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Posts Tagged ‘Preaching’

When Speaking Betrays the Preacher

Posted in Christian Life, Digital Ministry, Ministry, Preaching, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 02/08/2023| 1 Comment »

Every now and then we encounter people who have destroyed their careers and lives simply by something they said. Politicians top this list. Someone will be doing great in their campaigns, and command the attention of their constituency only to say something in a rally that becomes their downfall. Sometimes you get that feeling that some people shouldn’t hold the microphone for more than two minutes. Other times we hear stories of people who were about to win a court case and then threw in a detail that changed everything. Our words can fight for us but so often they fight against us. But while politicians can deny what their tongue said preachers are even more vulnerable in this area.

Our words can fight for us but so often they fight against us.

Public ministry is a dangerous place to be because building a reputation takes years and yet destroying it only takes a few words thrown here and there. More is expected of those who lead and yet they are as human as any of us. The Bible says those who speak regularly are vulnerable to sin more frequently with their tongue, Proverbs 10:19. Those of us who love sharing our opinions on social media are vulnerable in sinning with our mouths and typing fingers. Speaking is the tool of the preacher but he needs to be careful it doesn’t become a weapon forged against him. So how do we guard our mouths without faking it until we make it?

Feed Your Heart Intentionally

The word tells us that it’s from the heart that we speak, see Luke 6:45. What comes out of the mouth is evidence of the food of our mind. We speak what we believe and when cornered what we truly believe. Some people are able to separate what they believe and what they need to say. They know exactly what to say in a particular context. But so often what’s hidden within tends to come to the surface. It’s worse for those who speak more regularly. Pretence will work for some time but soon the truth will come out.

The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat the failings of its human characters and the true nature of man. But it invites us to the transformation of the Gospel.

But instead of this hard double life the word frees us to know that God knows us truly and yet has called us fully. The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat the failings of its human characters and the true nature of man. But it invites us to the transformation of the Gospel. We are capable of a lot worse than we imagine but the Gospel is capable of changing us more than we would ever dream of. The remedy isn’t hypocrisy but continually feeding our hearts with the food and practice of the word. And here I don’t mean just read more Bible passages. I mean take the time to reflect, apply and own the word. Feed your heart with the truth and your mouth will be safe. Let the overflow of your speech be the evidence of what is hidden in your heart, the sweet and precious word of God.

Bridge Public Ministry with Private Life

When we read the Gospels we tend to side with the sinners who come to Jesus more than we do Pharisees. Why? Because we all hate hypocrisy and we can see it so clearly in others. Those in public ministry have a private life that can ruin or build their ministry. We are not expected to be perfect but we shouldn’t be hypocrites living a double life. Our private life left unchecked will influence our public ministry. Our hearts will betray our tongues or we’ll always pick and choose what to teach.

Instead, the man of God has to learn to be God’s student number one. He doesn’t stand as God’s lawyer but as his keen student who knows his own need and of those he ministers to. None of his sermons are directed to others. It always begins with him before it flows to beggars like him. If we don’t keep asking God to work in us, if we ignore our desperate need for the meal of the word then we’ll inevitably become hypocrites. Our mouths will teach what we don’t believe and soon our tongues will betray us.

Watch Your Tongue and Typing Fingers

We speak to such a diverse audience these days. When you post on social media there’s all kinds of people with different backgrounds and unique context that read your post. It’d be better if we had more opportunity to speak the truth to fewer people in a specific place and setting. But while we should do that more regularly still we’ll find ourselves having to speak to a more general audience. If you like writing like me then you know your audience will be even more diverse. For this reason I think we need to be even more careful with our words. Now more than ever we need to watch what we say, how we say it and who we intend to hear if we want to truly influence people with the truth.

We cannot afford to be careless with our words and expect anyone to take us seriously. The sword of truth should be used to dispel lies but not slay our audience. We ought to speak with care and wisdom to protect our audience from our extremes. Haven’t you listened to someone and knew what they were saying was important but the way they did it made you dismiss them. Sometimes I see posts on Facebook that makes me feel the author needed to take a glass of water to cool down first. How can we be expected to help others if we cannot control ourselves. Keyboard warriors need to be warned of their sinful hearts masquerading as defense for the truth. By all means we should speak the truth all while watching our hearts and controlling our tongues.

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The Making of Great Speakers and Influencers

Posted in Bible interpretation, Discipleship, Jinsi ya, Ministry, pastoral ministry, Preaching, tagged , , , on 07/05/2022| Leave a Comment »

That’s exactly the kind of title that makes you stop scrolling, isn’t it? What if I said this blog is about preaching? How does that make you feel? If you are honest you might be a bit disappointed. You might even feel cheated because that’s not what you always associate preaching with. You wanted to hear about the secret behind public speaking and moving crowds. How to become the Luther King of our generation. To move crowds and influence people. Well, I want to make a case that preaching can do that and much more when it’s faithfully done. You can then apply the same idea as a Christian influencer whether in blogging or Tiktok.

