Book of the Week No. 12

I am not sure how I can say this without sounding a bit over the top but Bryan Chapell’s ‘Christ-Centred Preaching‘ is, quite frankly, the best and most helpful book on the preparing of sermons that I have come across in all the many books on preaching I have read. It’s one of those books you just wish you had been aware of when you started out preaching and now, when you read it, you feel like you want to start all over again and get it right this time! Chapell is president and professor of practical theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis, Missouri and if you click here you can actually download his lectures on Christ-centred preaching, either in MP3 or pdf format.

Of all the many highlights of this great book, let me single out just three that have been particularly striking for me.

One of the underlying themes of the book is what he calls the ‘Fallen Condition Focus’ (FCF). Chapell maintains that “Determining a sermon’s subject is half done when a preacher has discovered what the biblical writer was saying. We do not fully understand the subject until we have also determined its purpose.” (p48). Believing that “all Scripture focuses on the fallen condition that necessitated the writing of the passage” and that true preaching will use “the text’s features to explain how the Holy Spirit addresses that concern then and now“, Chapell teaches that “Ultimately, a sermon is about how a text says we are to respond biblically to the FCF as it is experienced in our lives” (p50-51). I found this so helpful and illuminating and it will certainly affect my preparation in the future.

Focussing on th FCF naturally leads to another area which Chapell is very strong and helpful on - application. “biblical preaching that brings an FCF to the surface also recognises the need for application” (p53). After all, as he memorably says, “Without the ’so what?’ we preach to a ‘who cares?’ “(p52) Again and again he stresses the need for careful application and his full chapter on the subject is worth the price of the book alone.

Another emphasis I found so helpful was his very practical guide to ‘Outlining and Structure’. In one sense he doesn’t says anything that you don’t instinctively know to be common sense and true, but for some reason it had never occurred to you. Chapell is a great believer in well structured sermons. “A key to the revival of effective exposition is teaching pastors to hone the structure of their messages so that the truths of Scripture can shine clearly through this long-trusted approach with methods that are sensitive to the currents of our culture but do not capitulate to them.” (p133) Of all the gems in this particular mine, the one I need to work on most is “Avoid the trap of merely describing a text (i.e., simply outlining the facts of a text in a way that does not disclose the truth principles they support - Noah was old, Noah built an ark, Noah stayed dry). Main points should always remain hortatory in nature…..Most preachers discover that when they state the main points as truth principles that immediately apply to their listeners rather than as simple descriptions of the facts of a text, their sermons significantly grow in power of expression and engagement of listeners.” (p153).

The great thing about this most practically helpful of books is that it doesn’t leave you somewhat cold with the mechanics. It warms your heart and stirs you to do better. It comes from the heart of a pastor-preacher who believes that “the goal of preaching is not merely to impart information but to provide the means of transformation ordained by a sovereign God that will affect the lives and destinies of eternal souls committed to a preacher’s spiritual care.” (p25) Having read the book, I’ve burned the lecture mp3s on to CDs and look forward to enjoying this ministry on my travels in coming weeks. I also plan to use this book - along with Ramesh Richard’s book I reviewed last week - as a text book and basis for a Preachers’ Workshop my home church is starting in the autumn. More info on that here

The African Spurgeon?

Last week I had I had the privilege of hearing Pastor Conrad Mbewe speak at a meeting I was involved in in London. Conrad Mbewe, who has been described as Africa’s Spurgeon, gave a heartfelt message on the challenges and blessings of Bible Teaching in Southern Africa. It was undoubtedly one of the best things I have heard from an African Bible teacher and I warmly commend it to you. Unfortunately the message wasn’t recorded so you won’t hear the warm tones of his voice but you can download or access the text here. Conrad Mbewe is Pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia and you can download audio sermons from their website.

The article likening him to Spurgeon appeared in The World Magazine in 2003.

