Tag Archive for 'preaching'

The Message for the Broken

Published by bcg on 22 February 2010 in Church and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can mean only one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, p.16

Thanks to Custard for the great quotation.  I suppose this question has haunted me for quite a long time.  We are quite convinced that our preaching is faithful, that we are saying the right things, encouraging the right things, but the churches I have known have almost universally been precisely not irreligious.

Is it that we don't know how to encourage the right kind of practice?  Or is it more that there is a tendency to want to think the 'correct' things, rather than go out of our way to do the hard, un-selfish, loving and caring things?

I love things to be in order, to be just so, but that is precisely not how Jesus operated, and it can so easily lead to the kind of situation Tim Keller describes.  I find Keller's words hugely challenging.  They seem to me to be to be vital for the church's mission, yet at the same time almost impossible to put into practice.

Because, to me, I want a church for the broken, not a church for the religious.  I feel like a broken man, not a religious man, and somehow that means I don't feel like I belong in the church – the very place I should belong, in the arms of God.

A Good Sermon?

Published by bcg on 30 March 2009 in Church. 1 Comment Tags: .

What makes a good sermon?  We are having a preachers' meeting this evening at church, and at our staff meeting this lunchtime we discussed the kinds of things we look for in a good sermon.

We suggested things like:

  • Bible-based
  • Applied, relevant to everyday life
  • Good illustrations
  • Authoritative
  • Passionate
  • Appropriate length (!)
  • Transformational / affirming / encouraging
  • Having a clear aim

To which I would add:

  • Prophetic
  • Challenging
  • Prayerful and well-prepared

These are things that we do not look for:

  • Too long
  • Personal (not-so-humble) opinions
  • Like a lecture (all teaching, no application)
  • Emotionalism
  • Inappropriate language

To which I would add:

  • Boring (!)
  • Lots of jokes – we should try to make people smile, but they are not in a comedy club, they are in a church

I can remember being told that every good sermon needs exposition, illustration and application.  The question of length is a bit tricker.  How long is too long?

Actually, I think that depends on the preacher.  Some preachers can preach for 10-15 minutes, and it becomes painful.  Others can preach for 30 minutes plus, and you don't notice the time go by.

Personally, I always aim for 20-30 minutes, because I think anything less than that only really scratches the surface of what you can say.  It enables you to have much more flexibility in what you are saying.  However, if you can't hold people's attention for that amount of time, you need to preach shorter sermons!

Application is the thing I find most difficult when I'm preaching, and the thing I pray about most when I'm preparing a sermon.  Apart from the most difficult passages, I generally find the exposition part easier.  Organising the sermon so it is faithful to the passage, and also applied and relevant, is a difficult skill.

Passion is something I love to see in preachers.  I love to see it when the preacher has obviously wrestled with a text, when it has obviously spoken to them during the week.

The clear aim is something I used to write for each sermon I wrote, but I've got out of the habit.  I guess it is always in the back of my mind, but it is helpful to write it down – especially if you have to prepare a shorter talk – because it helps you to keep on topic!

Illustrations can be hard – but they don't need to be long, nor do they need to be funny.  Word pictures are much more effective than a joke – no matter how funny – that has been shoe-horned to fit the context.

The prophetic element is interesting, but when I pray while preparing a sermon that is always a big part of what I ask God for.  For me, the prophetic ministry is exercised primarily through biblical preaching.  So I wouldn't call myself a prophet, but I do try and make my sermons prophetic.

Finally, should sermons always seek to change the congregation?  Probably – but we don't want to give people the impression all the time that they are not good enough.  I know, I know – they aren't 'good enough' – but there is a place for encouragement and affirmation of the great truths of the faith, which doesn't challenge people to change their behaviour but helps renew our minds.

I could write a lot more about preaching.  But I'll stop there.  500 words is quite enough!

New prophecy?

Published by bcg on 10 August 2008 in Church. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We had an interesting comment by the preacher in church today.  He was saying that whenever he preaches, he tries to have something fresh, something new and prophetic to say.

