The Gospel

We’re two weeks into a three week evangelism training course at CCB at the moment. This week I gave a talk on the gospel. We looked at Romans 1:1-6 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-6. And I argued that essentially the gospel concerns Jesus’ identity and Jesus’ activity. It’s to do with his person and his work. Who he is, is expressed in what he does.
I like this. I just don’t think I could carry it off!

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Four Reasons I Preach Rubbish Sermons! (not deliberately, you understand …)

In recent weeks I’ve given some thought to what makes for a rubbish sermon. You can find that here. I also addressed the issue of how to listen to a rubbish sermon. You can find that here.

Writing those posts has involved some painful soul-searching. I’ve come to the conclusion that I preach rubbish sermons. Not all the time, but from time to time. Deep down I know when I have. And, because our church is discerning, they know it as well. But they’re gentle and they knew long before I told them, how to profit from a rubbish sermon!

But, so as not to try their patience too much, I’ve identified some of the contributory factors that cause this unintended consequence!

1. I preach rubbish sermons when I’ve been mentally distracted

Lots of things distract me from the task of actually sitting down and preparing and writing a sermon. The e-mail inbox currently has 233 unanswered e-mails. I have no idea how many of those are spam. Then there’s Facebook. Sure, it’s only a mental break inserted into a concerted period of intense concentration. But you’d be surprised how enthralling someone’s pictures from their time in Luxemburg can be when rigorous thought is the alternative! And then there’s blogging on why I preach rubbish sermons! Occasionally I leave the study to head for the kitchen table. I don’t have the internet down there. The volumes of cookery books hold no attraction to me. The golf ball doesn’t run so easily over the lino as it does over the carpet in my study. And so on.

In short, like many people, I don’t need a whole load of encouragement to keep away from the mental effort required to prepare good sermons. It’s easier not to think than it is to think. And like some, I find that an imminent deadline can focus the mind wonderfully, which is why I’m often up early on a Sunday morning. I’ve tried to change. But I’m deadline driven. And I’m an old dog who sees no attraction in new tricks. And so the final edited sermon script can come quite late. And that’s OK. As long as it’s edited. But the real issue is how much work has gone into the text work prior to that final script. That’s why the real battle isn’t at the end at the week; it’s at the start. I need to get to the text early on and let it percolate throughout my week. Trouble is that Monday is staff meeting morning and a whole load falls out of that. Then there’s Ministry Matters to prepare for. And then there’s the Apprenticeship workshop and so on. It’s the preparation time that gets squeezed. And that has consequences. And so the key thing is to avoid being distracted from, as Paul calls it, reflection (2 Timothy 2:7).

2. I preach rubbish sermons when I’ve been physically exhausted

Nothing works properly when I’m tired. And that’s especially true about my brain. I need it both to prepare and to preach. But I especially need it when I’m preparing. I need to think. Hard. If I’m physically exhausted then I can’t expect to be able to mentally engage. But I need my brain to observe what the text says, interpret what the means and apply what the text implies.

I can remember back to the time when our younger two kids would repeatedly wake during the night. There was something worse about interrupted sleep than insufficient sleep. It was exhausting. And it meant that I went into everyday feeling spent before I’d even started. I dread to think what my sermons were like during that period. I’ve looked back at some and I don’t think I’ll be using them again! There are seasons to life and I’m grateful to God that He gave us that experience of sleeplessness. It taught us to depend on him, it taught us perseverance and it’s given me some insight into other people’s struggles. But it was tough and I need to be sharp and mentally switched on if I’m going to prepare well. Mercifully we don’t have to struggle with interrupted sleep anymore. Now the issue is not my children’s sleep patterns but mine. I’m ill disciplined at the end of an evening. I find that after an evening meeting whether that’s a Bible study an evangelistic course or just a ministry group I need some down time. I think I need to switch off in front of Newsnight but what I really need is to go to sleep!

3. I preach rubbish sermons when I’ve been emotionally preoccupied

This affects me at the preparation stage. I find it hugely difficult to concentrate if there are things hanging over me. It might be an inappropriate remark that I let slip, it might be a disgruntled e-mail that I’ve received, it might be the thought of an imminent awkward pastoral conversation or it might be the gnawing frustration of someone who’s not doing what I might reasonably expect from them. I find those things emotionally draining. They play on my mind. And in one sense I’m glad of that. If I was unperturbed by those sorts of issues then I’d be pretty unfeeling. I might come across as cold and dispassionate. And who wants that in a Minister! The upside of sensitivity to emotional angst is that I’m sympathetic (in principle if not in practice) but the downside is that I get derailed. Criticism hits me hard and unsettles me. Confrontation is not something that I look forward to. And so rather than thinking hard about the sermon, I’m writing e-mails in my head, rehearsing what I’m going to say or phoning people up to take a second opinion. There’s something to be said for being able to park issue with the Lord and move on. I find that emotional preoccupation affects my ability to think straight about the text in front of me.