Book of the Week No11 is, like last week’s selection, also the result of a recommendation. Some time ago, Jonathan Lamb of Langham Partnership International drew my attention to Ramesh Richard’s ‘Preparing Expository Sermons’ which is subtitled ‘A Seven Step Method for Biblical Preaching’ Ramesh Richard, who is on the staff at Dallas Theological Seminary has devised a system he calls Scripture Sculpture and the book is a very detailed explanation of this approach to sermon preparation.

After an introductory chapter in which he affirms and defines expository preaching - “Expository Preaching is the contemporization of the central proposition of a biblical text that is derived from proper methods of interpretation and declared through effective means of communication to inform minds, instruct hearts, and influence behaviour toward godliness” (p19) - Richard introduces his seven step approach which is, in many ways, an exposition of his definition of exposition.

1. Study the text - the flesh of the text
2. Structure the text - the skeletal make up of the text
3. The central proposition of the text - the heart of the text
4. The purpose bridge - the brain of the text and therefore of the sermon
5. The central proposition of the sermon - the heart of the sermon
6. Structure the sermon - the skeleton of the sermon
7. Preach the sermon - the flesh of the sermon

As someone who has never really adopted a mechanical process for sermon preparation, my initial reaction to Richard’s method when I first read it a couple of years ago, was somewhat negative. But I worked through the book in great detail at that time and have revisited it several times since, most recently through this last week. As I have re-read and, from time to time applied his principles, I find him enormously and increasingly helpful.

If I could borrow Richard’s helpful analogy, the ’skeleton’ of his method is that each text contains big bones and small bones and the preacher’s task is to identify them, differentiate between them and reflect them in his sermon structure and preaching.

One of my greatest joys in ministry is an annual Preachers’ Workshop I run for national pastors in Sudan. I have largely based my teaching on a very simplified version of Richard’s approach and the analogous basis of the method connects well with the African mind.

At the end of the book is an unusually large number of appendices, 13 in all, some of which further clarify and develop sections of the book; but there is also, for example, a very helpful Sermon Evaluation Questionnaire, which it might be worth using to test your next sermon.

Once or twice, especially in the area of grammatical analysis, he gets so detailed that at first I almost lost my way, but for a fresh approach to exegesis and preparation, I unhesitatingly commend the book to you. It refreshed my own preaching preparation and is a great discipline for sticking to the actual text of Scripture.

My Book of the Week No 10 is
‘Spirit Empowered Preaching‘ by Arturo Azurdia III and I’m thankful to my good friend Cliff Boone of Allentown, Pennsylvania for the recommendation, since I was previously unaware of this author. Azurdia is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Director of Pastoral Mentoring at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon and has an excellent website at www.spiritempoweredpreaching.com which I have just discovered and will be revisiting frequently, I am sure.

Refreshingly honest, Azurdia admits that “the majority of my efforts in pneumatology have been in establishing what the Spirit does not do, almost to the complete exclusion of establishing the magnificence of His person and the indispensability of His ministry in any positive way.” (p33)

The basic tenet of his book is that “any effective ministry must include both a resolute commitment to the practice of diligent exegesis and a thoroughgoing dependence upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit” (p14) and he maintains that “the greatest deficiency in contemporary expositional ministry is powerlessness; in other words, preaching that is devoid of the vitality of the Holy Spirit.” (p12)

Let me review this superb book by giving you a brief overview of the chapters.

1. The Greater Works - really an exposition of John 14v12, persuasively explaining the “greater works” which Jesus promised his disciples they would do after his ascension as the conversions of people and the advancement of the gospel.

2. The Sacred Communicator - he identifies the great deficiency, in so many preachers and so much preaching, of dependency on the vitality of the Holy Spirit. “Rarely are seminarians taught to pray and fast and weep for the subjective and internal illumination of the Holy Spirit in correspondence with their diligent efforts in the sacred text.” (p39)

3. The Christocentric Spirit - “Jesus will be the sum and substance of the Spirit’s revelatory ministry” (p31) “If ever we are to expect the Spirit’s enablement, we must be resolutely wedded to His purpose; to glorify Jesus Christ through the instrumentality of the Scriptures. When this message is our message we can look for His vitality. God’s purposes will advance. Hearts will burn. Minds will be opened. People will come to know and love Jesus Christ.” (p63)

4. The Evangelical Priority - in many ways a development of the previous chapter, but also a practical exposition of 1 Corinthians 1:18-21 and the fact that “apostolic ministry is characterised by a determination to proclaim a foolish message” (p69) Heart warming, confidence building stuff and badly needed today.

