by James Webb
1) The Bible contains poetry, exposition, theological analysis, parables, historical accounts, song and more. Valid styles of preaching are just as varied; a.k.a. The “More than one way to skin a cat” Principle. Read more
I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks that preachers need to tell more stories about themselves. Not only do preachers not tell enough stories about themselves, I also think that when they do, they tell the wrong stories.
Let me make up an example. Let’s say that I’m listening to a sermon on evangelism. Let’s also say that the preacher tells a story about a time that he had a leaking pipe in his home. He kept meaning to get round to doing something about it, but he never had the time. When he finally got to it, the persistent leaking of a single drop of water had caused some big wooden boards to rot. Imagine that the preacher then suggests that sometimes evangelism is like that – a consistent, little effort that can, over time, have a huge impact.
It’s a nice image and an illustration that might be quite helpful to someone, plus it’s exactly the sort of metaphor that I enjoy. Nothing wrong with that – I would happily include such a story in one of my own sermons – but maybe the congregation also needs a different story from the preacher’s life? Perhaps a story in which the preacher himself tells of a situation where his own consistent, little effort made a huge difference. In other words, a story of how he put his preaching into practice?
I know very well the internal debate that comes from deciding whether or not to include a story that makes me look good, but sometimes my hesitation is just another refusal to get over myself. Refusing to share something that might be helpful to your congregation because it reveals something positive about you? Well, that’s just a different way of making the sermon revolve around your ego.
When I was in Cornerstone I learnt from many men and women who shared stories of how they actually went out and did the things they were talking about. Sometimes it was a story of how things went wrong, but more often it was a story of how this God stuff actually does work. As someone who finds the theoretical easier than the practical, it was informative and inspiring. Those earthy stories that backed up the theory actually changed me, for the better. That’s what a congregation needs – not just to be taught the truth, but to be inspired to live it. Stories from our lives of how we put things into practice may be the little push that encourages someone to sweep away the years of fear and act.
So preacher, tell more stories about yourself. Tell the congregation about worship that drew you closer to God, or prayers that didn’t. Don’t just share the disastrous attempts to explain your faith, talk about the times when you got it right. Share the tools you use to survive the moments when God seems distant, and shout from the rooftops the tales of how God showed up in your hour of need.
Of course, I do have the nagging fear that the reason we preachers don’t tell many of those kind of stories is because we don’t have many of those kind of stories to tell. In that case, perhaps we should step down from the pulpit for a while, until our actions have caught up with our words and we actually have a life to preach.
There are lots of different translations of the Bible. At the time of writing, the online Bible resource BibleGateway has 59 different English translations available. That’s a lot of Bible, and unless you read Greek and Hebrew yourself, you’re stuck with someone else’s interpretation.
The fact is, all translations have strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think you can argue convincingly that any translation is the One True Version, especially as – and some of you may find this hard to believe – Jesus didn’t actually speak English.
In my last sermon, I referred to Malachi 4:2. The King James Version goes with “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings…”, which is a fairly literal translation of the original. Some copies of the New International Version plump for “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays…”, which is, I suspect, much closer to what the original author was trying to convey. However, in the context of my sermon, I needed the more literal KJV translation. Something was lost in the dynamic equivalence of the NIV, even though it is arguably the ‘better’ translation.
When I first made the decision to follow Jesus, I read from The Good News Bible. No-one reads it nowadays, but I will always have a soft spot for it because of the role it played in my early spiritual growth. Plus, I still think its translation of Proverbs is first-rate. When I was at university, the New Revised Standard Version was recommended to us as the best mix of readability and scholarly accuracy, so I have a copy on my shelf for that reason – but I rarely ever use it. For over two decades now, the NIV has been the translation I use in my everyday life. The Message gets a lot of stick in some circles, but Eugene Peterson’s version of the Psalms is excellent, and those who turn their noses up at his scholarship might want to check out his translation of Galatians 3:23-24:
“Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.”
In terms of Paul’s argument, that is, hands down, the best translation of those verses I have ever read, and should certainly knock all talk of ‘prisoners’ and ‘school teachers’ on the head. If you delve deeper into the concept of ‘Greek tutor’ then you can truly have your mind blown by what Paul goes on to say from chapter 3:25 to chapter 4:7…
Anyway, what I really want to ask is what your favourite translation of the Bible is, and why. Is it because it’s objectively the best translation, or is it because it’s the version that you grew up with, or the one that had a particular translation of a particular verse that you found especially helpful in a difficult time, or is it because someone you respect told you that it was the ‘best’ translation? Thankfully, the Holy Spirit is big enough and gracious enough to be found in those words, regardless of how good a version I think it is.
