Deep & Wide 6.29.2023

Deep and wide

Deep and wide

There’s a fountain flowing

Deep and wide.

    I grew up singing this song in Sunday School and Youth Group. You probably did too.  It is a simple song that teaches a profound lesson. The analogy is taken from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman recorded in John 4. Jesus tells her that for those who respond to Him in faith—He would provide a fountain of water springing up to eternal life. 

    This metaphor, Deep and Wide can be applied to the task of preaching. As the Holy Spirit provides an unparalleled refreshment for those in Jesus, those who preach scripture should aspire to provide their congregations with fountains from the Word which are both deep and wide. 

    The alternative to preaching which has depth and breadth is preaching that is shallow and narrow. Jesus provides spiritual refreshment which is sufficient and timeless. Why should His messengers settle for preaching that is insufficient and wasteful.  The goal is depth and breadth. How do we achieve it? 

Hard work

    There is no way around it. Good preaching that is deep and wide takes time. It takes work. It requires focus and due diligence. I often talk about our tools in these weekly essays. Using the tools at our disposal to the best of our ability is crucial to good preaching.

• Deep Reading. Read everything you can on the text and topic at hand. Draw broadly not only from Biblical and theological works but from works of history, philosophy, and fiction. Anything to help you understand and communicate the text fits into the program of preaching.

• Thinking. Clarity comes from thinking above, underneath, and around the subject at hand. Reading aligns us with the thinking of others. Your sermon this Sunday needs to communicate your thoughts about the text. Depth and breadth are the outworking of thinking. It is hard to speak clearly about something you have not thought deeply about.

• Tinkering. Note taking. Scribbling. Outlining. Mind-Mapping. Drafting and Editing. Organizing. Designing. Connecting the dots and filling in the blanks. Go into your workshop and sharpen the tools. Don’t be afraid of the unformed, partial, and ugly process that yields profound results. 

• The Hard parts. There are some parts of the Scripture that are more difficult than others to understand, accept, or apply. Avoiding them may be easier, but they are essential for understanding the full counsel of God. And they lead to the next point.

Growth

    You don’t improve by doing easy things. Doing the hard part and preaching complicated texts will not only strengthen your preaching, but it will also create depth and breadth in you and your congregation. Grapple with the text and use the unfolding of your ideas in your preaching. Explain how the work itself is making you a better preacher and helping to season your understanding of scripture.

     If you do hard work and experience growth, you will change your mind about long-held conclusions. You will revise your thinking. Show them and tell them how you are growing and explain to them how your growth as a student of scripture will make you a better preacher so that you can provide a richer diet for their spiritual growth. 

Relevance

    Nothing ages faster than practical admonitions anchored fully to the present time. Broad preaching that draws deeply from the full canon of scripture has a timeless quality that accrues a patina of timelessness, which is also perpetually relevant. Preaching, which is only designed to address the felt needs and current problems encountered by the present generation will eventually become dated. 

    Ancient wells contain the freshest water. If we want to address the circumstances—good or bad which confront the contemporary Church, the solutions we offer must be fully grounded in the full revelation of Scripture. There are, and will always be, books that never, ever seem relevant. These portions of scripture, when preached, should not be preached in isolation. Plan in such a way that you surround obscure parts of scripture with those that are more familiar. Make connections. Invite your congregation into the intertextual conversation(s) that permeate(s) scripture. Examine current cultural trends and address them Biblically. Do not be afraid of practicing hermeneutics before the flock. After a persistent, transparent campaign of Biblical study and preaching they will have a greater understanding of the Word and will begin to make the relevant connections themselves. This is a sign of mature discipleship. 

    Jesus tells us faith can move mountains. This is not just an encouraging word but also an invitation to service. Bring a shovel and be ready to dig because it is your faith in God’s ability to work through you that will move the mountain. If your preaching consists of advising people to stand around and wait for God to do something, you need to reread scripture and reconsider your vocation. Preaching calls for Christians to pick up their cross, shovel, and follow Jesus. 

    Let me make up a word. Shallowing. Definition: “Shallowing is the process of systematically reducing the expectations for Christian believers to the point that they are co-dependent on the “Worship Industrial Complex”, having reduced the Christian life to standing around, waiting on God to perform “trickses”. Shallowing is often mistaken for a contemporary version of the Christian faith when instead, it is laziness transformed into a virtue.” 

