Darryl's Blog
June 2006 Archives
David Fitch on The Myth of Expository Preaching:
I believe there is a myth surrounding expository preaching among N. American evangelicals. It goes like this: if the preacher follows the text more closely in his preaching, both he/she and the congregation will stay true to the Word of God. No other agendas or human wisdom will slither into the preaching. Implied is, if the preacher but applies the exegetical historical-critical skills (s)he learned in seminary and studies the text in its original language, aided by the Spirit, (s)he can arrive at the meaning of the text all by him/herself. Expository preaching, done right (with good exegesis), sticks to the already existing stable perspicuous meaning in the text. Interpretation therefore comes second and can only follow the text. In this way, expository preaching allows God's Word to drive the message and any interpretation is automatically subordinated to it. This is the mythology I believe is behind expository preaching in the evangelical world.
You may want to read the entire post.
Fitch is on to something. I like what he says about individualism, and I like where he ends up in his chapter on preaching in The Great Giveaway. But I need to wrestle through his authorial intent issue. I'm looking forward to reading Is There a Meaning in This Text? which is on its way to me now.
At our last residency, they warned us that we had a good 50-100 hours reading ahead of us before we started to write our thesis-project. I thought I would get it done in a couple of months, but it's taken longer. One book leads to another 400+ page one. But it's been fun.
My reading is mostly done now. I plan to read a few more on vacation over the next couple of weeks. Then comes the hard part - writing. I have to say I'm looking forward to it.
Here are some of the books piled on my desk.
I was going to write one more premise about theocentric preaching - something about the importance of making the story of the Bible our story - but I think I'll leave it for now. I have way too much thinking to do to make many more pronouncements right now.
It's been scary, though, to realize how easy it is to fall into allegorizing and moralizing when we read or preach the Bible.
I hope I can do justice to the topic when I actually begin to sit down and write in a couple of weeks.
I'll be posting more as I write at TheocentricPreaching.com, starting around the end of July. If you're interested you could add it to your RSS reader now.
In discussions about the contemporary mission of the Church it is often said that the Church ought to address itself to the real questions which people are asking. That is to misunderstand the mission of Jesus and the mission of the Church. The world's questions are not the questions which lead to life. What really needs to be said is that where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer.
This month, Richview has hired two new staff, one externally and one internally. We also have some staff who've been with us a bit longer.
So, we now have quite a diverse staff: all different ages, both genders, different family situations, and various ethnic backgrounds. I'm enjoying the diversity and the way we really seem to enjoy being together.
This week we've done quite a bit of relational stuff. Last night, I sat in a room with all of them and realized again what an amazing group of people they are. Jim Collins talks about the importance of getting the right people on the bus. I like having these people on the same bus that I'm on.
Good to realize how blessed I am, and to give thanks for some pretty amazing people.
Christina played in a soccer tournament last Saturday, and her team won the gold medal. Not bad. It was a fun day and almost as entertaining as some World Cup games.
Tomorrow she graduates from grade six. It's only grade six but it's a big deal for her. Neat and scary to see her growing up.
Not long after my last post, I started listening to the recording of a session that N.T. Wright did on preaching in Toronto last month. Someone asked him what he thought about preaching on themes that aren't central to the text - for instance, using the story of Eli as an example of a bad parent, or Ruth on courtship principles. (The questioner joked that he used Ruth this way until he got to the part about the night on the threshing floor.)
Wright didn't seem to rule this out, so I guess you could say that he disagrees with me. I think he would say it's not the best use of the text, and it certainly doesn't lead us into understanding the story that we're a part of in quite the same way. In other words, it's not the best way to preach but it can be done.
So N.T. thinks it's okay to keep some of the sermons I think we need to throw out. And he's a lot smarter than me. So there.
Warning: if you accept this premise, it will destroy a lot of sermons you may have preached.
