Thursday, August 10, 2006
What makes for good preaching?
Recently I've developed the habit of listening to a variety of preachers from around the globe. This started as a professional development thing, but it's also turned out (surprise surprise) to be an incredibly edifying hobby. One of the most enjoyable has been Greg Laurie from the west coast of the US. Exegetically he can miss the mark at times (who is going to cast the first stone?), but he is sure worth a listen...so darn clear in his presentation, and you end up thinking "Man, its good to be Christ-follower." Now there are two goals that I reckon we should be aiming for when firing from the pulpit. So now I'm interested, what do like hearing from the pulpit/lecturn/stage/podcast?
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14 comments:
Passion; arising out of the conviction of God's word being preached, as it critiques society and moves our hearts to live for Christ.
interesting question - there is a related discussion over here
... and for what its worth, i think one of the things that marks good preaching is preaching which says something to both Christ-followers and others. this sounds really obvious, but i think good preaching assumes that sitting in the congregation, on any given day, are the people we want to be there (our non christian friends, family, randoms from the surrounding area) and has something true and real to say to them, in a manner that is challenging rather than alienating.
Challenging rather than alienating...that's a helpful distinction. Thanks
Marty Marty Marty, welcome to the world of blogging from which you will never escape...
I fondly remember Katay tearing-up (as in tears, not ripping stuff) in the pulpit when he was particularly struck by the magnificence of the God about whom he was preaching, i love it when sermons lift my eyes to heaven or at least out of my own funny little world and then brings them to rest on my neighbor - is it ok to say that a nice bit of application never goes astray?
Good ole CSL at the conclusion of "The Weight of Glory" says: "Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point. That being so, it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of one such use..." And he goes from there to articlate a really helpful and really challenging application of his sermon - beautiful stuff which I would totally type out except I will eventually have to get to work this morning!
And I love his segue too, "meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning..." acknowledgement of that reality can never go too far wrong I don't think!
I like the dedication at the begining of Haddon Robinsons 'expository preaching' - that it is for
"The men and women who keep a sacred appointment on a Sunday morning. Bewildered by seductive voices, nursing wounds life has inflicted upon them, anxious about matters that do not matter. They come to listen for a clear word from God that speaks to their condition."
I think that a part of good preaching is using scripture to speak words of truth to those conditions (however hard it might be to hear) and helping people to understand that by Grace there is a better alterantive to the medicocrity that we settle for...
anyway - welcome to blog world
I'll find her Marty, don't you worry about that...
JT
JT: don't make me call you a name that I might regret.
Jodi: Yes, absolutely I agree with the great HR. I've had another thought, which I might post tomorrow after Mr. Exegetical Paper is finished.
Emma: Yes, show them how heaven hits monday morning. Hard to do every week, you need to be emotionally/mentally firing to do it well I think, but I try!
Why do we assume that good preaching is defined by a Christian aspect. Does this mean that Islamic preachers cannot be good preachers? I think it's a bad semantic move to equate 'preaching' with 'christian preaching', doubly underhanded if the move is to restrict the idea of 'good' preaching to 'christian' preaching.
to critique Russ, for example, passion is not solely confined to the Christian experience of life. people are passionate about lots of things. how will you discern passion that arises from the conviction of the truth from passion that arises from being convicted by delusion (since delusion 'puts a hold on you' as much as truth seems to).
I would argue that preaching itself is a human art. the gospel certainly changes that - it gives content, it guides our methodology of preaching, and it empowers it in a way that non-christian preaching must lack (since the Holy Spirit is categorically different from the many other spirits). but the art of preaching itself? perhaps we need to rethink a quick 'go for the Word' answer.
That is a good point to address Seumas, so much in fact I think I am being stirred to use this topic area as a subject for a fourth year project.
An so I am rethinking:
Why do I assume that good preaching is defined by a Christian aspect? That is a helpful question. I am not a smart man, but I may have a go at what I think makes for good preaching. And that is, because bad preaching is not of Christ, that is what makes it bad, as opposed to good. I assumed this discussion was nailed to the this door of the Blog world out of the context of Christian preaching. That may be where I am at fault. I continue to rethink. Yet I want to go further.
