Practical Application of Promiscuous Reading 6.30.2022

    I was going to write about reading biography this week but one of my regular readers suggested that perhaps some practical examples of how to use all this extracurricular reading to polish up your preaching would be helpful.  

    First, you need to study the text. You need to have a long, immersive, detailed, critical examination of the text. This must go beyond your daily devotions. This is work. You need to bone up on those original languages and read as much as you can about the text. You need to do solid exegesis and compare your work with others. You need to plan your preaching (here I go again) not just to know what you will preach when but so that you can organize the study that will undergird and flesh out the plan. The plan provides a strategy. The study and preparation are tactical. It means doing. Study means wrestling (wrasslin’ for some of you) with the text. Preparation means knowing the big picture as well as the small details. Proclamation means you must leverage your time, maximize your talent, and yes invest your treasure. 

    All your reading, from poetry, philosophy, aesthetics, history, biography, and fiction reflects the human striving for coherence in a fallen world. Even if much of it is flailing and failing it is the genuine expression of human existence in a sinful world. If you only read what you agree with or those things that never offend you, your sheltered life is not helping you to be a better preacher. 

    The fall is real. Sin is a central part of the human condition. Truth. Beauty. Goodness. These too are a part of the human condition. Things have been well said by people you disagree with. Not reading what they have written does not hurt their feelings, but by avoiding their words you have surrendered a little bit of understanding that might help you do a better job of making disciples or discipling the saints. 

    Sorry, all that was still theoretical, and I was wanting to help you with practice. Here are some pointers for how your reading can help your preaching. 

Illustration

    Every time we preach, we want people to “get it.” Different congregations respond to different stimuli. Some people need to have you draw a picture. That is what illustrations are. Word pictures. Many authors have written poignant words that you can drop into a sermon to make a point, properly cited of course. If the writer or speaker or poet was not a believer, it is ok to mention that. There are times when the contrast of well-written words from an unbeliever can help you make a Biblical point better than similar words from the perspective of a believer. 

Quotation

I scribbled this down last week whilst reading a book about the Macintosh computer.

“Joyously treading on the foul-lines of possibility.” 

Excerpt From Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything, Steven Levy

    I did not know if or when I could use this quotation, but my goodness what a pithy, witty, pregnant statement. I did not record the broader context because it will fit a lot of different places and decontextualizing it expands its possibilities. I did this because it is not a statement of fact, belief, or opinion. It is just a quote that sings. And sometimes you need that sort of thing in a sermon. 

Clarification

    Sometimes quotations and citations help us to clarify things that might otherwise be obscure. Good writers are always trying to make things clearer for their readers. Sometimes checking your written work for the pulpit with good writing from others helps you to get a better grasp of your style. 

Amplification

    Last week when talking about Churchill (Mrs. Beckman found another biography of him for me at Goodwill last week!) I mentioned that he wrote in what he called Psalm Style. (I am actually amplifying what I said then, right now). Psalm style meant that he used the physical presentation of the speech on the page to help him memorize it and to better follow the flow when speaking. He used indentation, size of text, underlining (in the pre-computer age that was about the only way a typewriter could highlight), and annotation to help him master his material and present it as forcefully as possible. 

    See what I did there? I took a phrase that you might have noticed and passed over last week and provided additional information to help you understand it. There are times we need to do that in a sermon. If we already have the congregation drowning in the deep end of the theological pool the best amplification might not be another Bible verse or rephrased theology. Sometimes people need to be led gradually to the next truth and amplifying from broad reading will provide the best resource for doing so. The job of preaching is to help people to swim, not to help them more comfortably drown.

    The world is a complicated place. The fall has impacted every creature. The two-legged ones? Every single one is made in the image of God. Even the ones you don’t like or respect. Even the ones who persist in their sins. Every single person. Some of them have said things worth remembering. Some of them have written things worth quoting. Some of them have produced literature that you and I need to read. We serve a Master who Himself embodies the truth. In serving the Word we should have no fear of words.