I want to begin by saying that no speaker sets out wanting to be boring. They may have struggled in preparation if they did any of it. They may have wrestled with the text and question of relevance in their study. But no one wants to imagine theirs will be a boring message with little impact on the audience. I doubt any of us sets out to fail in persuading people.

We want the Truth but we also want it to move our audience. But how do you move people while being faithful in your preaching?

We want to move people with the Truth. We want them cut to the heart and ask, how can we be saved? We want to spur people to be excited to live for God and his mission? We want to warn them of coming judgement in a way that they feel compelled. If we are honest we admire preachers who move crowds even when we might take issue with their methods. And no one comes to a Sunday morning ready for a boring sermon. We want the Truth but we also want it to move our audience. But how do you move people while being faithful in your preaching?

Ask Why it Matters
You cannot be a good speaker if you don’t believe in your message. Likewise, you won’t make a faithful and relevant preacher if you don’t believe in the text at hand. Before you can preach it to others you need to preach it to yourself. And here I don’t mean give yourself a theological or doctrinal lesson. I mean preach it to yourself brother! Sit and ask what it’s saying, how it’s saying it and why that’s relevant. Have your Eureka moment not by discovering the Greek wording of it but by seeing just how relevant and practical it is to our faith and everyday life. And trust me it’s relevant.

Great preaching rests on showing us why the text matters and the secret is going back in time.

You see the beauty of expository preaching is that you have your work already done for you. Every passage we teach is actually a repeat sermon. There was a first audience who heard and applied that sermon. They were moved by it back then. This means all we need is to go back and ask why it mattered to them so it matters to us. Great preaching rests on showing us why the text matters and the secret is going back in time. But be careful not to remain back there. Before you stand in front of us make sure to travel back and apply it in real life. Preach that sermon to yourself and your world and if you can at least move with it you’ll have a friend cheering you in the congregation.

Find your Passion Switch
It’s said some people can sell you anything because they do it so passionately. The problem with some expository preachers is they can rest on just having the faithful script with them. They know the truth, they want to preach the right thing but give little attention to the delivery and landing process. But I guess for most of us who are starting out we just don’t know how to go about it. I want to say if we are compelled by the truth we will be compelling in our delivery of it. If the message had an impact on us we need to do the same for our audience.

While we can apply methods like storytelling, humour, helpful illustration and the like it all depends on how passionate we are about the truth in front of us.

We need to find our passion switch. To want to communicate the passage in a way that moves people. But this is not just about the methods. It’s about us and the truth. Think about how you told the news of your wedding, your graduation, your first job… There was an enthusiasm that made people want to listen. While we can apply methods like storytelling, humour, helpful illustration and the like it all depends on how passionate we are about the truth in front of us. Some people can talk all day about their jobs because they are passionate about them. Others won’t stop bringing football into every conversation. Why can’t we do the same with our preaching? Make the people in front of you see you value and love what you are teaching. Passionate speaking is infectious. Find your passion switch before you come out to preach.

Think about the People
Faithful preaching cares about people because God cares about them. You cannot love preaching and not love people. That’s like loving a party without people. Unfortunately, sometimes we think so highly of preaching than we do the people in front of us. We call ourselves soldiers of the truth but miss the recipients of the message. If that explains you and I then we should stop preaching and ask God for a love for his people first. Don’t go to that Sunday service with your points and illustrations if you’ve not thought of the people.

Jesus was a faithful preacher, he knew his text but what moved him to preach is the people.

What moves people is when the preacher is both faithful to the text but also faithful to them. I always admire the instances where the Gospel accounts note that Jesus saw the masses and had compassion for them. Jesus was a faithful preacher, he knew his text but what moved him to preach is the people. Do you want to be a great speaker and influencer? Think about your audience first. Ask yourself where they are at in their journey of faith. What are they struggling with? Do they need encouragement or rebuke? Faithful preaching is neither tied to the text nor the people alone. It’s tied to both. It’s faithful to the text but it’s also faithful to the people.

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Preaching as a New Covenant Disciple

Posted in 1 & 2 Samuel, Bible interpretation, Gospel, Jinsi ya, OT Narrative, Preaching, tagged , , , on 03/03/2022| Leave a Comment »

I grew up loving stories. I loved listening to my uncle tell funny ones of the sneaky hare and the scary ones of giants and ogres. I loved reading any story I could find in our school textbooks and would pause everything for a storybook. There’s just something in a good story that not only excites the mind but grabs the heart. Stories can teach your most complex ideas and moral lessons in a very simple and yet compelling way.