5. The Decisive Function of the Church - Azurdia maintains that the Bible itself establishes preaching as the primary method of communicating the message of the gospel, because “it is the best method suited to the nature of the message being preached.” (p8 He recognises that in many ways preaching is a counter-culture activity today and many preachers have gone with culture rather than Scripture.

6. The SineQua Non of Gospel Preaching - Azurdia really gets to the heart of his thesis here, based on all that has gone before. “It is not enough to possess the proper message. Nor is it enough to embrace the proper method. Gospel preachers desperately need the divinely appointed means; the clothing with power from on high.” (p112)

7. The Occupational Vulnerability of Preaching - one of the most uncomfortable but helpful chapters I have read for a long time. He describes this vulnerability as “to be possessed by a holy compulsion but hobbled by human inability” (p12 “But he must not seek to elude the pain by redefining the aim”

8. Preaching and the Man of God - the source of power in the preacher. This chapter, almost the book, is worth it just for the violin illustration!

9. The Sensitive Spirit - the role and responsibility of the congregation in bringing about spirit empowered preaching. Azurdia quotes Pierre Ch Marcel - “When, then, will the believers en masse understand that they are primarily responsible for the preaching which they hear, yes more than their preachers…preaching the word is a function and activity of the Church, not the function and specialty of a man.” (p152)

10. Pray Me Full - the necessity of prayer in the lives of the preacher and congregation

Most books on preaching devote a chapter or two to the role of the Holy Spirit in preaching. Here is a whole book given over to the subject and, as Joey Pipa says on the cover, “Everyone who is preaching, or preparing to preach, needs to read this book.”

Book of the Week 9

At 109 pages, John Piper’s ‘The Supremacy of God in Preaching’ will not take you long to read but if you are like me, it will take several readings and probably a lifetime of preaching to begin to feel that you have really got anywhere near the sort of preaching that Piper so eloquently depicts here.

During this past week this book has fired my heart, moved my soul, fed my mind and deeply humbled me. It has, unashamedly, left me crying out to God to forgive all my lack-lustre, half-hearted, unbalanced attempts at preaching and made me long more than ever before to preach in such a way that, in Piper’s words, my affections and those of my listeners are “ravished” with “irresistible displays of glory.” (p2 I love his typically Piperesque definition of preaching - “worshipping over the Word of God - the text of Scripture - with explanation and exultation.” (p9) “Preaching is expository exultation” he says. (p11)

The book is in two parts. The first ‘Why God should be supreme in preaching’ has chapters on The Goal of Preaching: The Glory of God; The Ground of Preaching: The Cross of Christ; The Gift of Preaching: The Power of the Holy Spirit and The Gravity and Gladness of Preaching.
Here is a clear call to faithful God-centred, Scripture saturated preaching. “My guess is”, says Piper, “that one good reason why people sometimes doubt the abiding value of God-centred preaching is because they have never heard any.” (v25) There were two emphases here that particularly resonated with me and I think are desperately needing to be heard in today’s preaching climate. The first is the challenge to preachers to “get people to open their Bibles and put their fingers on the text.” (p45) For me personally that’s one of the great reasons I don’t like using PowerPoint in my preaching. The sweetest sound is to hear the turning of Bible pages as the congregation follow the references in their Bibles. Piper says, “One of the biggest problems I have with younger preachers whom I am called on to critique is to get them to quote the parts of the text that support the points they are making. It makes me wonder if they have been taught that you should get the drift of a text and then talk in your own words for thirty minutes. The effect of that kind of preaching is to leave people groping for the Word of God and wondering whether what you said is really in the Bible.” The other emphasis is in the call for “the work of preaching…to be done in blood-earnestness” (p54), quoting John Mason speaking of the ministry of Thomas Chalmers. “Most people today have so little experience of deep, earnest, reverent, powerful encounters with God in preaching that the only associations that come to mind when the notion is mentioned are that the preacher is morose or boring or dismal or sullen or gloomy or surly or unfriendly.” Piper bemoans the present “preaching atmosphere and a preaching style plagued by triviality, levity, carelessness, flippancy, and a general spirit that nothing of eternal and infinite proportions is being done or siad on Sunday morning.” (p55) “Gladness and gravity should be woven together in the life and preaching of a pastor in such a way as to sober the careless soul and sweeten the burdens of the saints.” (p55)