Is it an underhanded semantic game to use words in context to convey meaning? I don’t think so. We need the context of our original question here as well, don’t we? Yeah, I love the Bible, I will go to the word pretty quickly. It is there we see the root of the Greek word where we translate into the forms of ‘preach’ is ‘to bring good news’, or to ‘proclaim’ in the context of ‘the word’ (2 Tim 4:2). There are times in the Bible where preaching is termed ‘bad’, because of its misuse of content (Mt 23:3, Rom 2:21, Gal 1:8, Phil 1:15).
Yes, passion is not solely confined to the Christian experience. Last night I passionately sang for the sake of people’s entertainment at The Moore College Revue; note the content of the words by the artist Robbie Williams. Even the words I used to gee-up the crowd. No word of God there. But it was passionate, and sincere, maybe even deluded. The passion had a hold on me, and on the crowd. Yet it was not preaching, it was singing. Another semantic category others may call preaching. How many other categories can we think of? (I almost felt like a Pentecostal pastor at the end in the suit on another crowd gee-up session, but again, not preaching in the light of this context). How do I discern from where such passion arises? Did I preach Christ or entertainment? I can be passionate about either. But Christian preaching, and good Christian preaching is (if I may quote myself to clarify), ‘Passion; arising out of the conviction of God's word being preached…’
The Holy Spirit is so different, Christian preaching is so different, that ‘preaching’ is different. Different from shouting. Different from hosting ROVE live. Different from a presidential address. Different from Islamic oration, or ‘Islamic preaching’, using whatever semantic move or word we would like to use. Because when we speak of preaching, we speak of Christ preached.
I was on the school debating team throughout high school, being passionate about the issues, and wooing the crowd through communication. But if I do this in church not as a Spiritual Gift for the building of the body, then alas I am but a clanging cymbal. I can be a good speaker, but am I a good preacher? Again, you may argue I am splitting definitions, well, I’ll keep sharpening up on this and learning, for I do want to split hard on this. If we want to discuss what makes for good up-front skills or good speaking, lets do that too. But Christian preaching? Different.
I would argue that any human art is only God enabled. Yes that means people can be good orators, but to argue by way of semantics, I think we can use words to state what we mean, in context. Seumas, I would argue that you are speaking of oration and I am thinking that we are speaking here of preaching; namely Christ. At least, that is the context I assumed when I jumped into the water and had a splash with this issue. So as I hit the ball back, who’s up for a hit?
Then, Russ, if you want to use 'preaching' to mean specifically 'Christian preaching', with a God-Word content, are you not radically dividing human oration from some kind of divinely-inspired Gospel-ising? I think the danger you run is to make the split too deep, and that we will end up with a theology of preaching that is similar to that doctrine of scripture that sees the human authors as mechanical tools.
Which would be an even graver danger in theologising our preaching, since I take it none of us want to claim divine inspiration at that level for our words. The point I'm driving at is that however much we want to claim a distinctive nature for Christian preaching, and I think we do, because both the Gospel and the Holy Spirit are categorically different from 'other gospels' and 'other spirits', we must also wrestle with the truly human aspect of the preaching endeavour.
Firstly, I want to make the split because we are talking about Christian preaching here, or am I misreading the context of this discussion? And I want to make the split as far as saying that when we speak of Christian preaching, you can have all the technique in the world, but without the gospel being preached then what exactly is your technique doing? I have assumed the human endeavour involved when I say there is a passion there, a conviction, as there is a preaching of God’s word. Christian preaching is humans preaching the word of God. Yes we sharpen our techniques. We are doing that all the time. But when the question is asked, ‘So now I'm interested, what do like hearing from the pulpit/lecturn/stage/podcast?’ My answer remains the same. I don’t see how I am in danger here? Is it okay to say that I like hearing the conviction that Christ is Lord from the pulpit, maybe even over the fancy presentation that is given in? I like hearing from a preacher who has worked hard at the text, is himself convicted, is able to communicate the importance of that conviction to me so that all I see is Christ and through being informed am moved in my heart to live for Him. I’m all for talking techniques of human oration. But when we are talking about Christian preaching, are we not talking about preaching Christ with whatever technique we develop? Maybe we should have started the discussion at; what makes for good technique? Then I would have answered with my list of techniques, even with a line graph. But its just that I assumed we were talking about Christian preaching, which is about Christ, that’s why there is a ‘distinctive nature of for Christian preaching’.
For my 2 cents, maybe this helps from 2 Cor 11:
Paul says "I may not be a trained speaker..." (V6),
but he has just sid that he "preached Christ" to them in V4.
JT
(actually it's "preached Jesus", but same diff, right?)
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