When I came to the Bible even before I could say I was a believer those Old Testament narratives always got my attention. In Sunday school they informed our training curriculum. I wonder who in this country has not been taught about Joseph, Samson, Father Abraham, Moses, David, Samuel… And I think here in the African church the Old Testament remains an important text for many pulpits today. Our preaching is in many ways storytelling and there’s a lot of merit in that when it’s done well and faithfully.

But the problem with the stories in the Bible is they don’t end up where other stories end. In our African storytelling, a good story has done its job when the moral lesson is arrived at. You can actually change a few details to make the story do the work for you. You can change character names and give it a more modern feel. In the end, people don’t stand and say that would never happen. They ask, what I’m getting out of it. There would also be more than one lesson from a good story and it’ll work for any group of people.

The Gospel interprets Bible stories

But Bible stories are to be understood a bit differently because they are not just mere stories to draw out moral lessons from. As Christians, we believe them to be historical and they are not just crafted for moral lessons. God is the one telling his redemption story to us through them and he has a specific lesson for us as reflected within the grand narrative of the Bible. But more importantly, we need to remember that we are living in a different time today to when the story happened and was first told. We are in the era of the new covenant of grace not the old covenant of the law.

Here I find the book of Hebrews is really helpful in understanding the transition between the Old to the New Covenant. This is probably the one book every preacher must read and understand though I know I say the same for a lot more others in the New Testament. This is where the preacher gets his theology right as we see right from Hebrews 1:

1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. Hebrews 1 NIV

This is a great place to comment on how God speaks to us today. But another implication is that teaching the Old Testament to people in the New Covenant calls for us to ask, how does this passage point us to Jesus and his Gospel? That’s a good rule for teaching any passage in the Bible but even more important in the Old Testament. A better way to put it is, what is Jesus our New Covenant teacher, saying to us today in this passage about himself and what he came to do? This doesn’t mean we ignore what the Old Testament passage had in mind for the original audience but we cannot stop there as New Covenant believers. We must always come to that point when we ask, how does this point us to Jesus and the Gospel message?

Samuel points us to Jesus

For instance, if we read the story of the calling of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3, we meet God speaking to a young boy while ignoring the old Eli who’s obviously failing in his job as a priest and parent. If we stop here we’ll get the lesson that God is about to replace the wicked priesthood of Eli and his sons. We’ll see Eli’s indifference to God and his voice. But if we stopped there in our preaching then we are likely to end up only with good moral lessons. Depending on our theology we can say almost anything at this point and there’s no way of saying some are more right than others if it’s all about our take from the story.

But if we read this story as New Covenant disciples we’ll see a lot more here. We’ll actually be amazed what Jesus is teaching us about himself and his Gospel this early in the Bible story. We’ll see that Samuel in many ways is like Jesus. We’ll remember the popular Luke 2:52 from Sunday school days. His encounter with the teachers of the law early in life will come to mind. But more than that we’ll see what Hebrews tells us, that Jesus is a better leader and high priest. He’s the one who is better than Eli and his sons who are wicked. But also better than Samuel because he won’t die. In Jesus, we have the perfect high priest who is sinless and eternal. The one who guarantees our eternal salvation and is always present to hear our prayers. There’s a good lesson for today’s leaders within the church to take away here. But even that is to be seen in the light of the Gospel and Jesus example, not from a good moral lesson perspective.

Now, I know this example makes it sound like it should be so easy and obvious, and yet that is not the case. I also know there’s a danger of reading narratives backward when we only want to see Jesus in the pages not wrestle with the details of the passage. I know the route to Jesus and the Gospel can sometimes feel too simplistic. I’m aware certain people can make sermons all about getting things theologically right and not living it out. That this can make the church sound like a theological school, not a discipleship training ground. I also know we’ll only preach specific passages better when we have the grand narrative clear in our minds. But I think this is a good place to start. We already know how to get the moral lessons out. What I am suggesting is we go an extra mile to pay attention to the story while also asking the big picture questions. To be biblical and Gospel-minded in our preaching we need to point people to Jesus and the Gospel.

Only the Gospel bears lasting fruit

The challenge when we leave people with moral lessons even good Biblical ones is that we leave it all in their hands. It’s upon them to change and become better disciples. But if we do that we are not only missing the grand narrative of scripture we actually set people up for failure. New Covenant believers know they can’t do it by their own might and grit. It doesn’t matter how committed and theologically right we are, we just can’t do it without our Father’s help. Only the Gospel of Jesus can bear the fruits we desire in our audience.

We need Jesus to bear the fruit he demands in us. We need the Father to kill the sin he hates in us. We need the Spirit to remind us of the small respectable sins we overlook. New Covenant preaching converts moral lessons to Gospel lessons. It calls for prayerful action, not just a determined response. It demands careful attention to the word but reminds its audience that they can’t actually do what it requires unless the Lord works it out from inside out. Faithful preaching goes beyond moral lessons, it points people to Jesus and his Gospel, to the only one who can truly change them from within.

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