Distraction-free

Skye Jethani has written a blog post this week on the way in which we as 'church' regard those in our midst who are disturbances of some sort or other. He's discussing a situation in a church named 'Elevation' in which a boy with cerebral palsy was 'escorted out' (according to the mother) or moved to another part of the auditorium (according to church officials). He was a 'distraction' and the church's goal is "to offer a distraction free environment for all our guests."

As you might imagine, Jethani is disturbed by this attitude. Whatever the best intentions of the church are/were, his view is that church is a place where distraction is one of those things you put up with....because all the people in attendance are part of the family. Certainly it can be difficult for a minister doing his best to preach well to have someone in the congregation making a lot of noise (not that this boy was, apparently). Unwarranted noise can be an interruption to a well-prepared skit/drama/whatever sort of presentation.

But as Jethani notes: when I come freely to worship the Living God and gather with his people whom he describes as the foolish, weak, and despised in the world (1 Cor 1:26-28)--I do not expect a distraction free environment.

Church is not a cinema, a rock shop, a theatre, a performing arts centre. You might perhaps expect a distraction-free environment in any one of those places (although what you might expect and what you get aren't necessarily the same thing). Church is family, and in a family you put up with the noisy, sloppy baby, the irritating toddler, the old person heading towards dementia.

If we lose that, we're heading away from what church is about. Aren't we?

Job's wife

We base our entire picture of Job's wife on her one line in the story, and Job's rebuke that follows.

But she says no more than many of the prophets in their bitter moments, and to condemn her because she speaks out of her heart is to forget that she's undergone much of the pain which Job himself experiences. He's by no means alone in his sorrow.

Daniel Darling calls her The Most Misunderstood Woman in the Bible - that may be overdoing it a little, but there's no doubt that she's received more than her fair share of condemnation over the centuries, Augustine labelling her "the devil's accomplice" and Calvin calling her "a diabolical fury." Both men who were at times prone to overstating things...

Darling's article on Job's wife is an example of how to think outside the obvious, and is worth reading for that aspect alone.

Preaching as performance

"The second misconception is that performance [in preaching] is mere playacting. It's easy to assume that theatrics is about manipulating people for mere entertainment, that is, entertainment for entertainment's sake. When this is done with preaching, the delivery is embellished and actually impedes the communication of the message. Bad performances in the pulpit are as obvious as bad acting on the stage or screen. The only time we usually notice actors acting is when their craft is poor. It's the same with preaching. When it's done masterfully, the preacher almost disappears.

Good preaching comes alive and speaks to the heart precisely because it is well presented, with proper gesture, vocal technique, and bodily presence. People in the performing arts call this "stage presence." We might call it liturgical presence, or pulpit presence. All effective communicators realize that they must master numerous techniques in order to impact their audience."

From Preaching is Performance Art, by Clayton Schmit

Kiwi-made Preaching

A quick update on the Kiwi-made Preachingforums in October...

The venues in Auckland, Waikanae and Christchurch are confirmed..

A page has been added to the Kiwi-made Forum with more details regarding dates.

Paul Windsor writes: we are now working on signing-up 60 'Questions-Askers' who will provoke us. There is no shortage of people to ask, that is for sure (but we would be glad to consider your suggestions).

Chris Wright is confirmed as the companion for the day, coming out from the UK for the week.

He will open and close each forum with separate 'Exclamations' and then mix and mingle with people through the day.

Two things at this stage:

1. If you are a facebook-user, please 'like' the 'kiwi-made preaching' page and 'share' it with others as we intend to use it to update people regularly.

2. The best outcomes to the forum will be achieved when a preaching team from a local church comes together, divides 'n conquers the total menu on the day and then, on some later occasion, gets together for a debrief. We think this approach could provide a huge boost to the preaching ministry in a local church. Please begin to pray and plan along these lines.

Interpreting Scripture

Skye Jethani has provided a list called the Ten Commandments of Scripture Interpretation.

I realise, of course, that in putting this list on a blog aimed primarily at Presbyterians, who are wise in the Word and don't need warnings about the way they interpret Scripture, that I'm preaching to the converted, as it were.

