“Preaching is primary….exposition is paramount” (Stephen Olford
March 5, 2008 at 7:19 pm
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It’s ages since I’ve posted anything new on the site. I have been manically busy in recent days with a week long stint preaching at a Bible Week in Northern Ireland and then straight home, with a 10 minute turn around, before heading to Ayrshire where I had the privilege of speaking at a Church Anniversary weekend. Not to mention normal lecture preparation etc! It’s been exhausting but an enormous privilege and joy and I can’t think of anything I would rather be doing.
Now - I would love some input from my blog readers. In about 3 weeks I am doing a talk to some Christian workers and have been asked to speak on ‘The Top Ten Things for Preachers to Avoid’. If you were drawing up such a list, what would you include and why?
All contributions very welcome, either via the comments or by email to john(at)thebrands.org.uk
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I’ve been watching this for a few days to see what people would put. Not sure that I’m the person to kick things off but anyway for what it’s worth…
1. Forgetting Jesus (anything else is just a lecture in morality)
2. Ommitting grace
3. Skipping the cross
4. Prayerlessness (spending more time picking a tie to preach in than praying over the scripture you will preach).
5. Half-heartedness in study
6. Incoherence
7. Self speaking more volubly than the text.
8. Being applicationless
9. Being all correction and no teaching or all instruction and no rebuking.
10. Being too proud to learn the lessons of the text in evidence of grace in your own life.
Here’s one; Political involvement. Historically, it has always been an unmitigated disaster. Realistically, it will always alienate someone. Our job is to feed and protect God’s sheep. If we feed them to truth, they will be protected from falsehood and deception. If we feed them political causes and issues, they may become socially astute at the risk of becoming spiritually bankrupt. “…preach the word in season and out of season.”
Here is what I would say are 10 things to avoid:
1) Not preaching the cross in everything we preach, in some manner
2) On the flip side is forcing the cross into a text in a manner that is foreign to the text so as to simply say it was preached
3) To many illustrations
4) Minimizing or leaving out application (orthopraxy)
5) Maximizing application, making it all about application (both can be detrimental)
6) Using the text as a spring board for a topic the text was not meant to address
7) Not helping the audience to see that they can ascertain what you have understood
8)Focusing more on pleasing the audience than God
9)Leaving the audience remembering more about me or my illustration than about the scripture
10)Relying more on human ingenuity than the text at hand and the Holy Spirits ability to use it to change minds and hearts
Well these are just few things that crossed my mind.
J. Clark wrote @ March 11, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Some to add:
1.) Avoid pride by clothing yourself with the humility of Christ. Pride dies in service and earnest prayer. Don’t think your talents will save people or that you will change everything. Only complete and utter dependence.
2.) Avoid being out of touch with your people. Touch them, speak to them as people, visit them, serve them, let them see you in public
3.) Avoid a haughty spirit. Err on the side of grace.
4.) Avoid cowardice. Be brave and courageous in preaching.
5.)Avoid craftiness of the flesh and instead preach by the power of the Holy Spirit
6.) Avoid cliches. People need the freshness of truth. Cliches only corner words and limit what a truth might mean.
7.) Avoid anything that will stop you from praying. Don’t preach until you pray. Pray long and with earnestness till the fire is hot and bright.
8.) Avoid an unwillingness to hear and recieve the sermon yourself. Preach to yourself and respond to it! Be your first convert!
alice wrote @ March 17, 2008 at 3:53 pm
1. Making your personality so extrovert that people remember the person not the message.
2. Speaking for much too long and repeating yourself.
3. Like an actor, the preacher needs to be aware whether he is reaching his audience or not, or whether there are glazed eyes or people sleeping.
4. Making sarcastic comments at the congregation.
5. Jumping, shouting, gesticulating, over-acting, clapping so the sitting audience feels anxious and exhausted.
6. Telling a long story or personal anecdotes instead of illuminating a Bible passage.
7. Being too intellectual - people in church are not Bible College students, they are ordinary people.
8. Quoting from books - we want to hear what the preacher believes, not someone else’s ponderings.
9. Not giving enough time for prayer.
10. Shouting and aggressiveness - the sheep need to be led kindly and lovingly.
Just a couple of ideas to add:
One should avoid over-spiritualizing the process of getting the message or being overly mystical about the choice of the passage to preach. One needs a plan so as to not lose valuable preparation time. One must pray for wisdom and direction, but having asked for wisdom, one must believe that God will give the wisdom needed and get to work on the text.
Closely related, one should avoid treating the exception as the rule. Whereas God may on rare occasion give an entire message to a preacher virtually as a gift, 99 percent of the time, the preacher will have to dig deep for his message, working the text and letting the text work him. This seems to be the way that the Holy Spirit accomplishes His work of transformation in us and through us.
A major problem I see all too many times is the attempt to preach a text without the context. Usually this not only obscures the meaning and application of the text but often the preacher uses it to preach his agenda or trys to teach something contrary to the text.
rpavich wrote @ June 30, 2008 at 12:55 am
Hi,
I’m NOT a pastor. I’m just one who sits in the pews week after week, listening to the preaching.
With that in mind I’d like to suggest one or two:
1.) I want to know what the text means, not what you want to talk about! Don’t use the passage for a launching point and never return!
2.) If I’m as dumb as I am, and I can see what a passage is speaking about, don’t craft a sermon about a subject that is foreign to the text…you just upset me…and I get nothing out of it.
3.) If you’re going to tell me what one of the Greek words in the passage means, then by all means, pick a word that is at least “somewhat” important to the point being made by the biblical author!
that’s just my two cents…
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A Prayer of George Whitefield:
““Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”
