Utumishi Blog

Many of us would want to say, as preachers, that our confidence is completely in the Spirit-breathed Word to do a genuine, lasting work in people’s hearts. It is the seed of the Word which brings the great harvest. It is the Word of God that is living active. It is the Word which is sharper than a two-edged sword. That’s why we spend hours and hours labouring to get our understanding right (knees on the floor, nose in the text) before we work on how to get it across. But how can we tell if we are putting our confidence in the Word when it comes to Sunday morning? A few suggested measures:

1. Ratio of amount of Bible read to length of sermon. Paul calls Timothy first to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. In the 1662 BCP service of Morning Prayer as originally conceived, there would have been 7 or 8 chapters of Scripture read in the course of the service (including set Psalms and Scripture in the liturgy). That would be at least 30 minutes every Sunday (and possibly more with total Scripture length sometimes over 4000 words). In contrast the average length of the Homilies prescribed by Cranmer is around 3200 words (though some in the later second book of Homilies are considerably longer). Again, around 30 minutes. Compare that ratio of 1:1 with our more normal modern practice of a short reading immediately before the sermon.
2. Placement of prayer. Is it before the reading or between the reading and the sermon? If I pray for our hearing of the Word before it is read then that implies that it will be speaking even as it is read. If I always pray immediately before the sermon then the implication could be that we’re only going to hear God really speak when I unpack what would otherwise be rather unclear and hard to understand.
3. Ratio of introduction to body of sermon. How long does it take me to get into the passage itself? Introductions can be helpful in many ways but when it gets over a certain length then questions may be asked about whether I am really confident that the Bible is a) clear and b) gripping.
4. Speed and expressiveness in reading the Scriptures versus speed and expressiveness in the delivery of my words in the sermon. For one thing we need to make sure that whoever is reading the Scriptures in the public gathering does it really really well. But even in the sermon itself there is a danger – that when I as the preacher refer back to a verse or quote Scripture in the body of my sermon, I read it very quickly, rushing through it as a footnote or a parenthesis, while in contrast, when it comes to my own words and phrases and headings and points, I go more slowly, with much more emphasis. What I am subliminally communicating is that the Scriptures are my launchpad – and a rather dry and dusty one at that – while the thing you really need to take away is my carefully crafted rhetoric or 3 points beginning with P. What if I reversed (or at least equalised) the equation and gave great attention to how I read the Scriptures – with real force and authority and expressiveness – stressing the key words that make the point? What if I aimed to have the congregation go away with God’s words ringing in their ears not mine?
5. Number of cross-references, particularly corroborative and thematic. There is a place for cross-references, particularly Biblical theological ones connecting a passage into the big salvation story of Scripture, but generally, once the number goes beyond two or three cross-references there is an inverse relationship between number of references and our focus on and confidence in the text in hand. Particularly troublesome are the ‘this makes me think of…’ type of cross-reference or the ‘as it also says in…’ type. In contrast, a tight focus on one text communicates that there is plenty here; each passage of Scripture is clear and rich and solid.
6. Relying on God’s words to do the cutting versus relying on additional illustration or application to do the cutting. It’s important to illustrate and apply God’s Word. It’s important that things are grounded in real life. But there is a danger that, as one brother put it, “we use the illustration to do the work and make the turn.” In other words the thing that brings the energy or twist or punch in the sermon is my story that I have made up or my clever incisive application. It’s a form of preaching that people love but the warning sign is when you get feedback like “That was so powerful. I would never have got that.” or “It was so clever what you did with that passage. You made it so relevant.” Another warning sign is it people are nodding off as you go through the text but then sit up for the second half of the sermon when it gets to ‘application time’. Let’s labour to preach God’s Word with the clarity and relevance that it innately has, but let’s make sure that it is the Word that is cutting to the heart and not my elaborate application bolted on the end. Let application be flowing throughout, straight from the text itself.
7. Physical distance from the Bible. This is perhaps the easiest one for the observer to spot because you can literally measure it with a tape measure. I remember watching Dale Ralph Davis preach and his head never moved more the 30 centimetres from the Bible (which was incidentally his Hebrew Bible) as he passionately wrestled with and preached the Scriptures to us. I can remember another time with another preacher when the Bible was left on the pulpit as the preacher moved further and further away, and the further he moved physically, the further he moved in terms of content, until he was spouting complete nonsense. Certainly there’s nothing magical about the Bible and being close to it but if you want to ‘reason from the Scriptures’ (Acts 17:2) and if you want to show that your authority is the Word and you have nothing to say apart from this book, then it would make sense to stay glued to it.

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