Now I whole-heartedly agree that preaching should be prophetic.  It should challenge people, show them what God is saying to them through the Bible, feed them with truth, and encourage them in their day-to-day lives.  And above all, it should point to Jesus.

Now, my understanding of 'prophetic' is not that it is all about predicting the future (although it often does include that).  Much of the prophecy in the Old Testament consists of the the prophets reminding the people of God's promises, to bless them if they are faithful, and to punish them if they are not.  Granted, that included predicting the consequences of their disobedience, but essentially they were calling the people to remember God's word and his promises, and to be obedient.

Now that will sometimes include something 'new'.  That is, a fresh way of putting something, or teaching people something they didn't already know.  However, my reflections on the Old Testament prophets is that very often the people did know what they were being told, they were simply choosing to ignore it.  Or, they needed to be shown or told something they already knew in a different way.

I think that preachers should not be too worried about having something 'new' to say, but having something faithful to say – faithful to God's word.  The challenge comes not from what the preacher comes up with that is new or fresh, but from the word of God itself.

All this, the preacher tonight would agree with – his comment simply set me off on a train of thought!

Resurrection Life

Published by bcg on 25 March 2008 in Church and Theology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

On Sunday I preached on the final day of the college mission to Larkhall, Bath.  The text of the sermon can be found here.

Rather than preach directly from a passage, I preached on the meaning of Jesus' bodily resurrection, both for life in the future, and life here and now.

Since working at A Rocha two years ago, I have become more and more aware of how important it is that a) Jesus was incarnated, b) he spent three years preaching and healing the sick, c) he was raised bodily from the dead.

All these things amount to a wholehearted affirmation of God's good creation.  Many evangelicals seem to be drifting to an almost gnostic position, hugely prioritising the 'spiritual' over the 'physical'.

We must remember that when God's kingdom comes, we will not be living in a vacuum, floating on clouds in the sky, but on this earth, transformed.  Heaven comes down to earth, not the other way round.

A further thing I have often wondered is if we should translate 'spiritual' in the New Testament as 'Spiritual', i.e., of the Holy Spirit.  I'm sure someone has thought this before!

Pissing against the wall

Published by bcg on 10 March 2008 in Bible and Church. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I'm not sure if this is very funny or extremely sad, but I found a video of a Baptist preacher preaching talking about the phrase 'pisseth against the wall' from the King James.

Baptist preaches on KJV "him that pisseth against the wall"

This is the verse he preaches from:

Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam,
and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against
the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take
away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till
it be all gone.

1 Kings 14.10 (KJV)

From this verse the preacher's message is that real men (as opposed to 'males') urinate standing up.  The problems in America are caused, it seems, by men urinating sitting down.  How he manages to ignore the fact that in the context of this verse is that urinating standing up is not a good thing: doing it will get you 'cut off' from the people of God.  I don't claim to understand what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure it's not what this guy says!

He also uses manages to rant about how the King James is better than all other translations, for saying 'males', editing out 'Hell' and 'Jehovah' (which is the name of God).  From a bit of research on the internet it seems that this isn't the only strange thing this guy has said.

Clarity and understanding

Published by bcg on 22 January 2008 in Random and Theology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

I am currently trying to learn how to use XSL for my website.  XSL stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language, and allows an XML file to be displayed in a friendly format.

XML files look like HTML, and they are commonly used for holding data.  While slower than a database, they are much easier to read with the naked eye.  Because of this, they are very useful for sharing data across different systems.  For example, try opening a *.doc file in a text editor.  It is a load of gobbledegook.  Now find a *.docx file, change the extension to .zip, extract the files, and view them in a text editor.  You can read it with the naked eye.

However, all of that isn't my point.  A friend recently wrote a blog post complaining about overly complex language when explaining one's ideas.  It is of course not limited to academic circles, but all over the place.  I have been reading online guides to understanding XSL, and many of them are absolutely useless.  They use jargon.  They explain things using other concepts they haven't explained.  They use single sentences to describe complex things.  And so on.

