Preaching Notes #1- Don't Just Tell Them What Happened

I think a lot about preaching. It's the key part of my job as pastor of the church and it is pretty much on my mind all the time. From sitting down on Tuesday morning with a blank sheet of paper to standing up on Sunday morning with a page full of notes, a head full of thoughts and a heart that is often full of fear it is on my mind. Once I have preached I find myself not just thinking about the message I have just delivered but also thinking ahead to next Sunday and the next message.

Last summer I had the privilege to preach at a couple of churches in Canada who are part of our Harvest Bible family. They had two or three services where I preached the same message. People asked how I found it. The thing I enjoyed most was work the opportunity to work on things that I wish I had communicated clearer or differently the first time round. I liked the do over.

I have been thinking a lot about preaching recently, probably even more so than normal. I guess it is thinking more about the wider philosophy of preaching rather than the immediate press of a message to be preached on Sunday morning. I plan to write about some of those thoughts over the next while in this little blog series. Here is the first thing I have been thinking about, not in any particular order of priority:

# 1. Don't just preach about what happened, preach about what needs to happen. Don Kistler in his excellent book on preaching said that 'Preachers must preach for conviction and change. No one ever ought to leave a sermon without having a very real sense that there is something in their lives that they need to do something about.'

I think that is helpful to bear on mind. If you are a preacher when did you last think about what the goal of your preaching is and then ask if each aspect of your sermon contributes to that goal. Most people come to church with the ability to read (I know that most will claim to 'not be a reader') but most have learnt basic reading comprehension at school. Why then give them an outline describing what happens in what they have just read. Paul said this, Peter did that... You have without doubt produced a useful commentary on the text, but in doing so have instantaneously diminished the capacity your sermon has for conviction of their heart. They can work that out for themselves. What you have presented may be true but you are called to preach which is, by essence, designed to be transforming.

'But we want to help them read the Bible better for themselves.' That is not the thing the people who sit in church week after week find difficult. The challenge they have is how to apply God's Word to their every day circumstances in very specific ways. The difficulty they experience is how to smuggle those words deep inside them past the defensive attentions of a deceitful and sinful heart.

John Dirkse, my friend at Harvest Bible Chapel Rockford, describes preaching as pressing God's Word down upon the hearts of the listeners. I love that picture. The people entrusted to your care are not coming for you to explain what they already know but to discover the ways they need to grow, the God who alone gives that growth by His grace. So don’t unpack the text from the perspective of what happened historically but what NEEDS to happen in their heart. We should resolve that our hard work has the goal of all of us (including you) experiencing some heart work as the Holy Spirit applies God's Word to our lives.

Don’t be satisfied with sermons that are merely about information, ask God, by His grace, to allow your message every week to be a road map to Biblical transformation because that is authentic Bible preaching: I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of menbut in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2: 3-5, ESV)