4. I preach rubbish sermons when I’ve been spiritually disengaged

The single biggest contributory factor to my rubbish sermons is my spiritual state. If I’m in good shape then even an undercooked sermon can be delivered to good effect because it matters to me. If I’m in poor shape then even a thoroughly well prepared, exegetically precise and hermeneutically correct sermon will fail to hit the spot. You may as well get the devil to preach. Not quite. But you get my point. Sure, if the Lord can use shysters like Jephthah and Samson then he can use me and my preaching, even if I’m at a really low ebb. I guess I was one of many who’d say that they were greatly helped by Roy Clements in my student years. But that’s no reason to continue to be spiritually shabby.

But when Christ means little to me then the word that testifies to him will mean little also. When I’m spiritually disengaged, the spiritual life is devoid of interest and that’ll come out in preaching. It’ll affect the passion with which I approach God’s word, God’s people and the task of helping them understand the implications of what He’s said. If it doesn’t really matter to me then that’ll come across. And I can’t expect t to matter to anyone else. And a congregation full of people for whom spiritual things don’t really matter isn’t a great place to be!  Churches need their spiritual leaders to be in good spiritual shape.

But it’s a constant battle to prioritise my own personal devotional life rather than CCB’s congregational life. The latter always seems the more urgent pressing need. I go to bed every night without completing the work that needs to be done. And so I get up with a ‘to do’ list already formed in my head. It’s easier to concentrate on that than my quiet time. Or is this only me? The danger is that I think that I can go through a day without a proper devotional time in God’s word and it won’t be catastrophic. And it won’t be. But if that becomes a settled conviction a day can turn into a week and so on. And that’s catastrophic. But church ministry doesn’t work like that, does it. I don’t feel that I can turn up to the Church Prayer Meeting without something to say. But I could and it’d be OK. I’d love to have the courage to say one time, ‘I’m sorry that I haven’t got an exposition tonight but I thought it was more important to read the scriptures and pray!’ I honestly don’t think it’d cause a ripple; other than applause.

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Love Wins – The Fallout

Rob Bell has written a new book. You might have heard. The internet is awash with the fallout.

I’ve not read it. I’m not sure I’m going to bother. Is that bad? I probably should. But there are just better books that I’ve yet to get round to reading. I’m currently reading Tim Keller’s ‘King’s Cross’ and Mark Driscoll’s ‘Death by Love’ and I don’t want to put those to one side. But today ‘Love Wins’ is number 35 on Amazon UK bestseller list. So I may have to repent.

It’s a book in which [apparently] Rob Bell argues that God is love and His desire to share it means that in the end His love wins over our rejection of it, he redefines the concept of hell so that it becomes what we create when we reject God’s love and denies that there is eternal conscious suffering under God’s punishment. You can see why the internet traffic might have increased!

I’ve skim read Kevin DeYoungs’ thorough critique. It’s very good. You can find it here.

I’ve listened to Rob Bell’s interview with Martin Bashir on MSNBC, in which Bashir turns the screw and Bell squirms uncomfortably. You can find that here.

I’ve also listened to Martin Bashir’s 30 minute radio interview with Paul Edwards. You can find that here. It’s interesting and worth a listen.

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5 Ways to Profit from a Rubbish Sermon!

In Mark 4:14 Jesus warned that some of us are like seed sown along a hard path. As soon as we hear the word, Satan comes and snatches it away because we’ve not been careful about how we listen. So, with that in mind what can we do to make sure that we profit even from rubbish sermons. What is there that we can we do to take his word in?

All sermons are on a trajectory from imperfect (at one end of the spectrum) to perfect (at the other). Just plain wrong is nowhere on the spectrum; heretical is off the scale. So if a sermon is somewhere on the spectrum between imperfect and perfect, then it’s got to be possible to benefit from it in some way, hasn’t it?!

So how might we do it?