    It is time for the Church to expect more from her preachers and time for her shepherds to expect more from the sheep. It can begin as soon as right now. Drink from the broad and deep stream of Scripture. Revel in it. Learn things you did not know before. Show your work to your congregation. Give them a drink that refreshes them, satisfies them, and compels them into their life’s ministry.

 

Directed 6.22.2023

     An effective sermon will have a focus. It will have a goal. It will be directed. So far this month we have considered what it means for a pastor-theologian to focus on specific domain knowledge. We have considered that the process of studying and preparing for each presentation needs to be grounded in the details of the text and audience. And we have admitted that when we do this job well with an attitude of discovery, our hearts will be delighted. We will enjoy this work to which we are called.

    If we are in the text, if we master the details, if we are constantly discovering new, delightful nuances of the text that allows us to be very direct in our sermon preparation. By directness, I mean the targeted application of scripture. This requires a hermeneutic which is founded upon accurate exegesis. All the study that we pour into the text is designed to help us get a sermon out of the text. We do the same next week the week after that and so on till we die. In a located ministry your flock knows you. They know your expressions, gestures, inflections, and other personally identifiable characteristics of your preaching. They should also know the identifiable characteristics of your study habits. These habits should inform every sermon and lesson you present. 

    One of our tasks is to leverage our numerous opportunities before the congregation to enhance and advance our preaching program. We should always be oriented to where we are going and where we have been. And the people who hear us week after week should be able to discern a cumulative pattern to our weekly preaching. They should sense—and we should remind them that the 52 weeks of this year form a unified whole. Each individual sermon contributes to that whole, even as it addresses the message of that week’s chosen text to the needs of the hour. 

Directed preaching is not accidental. It is a purposeful approach to the task set before us by our Master. 

“1Corinthians 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 1Corinthians 1:22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 1Corinthians 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 1Corinthians 1:24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:21–25 ESV)

     So, Paul tells us that his only purpose was to preach Christ crucified, God’s saving wisdom to the world. And yet, he appears to know an awful lot about the culture into which he is proclaiming those saving words. He knows the prejudices and intellectual quirks of both Gentiles and Jews. He understands their objections and can speak directly to them because he has done his homework. 

    Later in his life and ministry, Paul will encourage his young protégé Timothy with the following:

“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:2 ESV)

     The content of this teaching is, is, of course, scriptural truth. The object is to exalt Christ. Again, Paul knows quite a bit about the context in which he would be pursuing this ministry. So well does he understand it, that he can remind Timothy that the content and intent of his preaching will be defined by several different emphases, each speaking directly to a congregational inflection point. 

    When we have done the hard exegetical work and have prepared a clear and direct sermon based upon that exegetical work, we can confidently affirm to our congregation that “this is God’s Word for us today.”

Discovery and Delight 6.15.2023

     Study is by its nature an act of discovery. We set out guided by an internal belief that unknown riches exist both in scripture and the world around us. To delight in this process requires removing all labels from the quest. If we decide that we are conservative then “progressive” ideas will elude, confuse, or antagonize us. If we decide we are “progressive” we will take offense at “conservative” conceptions. Better to allow the perennial resources of the Church to guide us. The Bible, sound theology, historical insight. 

    This essay was originally entitled Delight. As I did other exegetical work today and was reflecting on the content and title, I had set for myself when I planned my blog for June, I realized that much of the delight in studying to preach comes from the process of discovery. It is hard to understand what delights in scripture unless and until we come to grips with the process of discovery. 

    I have been professionally studying scripture for 42 years. It is Seldom that the work of preparation does not yield a new discovery or present a unique perspective from which to view an old one. This entire process is a sheer delight. Not only for nourishing the spirit of the searcher (in this case me) but also, more importantly, for the impact it has on the process of preaching and teaching. I want to be delighted in my study in hopes that others will find delight in the Word of God. We might contrast this response with that of duty. I am obligated to preach Christ. Were this process to become drudgery rather than delight eventually the curiosity that drives discovery would itself be extinguished. Maybe this best explains the phenomena of pastor theologians who become burned out and unable to preach. 