Every preacher I know wants to preach sermons that connect with the needs of real people. This is good and necessary if you want to be an effective preacher. There's a danger, though: to make the sermon primarily about us rather than God, and to miss the bigger picture.
So far I've said that preaching gets wonky when we think the Bible is about us, and all we have to do is apply it. Instead, we need to place Scripture within its larger context or story line.
This leads me to my third premise: the text has a point. So, if I'm preaching from a text, then my point had better be pretty close to the point of the text. This means that I read patiently and try to understand the purpose of the text, while recognizing my propensity to read preconceived notions and my existing worldview (more on this later) into the text. My preaching of that text has to tie in somehow with the purpose of the author in writing the text as best as possible.
[The Bible] is not a religious book of advice about the "answers" we need about a happy marriage, sex, work, or losing weight. Although the Scriptures reflect on many of those issues, they are above all about who God is and what God thinks and wills. I understand reality only if I have an appreciation for who he is and what he desires for his creation and from his creation. (Haddon Robinson, The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching)
I remember hearing someone preach on Genesis a few years back. One of his main points is that we should get more sleep. While this is great advice, it's also anthropocentric and really had nothing to do with why the text was written. I don't want to be too hard on this guy, because I've made the same mistake many times.
This is probably the biggest mistake that people make when preaching and reading the Bible. They see it as a book with all kinds of lessons for us to somehow lift out and apply to ourselves today. Some passages are a little more challenging, so you have to be a bit more imaginative about how you lift out lessons and bring them into today's context. Some funny things can happen when you treat the Bible like this. Anyone want to think about all the goofy sermons that could be preached if you take Genesis 24 as a text on how to find a wife? It's been done.
Also, we ignore huge parts of Scripture because they aren't as "relevant" to today. Entire sections of Scripture are ignored because they're not as applicable. For instance, one book says, "All Scripture is equally inspired. All Scripture is not equally important. All Scripture is not equally applicable." So, effectively, you abandon parts that are not as applicable and focus on the rest.
What's the alternative? Instead of relating the passage directly to application, relate the passage instead to the story line of the Bible. This is my second premise: that the Bible has a story line, and that theocentric sermons will somehow relate each text to the entire story.
A satirical article from LarkNews.com:
NAPERVILLE, Ill. — Brentwood Community Church's congregation has asked its pastor to stop using the pulpit as his public confessional and to set boundaries on what he's willing to share."Every week he confesses another personal weakness," says one member. "You get twitchy wondering what's next."
The personal confession streak started after Pastor Greg Ott attended a pastors conference in Chicago. He returned and told the church he was embracing a "new vulnerability" with them.
"That sounded great until we realized it meant he would dump his dirty laundry on us every Sunday," says one church member.
In the rhythm of his sermon, Ott's confession usually comes a third of the way through, his people say. On a recent Sunday morning the congregation seemed to collectively cringe as he stepped around the pulpit and said, "Let me be real transparent with you ..."
"I brace myself until he spits it out," says Jocelyn Garnet. "It makes for a tense service."
Every time I prepare a sermon, I face the same temptation. I open the text and want to make a headlong rush to application. I should know better but it happens way too often. And, when I give into the temptation, it leads to all kinds of mistakes including anthropocentric preaching that leaves everyone feeling that something is wrong somehow.
Underneath this rush to application is an assumption that is dead wrong: that the Bible is a book about me. I can see how one would get to this assumption. We are, after all, included in the Bible. But it's important to realize something important: the BIble is not about me. We are in the story, but we are not the point of the story. I'll get to what the story is, and our part in it, in my next premise.
To paraphrase Carly Simon, "You're so vain. You probably think this text is about you." Grasping God's Word says, "We should not be so arrogant and prideful as to think that God cared nothing about the original audience but was merely using them to get a message to us."
Will you explode if you drink Diet Coke and eat Mentos?
I first got interested in theocentric preaching when I realized how much anthropocentric preaching I've done, and how awful it really is.
