Category Archives: sermon development

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Why Our Study Skills Are Inadequate and How to Buttress Them

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word-and-spirit

Last month, Michele and I made our trek to the Evangelical Homiletics Society annual conference. This year it was hosted by Talbot Seminary on the campus of Biola University near Los Angeles. The conference theme was, Spirit-led Preaching, and our plenary speaker was Jack Hayford. If you’re not familiar with Jack’s ministry, he is probably the most well-known and well-respected Pentecostal pastor in the U.S. The plenary sessions contained heavy doses of anecdotes, sprinkled with insightful one-liners. Hayford, for instance, described praying over your preaching portion as “interfacing with the One who breathed the Book.” In preparing to study he would pray, “Let me breathe in what you breathed on.”

Hayford gave me a passion for the Spirit’s active presence in my study. He helped me realize that my grammatical-historical-literary-rhetorical-theological method is inadequate. Hayford firmly believes that a passion for the Spirit’s active presence in my study contributes what good study habits can’t (the concept is his; I added and emphasized the word, active). He made me a believer, too. I’m sure you know that it is the Holy Spirit, for instance, that brings the Word alive. Think about what difference, if any, exists between the interpretation of an unregenerate scholar and a Spirit-led scholar. Then, think about the difference between a sermon preached by an unregenerate preacher compared with a sermon preached by a Spirit-led preacher.

Except for the grace of God, it’s possible that I could be working in my study just like a non-Christian theologian/pastor. I have been trained fairly well and possess adequate study skills. But, in the end, those study skills are inadequate. I want to buttress them with a passion for the Spirit’s active presence in my study and during the sermon. So, I’m trying to remember to pray for the:

  • Spirit’s help before I begin studying
  • Spirit’s help during my study
  • Spirit to change me during my study
  • Spirit to show me Christ and how faith in His work sanctifies (cf. John 16:14 “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”)
  • Spirit’s help right before I preach so that my learning and growing occurs in the moment.

Share your ideas about Spirit-led preaching.

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How To Thicken Your Sermon With Theology

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One of the many definitions of the word, thin, is lacking an important ingredient (Reader’s Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder). Usually, more than a few times a year I listen to sermons in class that fall into the class of being thin. What always strikes me about those sermons is, rarely is the problem not enough exegesis. Usually, it’s a problem of not enough theological thinking. On August 13, 2013 I published a post, Add Theological Thinking To Your Exposition, and said I’d add some examples from the Gospel of Luke. Here’s one and it shows, again, how important it is to move beyond exegesis.
 
In Luke 8:19-21 Jesus makes obedience the sign of being in the faith-family: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” This is another example of having to come to grips with Jesus’ gospel. Jesus sure sounds like we’re saved by our obedience. It requires thinking through the difficult relationship between faith and works. Jesus doesn’t tell us why obedience to the Word of God is necessary for family-of-God-status. I believe we should make that theological move in our sermons. At some point we must say to our parishioners, “Jesus’ family members are those who obey God’s Word because relationship precedes responsibility, but relationship does not preclude responsibility” (cf. p. 190 in Kuruvilla’s excellent book, Privilege The Text!). When you complete that thought (“…because…”), theology has thickened the sermon. Your communication is commensurate with Scripture’s portrayal of the nature of salvation. Of course, since Luke 8:19-21 doesn’t contain the answer to your question, you’ll have to look elsewhere in the Canon to find one.
 
Take a look at your preaching portion for this coming weekend and see if there are gaps that exegesis alone cannot fill.
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Fight the Urge to Be Exhaustive (and exhausting?)

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I remind myself regularly, “Lord willing, we’ll cover that another time in another Text.” I’ll say that to parishioners periodically on a Sunday. It’s one of the benefits of preaching to roughly the same listeners each weekend. We do not have to worry about being exhaustive in every sermon.

 
If you’re a bit neurotic like me, you might be thinking: “That sounds like an excuse for shoddy sermons.” But that’s not my reason. Take, for instance, Luke 9:18-20 which contains Jesus’ crucial question, “Who do you say that I am?”, and Peter’s confession, “The Christ of God.” That paragraph begins in verse 18 with: “Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him…” I had to fight the temptation to elaborate on Jesus’ prayer life.
 