1. Do your own leg work!

We produce term cards at CCB with details of the preaching programme. Not everyone uses them, or even knows of their existence! The point of having them is not so that people can know who’s up and therefore skip church. But so that people would know what’s being preached so that we can think about it beforehand. Last Sunday I tried to teach three chapters of Judges. That’s a lot of material to cover. I had to work with the assumption it would be unfamiliar. And even after the reading I assumed that I’d have to spend time in the sermon rubbing our noses in the text once again. That takes time. As it turned out the sermon came in at 40 minutes. But a fraction of that time was spent on specific application to our own situation. Far too much time was spent on explanation. And so it drifted towards the imperfect end of the sermon spectrum. But if I’m going to make suggestions about life changing applications, then I want people to know where I’m getting that from. As congregational members, we could put in some hard yards of preparation ourselves. We could read the passage ahead of church.  That way you’re immersed in it and engaged with the issues that it raises. That way you’re not hearing the passage for the first time as well as the sermon for the first time. You’re hearing the text for the second time, at least. And so you can engage with the sermon and think hard about what’s being said. And you can benefit even if the sermon is application light, or explanation inadequate or engagingly insufficient! We could prepare for the sermon and do some leg work ourselves. So why not give it a go? See whether you’re experience of hearing God speak is enriched by being engaged with his word in the first place.

2. Pray for the preaching!

Pray for your preachers. Pray for the sermon. Pray for the event at which God’s word is explained. Pray for your own interaction with His word. Ask God that you’ll profit from a less than perfect explanation of the scriptures; because that’s what you’re going to get every time you go to church! I reckon that’s one prayer the Lord is pleased to answer. No preacher wants to be rubbish. They don’t mean to be. Sometimes it just happens. But it might not if his congregation is praying for him! There are lots of reasons why we preach rubbish sermons but I won’t go into them here. I’ll blog on that later. But pray for those whom God has given you to teach you the scriptures.

3. Fight the frustration!

When the sermon is failing you have a choice. You could let the growing aggravation within you come to the boil. I’ve doen it. And I’ve caused it. I can see it in their body language. The frustration simmers away as the preacher takes the sermon in a direction that you’re unhappy with. The preaching of yet another inadequate sermon could be used as justification for switching off. You could simply check out and think about something else. But let’s just remember what we’re doing when we do that. We’re muting God. And that’s not something that I want to do. Alternatively we could work hard to engage and not let the poor quality of the sermon quash our desire to hear what God has to say to us. We shouldn’t let the whole sermon be derailed by a less than perfect preacher. So try to find one thing to latch onto and think about that.

4. Don’t beat yourself up!

Though we’re responsible for how we listen to sermons, the preacher retains the responsibility for how that’s presented. If there are things that you didn’t get, or things that you didn’t follow then don’t blame yourself. There’s every possibility that he could have been monumentally unclear or whatever. Don’t think that you’re stupid because you didn’t get it. He may have cunningly obscured the obvious in amongst lots of other stuff in his sermon! So ask questions. At CCB we have a time for questions after the sermon. It benefits both the preacher and the congregation. He gets another swing at it and is often clearer second time round. And they get to clarify the issues or implications that they weren’t sure about. It takes a few minutes but it’s nearly always worth the effort. Of course, not all of us are comfortable speaking out loud in a crowd. We could submit written questions and we’ve done that before. But it takes time. So why not have a word with someone you trust or the preacher himself to chase up your issues. As a preacher, I’m often delighted when people come up to me afterwards and want to engage with what’s been said. It’s strangely comforting to know that what’s been said hasn’t fallen on deaf ears, even if what fell on awake ears didn’t make much sense!

5. Have another swing at it!

Talk about the sermon with friends. As you sit in the pew/chair at the end of the meeting why not make your conversation starter about the sermon. In the pub afterwards or over lunch why not take the issues and run with them. We build one another up as we encourage one another to respond to God’s word in repentance and faith. We’d be more mature in our faith if we did this more often. Resist the temptation to talk about the preacher and how well he presented it. Talk about the content and what God wants us to learn from that part of His word. That’s far more important. Don’t let the sermon be merely a 30 minute exercise in listening to something more akin to verbal wreckage than lofty rhetoric. Even if the content has been less than ideal and the presentation has been poor, don’t let that stand in the way of profiting from hearing God’s word. So have another swing at it and leave the sermon pondering what God has said.

Of course, none of these ought to be used by those of us who preach as an excuse to preach rubbish sermons. I spend hours each week trying not to be. But sometimes, despite my best prayerful preparation, I just can’t help it. Wonderfully hearing God’s word is a co-operative work. Whether God grows someone in maturity isn’t simply down to the quality of my sermons. And every listeneer can profit even when I’m at preaching at the wrong end of the spectrum!

This series of posts has been inspired by Christopher Ash’s little leaflet ‘Listen Up’ available from here. You’d be well advised to grab yourself a copy.

I’ve also blogged on Six Ways to Listen to a Sermon and Seven Things that make a Sermon Rubbish.

Seven

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