The second half of the book is made up of 3 lessons from the example of Piper’s great mentor, Jonathan Edwards, on keeping God central, submitting to sweet sovereignty and making God supreme. I especially commend to you the ten characteristics of good preaching that Piper has distilled from Edwards’ writings and ministry and which should almost be seen (in my humble opinion) as 10 commandments for God glorifying, saint edifying, sinner converting ministry. I plan to go back and review these on a regular basis and see how my preparation and preaching is matching up.

1. Stir up holy affections
2. Enlighten the mind
3. Saturate with Scripture
4. Employ analogies and images
5. Use threat and warning
6. Plead for a response
7. Probe the workings of the heart
8. Yield to the Holy Spirit in prayer
9. Be broken and tenderhearted
10.Be intense

Actually, I could have saved the effort of this review and simply quoted my own mentor, Sinclair Ferguson, who says on the book’s cover: “Occasionally, among the myriad of books for ministers, a work appears so seminal to the preacher’s calling that it can safely be said: ‘This is a must read.’ The Supremacy of God in preaching is such a book. No wonder it’s at No 2 in this blog’s polled list of the top 10 recommended books on preaching.

Book of the Week 8

I have so far managed to keep up my commitment to read and review one book on preaching a week through 2007 but I am a little behind in posting the reviews.

I first read Denis Lane’s excellent ‘Preach the Word‘ during my first pastorate over 20 years ago and also used it as a study book with a few men in the Church that I was encouraging to develop their preaching skills. More recently I was involved in getting it translated into Arabic and published through the generous partnership of the Middle East Reformed Fellowship and it now use it in my ministry among Sudanese pastors and church leaders.

Denis Lane is an experienced pastor, preacher and missionary, having served with OMF International for many years, and his book reflects the wisdom and insights garnered from many and varied situations and his passion for mission. After introductory chapters dealing with ‘Revelation and the Word of God’, ‘The Preacher and his Message’ and ‘The Nature of Expository Preaching’, Lane has two chapters dealing with ‘Planned Preaching’ and ‘Preparation’ and then a series of very practical and helpful chapters on how to prepare and preach sermons from different types of Scripture - narrative, psalms, epistles, the prophets. He then has chapter on the introduction, the use of illustrations and the conclusion before wrapping up with a chapter of personal application for the preacher called ‘The Primary Need’ where he stresses the need for personal preparation and prayerfulness to assist the effectiveness of the preaching itself.

I well remember the first time I read the book as a young and inexperienced preacher and being especially helped by Lane’s treatment of the different types of Scripture passages and, to a certain extent, my own teaching of others, particularly in an African context, has been hugely influenced by him.

Each chapter of the book has a short series of questions for further study and these form a great basis for some interaction with others as well as working through on your own. Let me just give you two quotes from Lane’s chapter on ‘The preacher and his message’:

“The church of God across the world needs men of God in the ministry. Where such men are lacking some people are not listening to the command of God, and what applies to churches also applies in mission. God has chosen to pass his message through people. His supreme revelation of himself came to us in a man, the Word made flesh. In Jesus Christ truth had a perfect human medium through which to reach us. The rays of true light were not bent, darkened or hindered by passing through the transparent personality of the Lord.” “Effective preaching depends on much more that good speaking, careful construction of the message and knowledge of methods. What we are determines the kind of message our hearers receive. Our personality and the personal relationship with God are vital parts of our preaching. We cannot live carelessly from Monday to Saturday and expect to preach with power on Sunday.” (p15)