I fought that temptation because Luke provided no commentary; just the fact. Although Jesus’ prayer life–like yours and mine–was crucial to His relationship with God, it was incidental in this scene. On that particular Sunday I intended to communicate what God was saying through Luke and Luke wasn’t saying much about prayer. Here’s why often, less is more:
 
1. Less is often more because covering less leaves more time on Luke’s theology and intention for the Church. I’m finding that, as I develop as a preacher, I am consistently cutting out incidental, biblical data from my sermons. The longer I preach, the more I realize the need to spend more time on the parts of a preaching portion that contain theology that functions for the Church.
 
2. Less is often more because covering less also leaves more time for application. I can’t tell you the number of times I look at the clock on Sunday and wish I had an extra five minutes. Those extra minutes could be used to make sure we all know how to implement the theology when we leave church.
 
Obviously, this is not the only way to approach preaching in church. But in your attempts to be biblical, consider the value of accomplishing more by covering less.
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Preaching the Synonyms of Faith (part 2)

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Preaching through the Gospel of Luke provides an excellent opportunity for us to repeatedly teach the nature of saving faith. You may have realized that many professing Christians are unclear about what faith is and how it works. In Luke 7:40-50 Jesus’ visit with a religious leader, Simon, is interrupted by a visit from “a woman of the city.” In v. 47 Jesus says, “…her sins, which are many, are forgiven–for she loved much.” But, then Jesus says to the woman in v. 50, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Jesus teaches us that her faith saved her, but also that had there been no love, there would’ve been no forgiveness. Functioning as theologians for our faith-families means explaining the relationship between loving Jesus and believing Him. It was Jonathan Edwards who said that love was the main thing in saving faith. As I said in a previous post, look for opportunities to teach the synonyms and antonyms of faith. This will broaden the theological understanding of our congregants and also create a solid foundation for working out their own salvation.

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Preaching the Synonyms and Antonyms for Faith

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In Luke 7:18-35 Jesus responds to a question posed by John the Baptizer. In Jesus’ answer, He says in v. 23, “…blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” This is an example of using antonyms to define saving and sanctifying faith. Usually, we’ll spend a moment in the sermon explaining this statement. Our explanations will, no doubt, include synonyms such as being turned off by Him. However, this is a great opportunity to explain what faith is. The opposite of being offended by Jesus is embracing Him and His teachings. In this context, those who were not offended by Jesus were responding well to John and his baptism. They acknowledge their need to be cleansed from their sin. Another example of this is in verse 30: “but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves.” Here’s another opportunity to explain faith. Synonyms will explain their unbelief; antonyms will explain the proper response intended for Believers who hear this narrative. See if your preaching portion for Sunday contains any synonyms or antonyms for faith.

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“My Preaching Portion Was Difficult to Preach Because…”

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Definition:

Preaching Portion: The amount of Scripture you choose to interpret and apply for a given sermon.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been conscious of how much easier post-Isaiah preaching is. In a prayer I worded for our congregation one recent Sunday morning I said to God that we needed His help even though the preaching portion wasn’t as difficult as Isaiah. I was feeling a bit of relief now that we had completed our study of Isaiah. But I was also feeling the need for Divine assistance because the act of preaching in general and, specifically, preaching any given preaching portion is beyond me and my abilities.

Would you be willing to share briefly with me why a particular preaching portion was difficult to preach and why? I want to begin to catalogue these issues for my learning, but also for future interaction with students and colleagues. How about your preaching portion for last Sunday? What made that Text difficult to preach? Thank you for sharing your insights with me. Here’s mine from Sunday…

1 Thessalonians 5:14 contains four Christian responses to four kinds of Christians. The instructions weren’t hard to preach. What made this sermon difficult was explaining why these instructions were vital for faith and the faith-family. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, it’s easy at the end of an epistle to forget the Gospel foundation that appears at the beginning (in this case, places like 1 Thessalonians 1:3 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5).