So, for all those people who read this blog who aren't Presbyterians, (those loose-theology Baptists, and wildly-wacky Pentecostals, and tradition-focused Catholics, as well as all the others - I speak with tongue in cheek, in case you didn't notice), I'm putting this list on here for your information.

You may not agree entirely with Jethani's list (one commentator rightly points out that there may be a contradiction between commandments two and four), but I think it has some good reminders for anyone who has to stand up and preach.

Rob Bell and Preaching

Rob Bell has perhaps become most well-known in New Zealand through the series of short videos that go under the general title of Nooma.

Other people may have seen his much longer videos in which he uses a huge chart and gradually fills it in piece by piece while speaking non-stop.

We've probably had less opportunity to hear about him as a preacher, and in an article in the latest Leadership Journal online, there's an interview with him about his methods, his philosophy of preaching and a variety of other related issues.

It's well worth reading in terms of getting a different perspective on preaching (he often preaches exegetically, but not quite in the way most would), and in particular on his view that everything in the world can be brought into the sermon - rather than being narrow in your approach.

Read Tying the Clouds Together here.

Street Preacher

Everyone who's been a Christian for a while will know of 'street preachers' in their town, some good, some noisy, some downright embarrassing. There's a feeling amongst a number of Christians that this isn't the way to preach the Gospel.

Of course there's always another side to the story, and street preaching is missionary work in the same way as any other kind of missionary work.

Earlier in the month, on the Out of Ur site, they featured a brief interview with an Irish street preacher named Anthony Brabazon. Brabazon is an architect by trade (by which I presume it's meant that he works at that during the day and street preaches in his spare time). "...he considers the Dublin streets his church and the passing pedestrians his congregation."

Note that word, 'passing' - many Christians would think it was a waste of time to preach to people whom you might never see again. And when you look at the video, you might keep on thinking that. However, check out the interview which is wonderfully positive.

Street evangelists put their lives on the line, though most don't get beaten up or murdered - at least not in Western cities. On the other hand, Christians in other countries are still being martyred for their faith - in Nigeria and Malaysia most recently. We need to remember to pray for people in these countries, for the safety of our Christian brothers and sisters, and also for the Muslim people who are attacking them.

And just by way of a footnote, here's a comment made about a photo of a street preacher that appears on flickr.com: There's a dude in Swansea who does preaching. it's the best preaching i've ever seen. It's done in the style of a Swansea 'barrow boy'. Lots of " there you go darlin"s and "go on my son"s thrown in for good measure.

I guess he was a hooligan or some shit who's been 'saved' and hence has taken to the streets without anyone quite teaching him a new etiquette to approach his work. You're not sure if he's shouting at people in an attempt to provoke violence at first and it's only after a while that you realise he's is preaching the word of the big man upstairs.

Preaching Golf

Do you think this is how some congregations hear what they're preachers are saying?




Note that this guy leaves the best till last.

Thanks to Bosco Peters on the liturgy site for bringing this to our attention.

Imagination and Culture

Kevin Vanhoozer, editor of Everyday Theology: how to read cultural texts and interpret trends (Baker Academic, 2007) and professor of theology at Wheaton College Graduate School in Illinois talks in an (abridged) interview on Leadership Journal.net about the need for preachers to preach with the culture in mind, exegeting it as well as exegeting the Scripture texts. Some preachers do this as a matter of course; some get more tied up in 'topics' than in text, but there is a need to get a good balance.

One of the more important things Vanhoozer says is this:

Imagination is the ability to grasp things together in a meaningful pattern. Imagination is at work when a scientist develops a hypothesis that enables her to see how something causes something else. We all do that. We all look at the world with a framework of belief and interpretation, and that happens on the level of the imagination. The question is, are we doing it with biblical categories or are we just following cultural templates?

Preachers should not only be trying to take every thought captive to God's Word, but also every imagination. The imagination is the core out of which we live. The problem with culture is how it captures our imaginations through indirect communication. We can spot direct anti-Christian communication; that's easy. It's the indirect propaganda that's harder to spot.