    Matthew 13 is one of the great chapters in all of Scripture. It is a primer on the teaching methods of Jesus. He describes the Kingdom through acts of sowing and searching. The Kingdom is described as something which is hidden and small. The Kingdom is a pearl of inestimable price--so valuable that the wise sell everything they have for a chance to attain it. At the end of the chapter when confronted with the creativity of Jesus He asks the disciples “Do you get it?” They of course say “yes.” What else could they say? They couldn’t claim inattention or boredom. His teaching was creative and engaging. He was recasting their understanding of the kingdom into what He elsewhere called “new wineskins.” They understood the referents of His metaphors, what they needed to do was rethink the Kingdom. 

    In this rethinking, there was a process of discovery that led to delight. Now, despite their affirmation here, and later declamations of understanding and commitment, they were just embarking on that voyage of discovery. They would continue the journey through conversation with Jesus right up to His ascension. Then they would continue, not only searching out the truth but in proclaiming it they would experience the delight of sharing the revealed truth with others. 

    The parable at the end of Matthew 13 has intrigued me for many years. In a sense, it has driven my exegesis for thirty years. Here is the last bit of Matthew 13.

“Matthew 13:51 “Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” Matthew 13:52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”” (Matthew 13:51–52 ESV)

The Kingdom material in Matthew 13 rightly grips our attention. Yet for you and me, exegetes who are “scribes being trained for the kingdom of heaven”, this speaks clearly and eloquently to our work of delight in discovery. We have treasure. Intellectual capital. We have the tools of piety and scholarship at our disposal. We are gifted, called, educated, and equipped to preach and teach. We are given time to study. We are afforded the opportunity to grow in our spiritual discernment and scholarly discipline. In the year 2023, we are those scribes. We are called to equip the saints for service and provide leadership from the sacred desk. 

    What a joy, privilege, and challenge! It is not always easy. I’ve been doing a series from the Wisdom literature. Five weeks for Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. It seemed like a great idea in October when I planned the series. I even stockpiled some preliminary study, outlining, and preparation. Yet the challenges of preparing the series have been manifest. As hard as it might be to master any one of these books for a series of sermons, giving a week for each of them individually is a bit of a stretch. Is it worth it? Yes, it is. I have learned things about each of these books (discovery) as I have gone through a truncated study of them. And I have been delighted with the outcome. I’ve fretted over the final sermons (does anyone really want to hear about Job?). Yet each has worked. Much of that effectiveness is because the preacher (me) has lived the process. 

    Every week we go into our storerooms. Scribes every one of us, searching the shelves for old things and new things. Or, if you prefer a different metaphor, we drop our bucket into the endless depths of the well of scripture and fashion from our studies a satisfying drink from God’s Word. Our weekly work reminds us that the discovery is worth it. Not for our delight alone, but for God’s people who are nourished by our discoveries, and for the delight of He who called us into this terrifying but marvelous task. 

Details 6.8.2023

     Last week I discussed domain knowledge. While Biblical Studies, Hermeneutics, and Theology are the primary areas in which the pastor-theologian works we also understand that all truth is God’s truth. Our explorations also require interdisciplinary (sometimes called multi-disciplinary) reading and research. Our application of the text requires analysis of our audience and cultural context, or we risk preaching sermons that people are unable to hear. 

    Today let’s discuss a couple of famous concepts that spring from design or architecture. Form follows function and the devil is in the details. 

Form Follows Function?

    In the late 19th and early 20th century, a familiar epithet regarding design was “form follows function.” It seemed like a commonsense approach to bridging the gap between conceiving a project on paper and executing it in the real world.  Recently I read a book entitled The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski. The guiding thesis of this book is that the notion that form follows function is wrong. The author makes his case convincingly. The history of innovation, as manifested in objects as diverse as forks, hammers, and paperclips demonstrates that form follows failure. These common objects evolved due to the perceived or actual failure of a previous generation of the item to solve the problem for which it was designed and constructed. 

