovered, but it should be driven by who, rather than what.  Prayer closet time allows that personal connection and responsiveness to the God who reveals Himself in the Word to develop and drive the preaching.

2. Preaching should involve awareness of the meaning and impact of the text, but it should be sealed on the heart and experience of the preacher, not just held at arms length as new discovery.  Time in prayer allows God’s Word to be driven deep into our hearts.

3. Preaching should involve a message carefully crafted to communicate effectively to a specific audience, but for that to be an act of real love, then God’s heart for the people needs to be our heart for the people.  Bringing the people before God, alongside the passage, is thus critical to forming and delivering a message as an overflow of God’s love for them.

More could be written, but let’s leave it there.  Study.  Then stop and pray.  Then?  Some people will be very excited by the next location!

The Four Places of Preaching

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There is a journey from text to message.  A journey consists of a sequence of locations, so I’d like to lay out the four places of preaching.  Perhaps this will be helpful to someone.

Place 1 – The Study

The first place the preacher needs to go is the study.  Just the preacher, the Bible, perhaps a desk, whatever study resources may be available, and a prayerful pursuit of the meaning of the text.

What is the goal in this place?  To be able to accurately state the main idea of the passage in a single sentence summary as a result of prayerful historical, grammatical, literary study of the passage in its context, with a heart laid bare before God.

Who is involved?  This place is where the preacher is in prayerful pursuit of the meaning of the passage.  So there is a historical focus, a sense in which the preacher is seeking to go back then to the time when the human author wrote the passage.  There is a deep concern with making sense of the text as it was intended, as inspired, with the historical and written context, the inspired choice of genre, the content of the passage in terms of its details and its structure or flow, and the intent of the writer.

So the preacher is studying, exegeting, interpreting.  Yet in that quiet place of wrestling with the text, the text is also wrestling with the preacher.  This is not some sort of abstract and entirely objective study.  The preacher is there.  When the Bible speaks, God speaks, and when God speaks, lives change.  So the preacher has the privilege of being marked by the text as the Spirit of God first applies the passage to the life of the preacher.

The study is a place of deep fellowship between the preacher and God.

Why, then, the study?  Should this not be the library, after all, studying involves resources?  No, this should be a study, because a library is a place of people pursuing information for a variety of purposes.  The preacher’s study is a place where the preacher meets with God as the biblical text is studied both exegetically and profoundly devotionally.

Should this not be the office, after all, ministry is a complex business these days?  No, this should be a study (whatever the room actually is), because an office is a place of action and interaction, of incoming emails and phone calls, a place where multiple plates are kept spinning.  No great and profound preaching can come out of an office.  (If your study is too much of an office, then study elsewhere – borrow a room and leave your phone behind, study in your car in the woods, but go somewhere where you can be with the Lord in a “study”.)

Tomorrow, place 2 . . .