We were set up. Two years ago I attended our first D.Min. residency with Haddon Robinson. He and Duane Litfin assigned us a whole bunch of texts and asked us to express the big ideas, or central themes, of these texts. They included stories like David and Goliath and Jesus calming the storm. They knew what was going to happen.
Everyone went running toward anthropocentric themes:
- God will help to slay the giants in our lives.
- Jesus will calm the storms of your life.
Think about that for a second. We were in a room of pretty smart people, all of them seminary trained and with years of ministry experience. And pretty much all of us ran to directly to application and missed the main point of these texts.
I'm thinking through a web site that would work much like sourceforge but instead of making software we work together to create things like sermons, bible study materials, music, course curriculum, and even books.
I like the idea and I've wanted something like this for years (and SermonCentral isn't it). Head over and let him know what you think.
I know there are some productivity geeks out there. You read 43 Folders, Lifehacker, and Pastor Hacks. You own Moleskines and appreciate what Rachel does with them. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you may want to skip reading this post.
I've bounced between systems for some time now. I've tried Covey, and later Life Balance with a Getting Things Done approach. I haven't been satisfied, though. It's important for me to feel like I can rely on the system, and that I'm not spending more time managing the system than actually getting things done.
Last week I began using Backpack. I've had an account with them before but I've never used it consistently. It's been a week now and it's perfect.
It's simple. It's reliable. It does everything I need but nothing more.
If you're geeky enough to care, give it a try. They have a free version for you to check out. And if you use a Mac, don't forget to try PackRat, which lets you take your Backpack data offline.
One of my favorite churches in Toronto has a concert this Saturday night. The Jehovah Shalom Youth Band and Choir are amazing, and I am planning to attend.
All the important details are on their website.
Ever have one of those weeks? After a few days you just have to laugh and go with the flow and be thankful that you're not dealing with real problems (e.g. ones that involve hospitals or worse). Broken Macs, traffic jams, being perpetually behind schedule, and Murphy's Law - sometimes you just have to wait it out and realize that it will get better.
I said to Charlene today that, even though I'm scheduled for dental surgery, today looks more promising than the past couple of days.
That's why when I got a call this morning saying that a dumpster had been dropped off on our driveway, I wasn't surprised, even though we never ordered one. I don't know what will happen next, but I sure can't wait to find out! I'm hoping it won't involve something crazy at the dentist, though.
I could brag about my lack of viruses and how good-looking my iBook is, and how much fun it is to use, but I'm tapping away on a cheap backup PC in my office instead. Why? My iBook is in for repair. Again. Logic board. Again.
I love Apple, but I'm back here in Windows world. I wish I could quit you.
If you haven't prayed for Jordon and Wendy and Mark in a while, please do so.
I think I've hinted before that Dad wasn't the father that any of us really would have wanted. I don't want to paint him negatively, because he was my Dad and I've inherited some of his traits. He really was, in many ways, a generous, truthful, and funny man with all kinds of potential.
But he failed as a husband and a Dad. There's no other way to say it.
Enter grace.
Yesterday I saw again what God can do when one person - in this case, my mother - shows grace to a person who didn't deserve it. Over the years, that grace worked its way throughout our family. The end result is that we gave Dad a much better send-off yesterday than he really deserved, but it was exactly the send-off that we needed to give, not based on performance but based on God's desire that we honor our father. We got to extend the same grace to him that God has shown to us.
Yesterday I looked around at my brothers and sister and mother and realized how incredibly blessed I am. And how great grace can be.
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things
Grace, U2
Today, my family is gathering for Dad's memorial service. It's going to be a quiet affair, with only family present. It's going to be in a home and I doubt any of us will be wearing formal clothes. It will be a good chance, though, to mark Dad's passing.
I stepped on a bee last night. Both the bee and I lost in the encounter. Charlene actually felt sorry for the bee. I'm not going to say any more right now except that guys are wimps when they get stung by bees.