    How does this relate to the work of preaching?  Most human knowledge is iterative. It requires experimentation, curiosity, creativity, and yes, failure. To go through this process requires basic reading and research that is challenging, even unnerving. There are divergent views in Biblical Studies and hermeneutics even among those who hold to a high view of Scripture. Among those who accept the authoritative voice of God in Scripture, there are differing theological viewpoints. Some of these are presuppositions, and some of them are conclusions. One finds illumination in the strangest places! But one must go to those places to find the light. You need to have a plan but be willing to wander a little bit to allow for serendipitous discovery. When you only plow the same furrow, repeatedly the ground will eventually begin to lose vitality. It is then that you need to fertilize that soil with something new. If all we ever do is the same thing that we have always done, then we will never produce anything fresh. 

    Much of the way that we study is predicated on the notion that we don’t want to be experimental or risk failure. There is nothing wrong with changing our minds. There is nothing wrong with incorporating new data into our thinking. If we keep our eyes on Jesus and rely upon the Holy Spirit and the community of the Saints, we will have the necessary guardrails in place to prevent catastrophe when any form that we are pursuing leads to failure. Do you have any idea how many patents were filed during the evolution of the paperclip? 

    The process of thinking through scripture and preparing a sermon is hard work. You will add a bit here, trim there, construct a truss or a brace, and then discard the whole thing and start over. Your floor will be littered with the abandoned detritus of your labors. The function of a sermon is to proclaim scripture so that believers are edified, and unbelievers are called to respond in faith. Reaching that destination may require starts, stops, rethinking, reevaluating, editing, cutting, trimming, folding two points into one, adding good parallel illustrations, and asking someone to proof and critique your work. After all that you will walk into the pulpit satisfied with what you have prepared and find that it falls flat. Other times you will enter the pulpit genuinely concerned—only to find that (this may have happened to me last Sunday) the book sermon from Job, that you were editing until 8.20 Sunday morning was effective in bringing someone to faith. Form follows failure, and failure creates focus. 

The devil is in the details. 

    That brings us to the anonymous (though often attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) blurb that the devil (or God) is in the details. The German reads Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail if you want the original. 

    For the preacher that means we must be diligent to consider each detailed step of exegesis. We should at least skim each secondary book available to us when exegeting a text. We should read the original languages of the text and examine several translations of the text to consider the diverse ways of rending the text into colloquial English. 

    How will you begin the sermon? How will you end it? Will you read the full text all at once or interleave it within the points of the Sermon as you explain each part and relate it to the point in question? What about the transitions? Am I using too many passive verbs? How’s the grammar? Am I saying too much in the first person? Are the slides too detailed? Is the vocabulary to foo-foo? When I preach this will I sound like a hillbilly?

     You have to consider how this specific message from this text fits into your overall preaching plan for the series and year. You need to think about how the pericope or paragraph fits into the overall structure of the book. Being a preacher requires that we function like a lawyer who must prepare a new, different case every single week. The details matter. Design matters. The words in the text matter. Our choice of words matters. This is important. God is truly in the details. 

Domain Knowledge 6.1.2023

    The theme for June is the acquisition of knowledge. How we study is as important as what and why we study. In ministry, it is tempting to make study the red-headed stepchild of our work—a necessary but embarrassing distraction from so-called “real ministry”. This does not comport with the clear message of scripture. Here is an example The controversy in Acts 6 is not resolved through the Apostles abandoning their calling to pursue “real ministry.” Their real ministry was proclaiming the Gospel. They chose other servants to do these other things.

“But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”” (Acts 6:4 ESV)

    Our study time is real ministry. Without investing time in our Study our preaching will soon lose color and become flat like a soda that has been left uncapped. This week I will discuss the idea of Domain Knowledge. In lieu of a definition, here are some quick illustrations of what I mean by Domain Knowledge.

• Doctors know…Medicine.

• Lawyers know…Law.

• Geologists know…Rocks.

• Pilots know…weather, navigation, and aircraft.

• Businessmen know…economics, monetary policy, sales, and product development.

• Preachers know…__________.

The goal of this essay is to fill in that blank. To identify some specific domains or categories of knowledge that you, as a local preaching minister, a Pastor-Theologian should know if you are to “rightly handle the word of truth.”

The Bible

    I have heard preachers in opening their Sermon state, with a kind of “aw shucks” pseudo-humility, “Now, I’m not an expert on this”, inviting their congregation to join them in a team-building exercise rambling around in the land of the absurd. You are the expert. For every Biblical topic, in every worship situation, addressing local needs through the lens of God’s timeless revelation. In your Church, in the town where you live--You are the expert. 