I think that at the root of all this is a lack of understanding.  The path to clarity is nothing less than understanding.  If people do not understand fully what they are saying, then they will regurgitate complex language in an attempt to sound clever, to sound like they really understand what they are talking about.

After all, I should know: I did this at university.  When writing essays I 'copied' the language of the books I was reading, in order to sound clever, because I didn't really understand.  One of my first essays is a wonderfully dense description of 'nothingness', using language heavily derived from Moltmann's own dense analysis.  When you really do understand something, it is painfully obvious when people are doing this.

My plea is this: please don't write an instruction manual, or something explaining a concept, unless you understand at least most of it, if not all of it!

The wrath of God was satisfied

Published by bcg on 18 December 2007 in Bible, Church and Theology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I have been reading some of the minor prophets recently, and it hit me quite how angry God is with his people, and with the nations surrounding them. Of Ninevah God says, 'Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts...' followed by some fairly graphic and disgusting things (Nahum 2.13, 3.5-7 etc). Micah begins with the promise of destruction for Israel's idolatrous behaviour. Obadiah condemns Edom, Jacob's brother Esau, for gloating over Israel's misfortune. And so on.

This made me think. Most obviously I suppose, it highlights just how angry God gets with sin. A stereotype of Protestant preaching is 'fire and brimstone from the pulpit', which reflects God's anger and just wrath, while perhaps being a bit over the top. It is an uncomfortable message, and not one people want to hear – it doesn't sit easily with the general understanding of God as a benevolent father with a big white beard. More serious are Richard Dawkins' attacks on 'the God of the Old Testament' for such unpleasant displays of vengeance and anger; unpleasant, that is, to our modern 'tolerant' sensibilities.

There are two dangers here. The first, corresponding to the uncomfortableness that people feel, is to deny God's wrath. This underestimates sin, and reduces God's holiness. Even claiming it is part of the Old Testament understanding of 'territorial gods' is false, because it is in the New Testament too. It is simply not the case that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and the God of the New Testament is peaceful.

If we are seeking to be faithful to the Bible we cannot avoid the fact that sin makes God angry. Therefore, just as sin is not confined to the Old Testament, so God's anger isn't confined to the Old Testament. If you want proof, look in a concordance under 'wrath' and 'anger' – not to mention Jesus' display of anger in the temple (Matthew 21 etc). God's righteous anger is a central part of the message of the whole Bible, perhaps at its clearest in the prophets.

The second danger, corresponding to Dawkins' attack, is to stop here, and simply emphasise how angry God is with us 'miserable offenders', effectively denying the message of grace clearest in the New Testament (though present also in the Old). For the Bible tells us that yes, God justly punishes sin, and therefore we sinners deserve death, but that he also loves us and wants to have mercy on us. The interchange in Hosea is particularly astonishing, as we read of God's love and justice wrestling with each other.

It is for precisely this reason that the cross is absolutely central, for on the cross God's love and justice meet – they are both defined entirely and exclusively by the cross. It is on the cross, as Jesus bears the penalty for our sins, their consequence, that God fulfils his justice, whilst at the same time fulfilling his love, as he sets us free from that penalty through Jesus.

If we take the Bible as a whole, we see the Old Testament preparing us for and pointing us to the cross. It is on the cross that the tension between God's love for his people and his righteous judgement of their sins is resolved. The curses of the Old Testament, the condemnation that God speaks over the nations, over his own people, all of that wrath is poured out on Jesus, and we are saved by his blood.

And so we return to the minor prophets. As I was reading Nahum I realised that on the cross, God spoke those curses to his own Son, who willingly and obediently put himself under those curses. And he did that because he loves us so much, and because we have disobeyed him so much, and because he is so holy and just and righteous and faithful.

So on the cross, God's wrath was indeed satisfied – and, in the frequent alternative words to In Christ Alone, God's love was glorified also. However, we need to make sure we strike the balance between God's wrath and his love, so we don't cheapen his love, and so we don't turn God into Dawkins' stereotype. This balance is struck by Paul in some important verses in his letter to the Romans, on which note we will finish.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Romans 5.6-9 (ESV)

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