(My emphasis in the above quotation.) The full version of th interview and Preaching Today's review of Kevin Vanhoozer's book, Everyday Theology, is available at www.preachingtoday.com
(However, you have to subscribe to this to read it.)

Virtual versus Reality

John la Grou has recently posted an interesting piece on his blog, Microclesia, in which he discusses the pros and cons of lecture-style preaching compared to virtual preaching via anyone of a number of different methods. One of his commentators points out that perhaps la Grou's approach of listening to great preachers on MP3 is just as 'consumerist' as expecting people to sit quietly and listen to a preacher in a church with a stage.

How do faith-based organizations respond to virtuality? The hardest part may be convincing the community that there’s a good reason to sit and stare at a stage, listening to a religious lecture. The virtually-connected church now has on-line access to the finest teaching imaginable, accessible at their convenience, 7 x 24 x 365. Of what value is physically proximate information (e.g., stage-centric pastor) when the average person can now access the best sermons, preaching, teaching, and cross-referenced commentary on-line?

The rest of the post is here.

The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts

About a decade ago one of my former customers encouraged me to read the first of Dale Ralph Davis’ Old Testament commentaries. It was on the Book of Judges, and subsequently, Davis produced commentaries on Joshua, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings, all of which I acquired and read – usually more than once.

If six commentaries strike you as too much to get going on, then the solution is to check out the book Davis produced in 2006 called The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts. While this book does focus on preaching the OT, it also gives a clear outline of Davis’ approach to studying the OT, and I believe you’d be hard pressed to find a better overview of OT Bible study anywhere.

This book, like Davis’ commentaries, is very readable and not at all heavy-going. Nor, on the other hand, is it lightweight; while Davis doesn’t have the room here to work in detail, as he does in the commentaries, he still discusses background and structure.

Davis is no slouch: he not only preaches what he writes, but he’s also a full-blown Bible scholar. His footnotes often contain the views of other commentators he disagrees with. While he’s never unpleasant towards these other writers, it’s plain he’s done his homework, and his reasons for saying what he does are valid.

He’s also a great storyteller. Both in this book and in his commentaries he backs up his arguments with stories from the American Civil War, or the Second World War (remember there are a lot of battles in the narratives!), or from his own experience. His own stories, like the rest of his writing, are full of wit and good humour.

He treats the text with great respect. If something is there, he sees it as being there for a good reason. If it’s obscure he’ll do his best to elucidate it, but he won’t speculate just so he can give an answer. Sometimes he admits that the answers aren’t easy for modern readers.

Perhaps his greatest gift is to remember that the Bible is literature. Time and again he clarifies the layout of a section or chapter by looking to see how the writer has planned the story. This is one of Davis’ great skills: to be able to see the structure in the midst of what might appear to be randomness.

A book for preachers, teachers and lay people.

Published by Mentor, a subsidiary of Christian Focus Publishing, UK. £7.99

No single gospel message?

If I had to put this [the Gospel] outline in a single statement, I might do it like this: Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

In an article in the Leadership Journal online, Tim Keller writes that while there may only be one Gospel message (which he's tried to put into a single statement form above), there are many forms of the message. After discussing the different 'forms' and the possibility of there being more than the ones he mentions, he goes on to talk about preaching the Gospel in different ways, as follows:
1. I don't put all the gospel points into any one gospel presentation.
2. I use both a gospel for the "circumcised" and for the "uncircumcised."
3. I use both a "kingdom" and an "eternal life" gospel.
4. I use them all and let each group overhear me preaching to the others.

Stolen Goods: Tempted to Plagiarize

Understanding the necessity of citation and the damage of deceit

Thomas G. Long, well-known for his own books on preaching, has written an excellent article on the problems inherent in 'borrowing' other people's sermons from the Internet, or other sources, in order to use them as our own in our own churches. He looks at the pros and cons, at the ethics, and whether there's a difference in plagiarising someone's sermon compared to plagiarising someone's other writings.

His conclusions are mostly against the practice, but it's plain from the comments that follow the article that some people regard it as normal to preach someone else's sermon on a Sunday.