    Our primary domain of knowledge is Scripture. This implies that we must be serious, lifelong, committed students of the Bible, and all the various disciplines, tools, and approaches used to understand it. Leaving behind personal reading and devotional time in the Word, here is a summary of what Biblical domain knowledge requires. 

Biblical Studies

    You are an exegete responsible for engaging in broader hermeneutical issues. You practice hermeneutics like a doctor practices medicine. You will need to have a historic appreciation for the development of our discipline. You should become familiar with the work of those who have gone before and who have paved the way by engaging with the broader landscape of philosophy, history, the social sciences, and other forces that contribute to human understanding. 

Approaches to the Discipline

    There is a myriad of approaches to studying scripture. Some are academic, others more practical. You need to be familiar with them all; from the Historical-critical-grammatical method that defined Biblical studies for hundreds of years to the Social-science driven methodologies that are in ascendance. 

    You need to know the difference between the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools of exegesis and know the differences between the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and the Christian Old Testament. You should be familiar with how our understanding of New Testament Greek changed because of new documentary discoveries in the late 19th century—as well as the contemporary debate surrounding the nature of the Greek verb. 

    These are not hobby horses or esoteric knowledge reserved for the halls of academia. The primary locus of Biblical Studies is the Church, the primary focus is preaching. Is it any wonder that the Twenty-first-century church is a distracted, confused, hot mess?

Homiletics 

    In your Church, you are the expert on preaching. You are the teacher of teachers. This means that you not only design and prepare individual sermons, but you are also responsible for the whole teaching office of the Church. Others may be “apt to teach”, but at 10.30 Sunday morning, you are the guy standing behind the Sacred Desk. 

    We must know not only the “traditional” concerns of the preaching task such as how to outline a text, how to turn that outline into a sermon, and how to identify the “proposition” of a sermon, but also the craft-focused work of editing, revising, and preaching to the heart through the ear. 

    We must pay attention to our language, grammar, syntax, discourse, and meta-discourse. Every sermon contributes to an overall plan for the year. We read other preachers and books about preaching. We listen closely to dialogues, monologues, and stand-up routines to help us understand how to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that lives are changed. We put in the work because eternity drips from every word. 

Theology

    Theology can be overly complex. We need to be deeply read in both historic and contemporary theology. Because of my experience in ministry, I conclude that, for those in located ministry, there are two primary questions that should drive the theological task. “Who is Jesus?” “Who are we?” For that reason, the most critical theological concerns should be Christology and Ecclesiology. 

    It is easy to get lost in the theological forest to the neglect or overemphasis of specific doctrinal trees. Focusing on Jesus and the Church gives us an organizing principle for our broader theological studies because these two doctrinal poles magnetically attract examination of other theological topics.     

    Virtually every contemporary theological concern, every confusing trend, and potentially heretical development can be traced back to a deficient understanding of the nature and divinity of Christ or the origin and design of the Church. The symptoms are varied. Overemphasis on practical application and problem-solving has created a generation of Christian believers who find it difficult if not impossible to think deeply about their faith. Fearing the surrounding culture, the theologically ignorant attack and demean those they are called to lovingly reach, blithely unaware that the undercurrents which formed the very culture they despise also formed the syrupy, self-centered theology that is crippling the Church.  In the words of Clark Griswold--“Where’s the Tylenol!?”

    In an age in which expertise is mistrusted or even maligned, we need to reclaim our place in our congregations and communities as those who know what we are talking about. This only occurs when we strive to know what we are talking about—which only happens when we master the information that defines our domain. No one would go to a doctor who neglects the ongoing evolution and development of her field. We want heart surgeons and orthopedists to know “whereof they speak” before they act. The viral infection of lowest-common-denominator preaching has robbed the pulpit of its authority by requiring little authoritative instruction from the modern preacher. It is difficult to imagine, Luther, Augustine, Johnathon Edwards, or Alexander Campbell being satisfied with offering a teasing sip of Biblical instruction when the whole fountain of God’s Word is available to address the human condition. 

    Each of us has individual interests and motivations. We all should share the desire to communicate the unsearchable riches of Christ to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. A part of that job is cultivating in our audience a longing for the deeper and richer drink from the scriptures. To give that deeper drink you need to draw from a deeper well.