I think that, for many years now, I’ve really only had one message. I think about the lectures I’ve given, sermons I’ve preached and stories I’ve told in the recent past and – to me – they’re mostly variations on a single theme. My life consists of repeated attempts to find different ways of saying the same thing over and over again. It makes sense to me; I’m definitely more of a “Do one thing really well rather than lots of things badly” personality type. It’s also something I can imagine God saying to me: “James, I’m giving you one message to proclaim. Just the one, but it’s an important one. I don’t think you’re quite up to handling several things at once. Be as creative as you want in sharing that message, but try to stay on focus, OK?”
I’m sure that there are plenty of people who are expected to multitask, but it also seems totally consistent with God’s love of community that He would share the work out among His children rather than overload one or two and let the rest spend the day at the beach. Billy Graham is, I think, an example of someone who had just one job, and good things happened when he made that his priority. Pay careful attention to that desire to have a finger in every pie, because maybe it was never your pie in the first place. It’s just rude to stick fingers in pies that don’t belong to you.
So, what’s the one thing that God has given you to do or say? It certainly helps to know what it is, and you could do a lot worse than doubling down on it.
And the one message I’ve been repeating for the past decade or so? Well, I’m not going to just come right out and tell you what it is here, am I? Where’s the fun in that?
“When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowd were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”
Matthew 7:29
In Jesus’ time, appealing to someone else’s authority was a key tool of the religious teacher. A rabbi would thread quote after quote from well-regarded predecessors to give his words weight. For whatever reason this didn’t resonate with the crowd, but Jesus – one who never appealed to religious tradition – had them spellbound. He, they said, had an authority that other teachers didn’t.
Modern preachers and teachers rely on the authority of the Bible, but there must also be a personal authority to the words that we bring, otherwise there’s no point. I’m sure we’ve all sat through sermons where the Bible said all that needed to be said, and the preacher should have just sat down after the reading. The messenger must bring something to the encounter, or go home.
Some preachers misunderstand what the authority of the Bible is, and treat it like an academic journal to be quoted from. They fill their sermons with verse after verse, like footnotes in an essay, and their own words serve no purpose other than to connect a string of unrelated texts. You’ll know you’ve heard a sermon like that, because despite being full of Biblical references, it sounds like theoretical musings rather than something heavy with life and power. Remember that the piling up of quotes to support a position was how the teachers of the law did their business. People can tell that there is no real authority in such words.
Instead, every single sound from your mouth should be pulsing with the vitality of the Bible, by virtue of being a message that’s consistent with the beating heart of God’s word. When you do this, then your teaching will be thoroughly Biblical without even needing to quote chapter and verse.
When I was on the other side of the world and would sit and listen to people like Laurie and Pete and Paul (and the rest) talk about sharing Jesus’ message, their words had authority. This was because they were talking about things that they knew – not things that they just knew about (though they did), but things that they knew. They shared from the overflow of their own experience, and that gave their words the authority that cannot come from heavily leaning on someone else’s knowledge.
When Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, he was talking about something that he knew, something that he had experienced. When he spoke about God and the divine vision for creation, Jesus was sharing from his own life. His words had authority not because he knew a lot about God, but because he knew the Father. No mental gymnastics were required. Likewise, if we want to teach as one who has authority, we too must know what we’re teaching about.
Here’s a twelve year old sermon that I’ve edited into a blog post. This one was on Hosea 6 & 7, and is a lot longer than the last sermon I revisited on these pages. It also required a lot more editing – I had to remove some especially dated references. Listen, it’s not that I’m too lazy to come up with something original – it’s rather that I don’t think I’ll ever preach this sermon again, so I’m putting it on the internet for posterity. Yes, that’s it. Read more
32 “…God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. 33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand 35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ 36 Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Read more
Over the years, the line between writing a story and preparing a sermon has become blurred. These days, I tend to take the same approach with both, which means that I spend longer editing a sermon than writing it in the first place. I revisit it frequently, toying with the order of paragraphs, or searching for exactly the right image or turn of phrase.
It’s not about ‘trying to be clever’. The sermon – like every effort to communicate – is actually a work of art, and needs to be treated as such.
Art can be a spiritual experience for people. A poem, painting, story, film or sculpture has the power to give people a taste of what lies beyond themselves. This is one of the ways in which God has weaved revelation into the fabric of what it means to be human. The sermon is unique among art in that the explicit contract between artist and audience is that God is front and centre. Some people turn hostile if they suspect that you’re trying to sneak God into areas where He’s forbidden, but with the sermon you’re allowed to be blunt.
Because of this, I find myself squirming in the pew if I suspect that I’m listening to a preacher who takes more care over constructing e-mails than he does over sermons.
“It’s about God. It’s got nothing to do with me” is an excuse used by sometimes well-meaning, sometimes lazy preachers who think that God is a KitchenAid mixer – you just throw in the ingredients, and leave Him to it. This approach denies one of the fundamental concepts of the Bible, namely that God, as an act of love, freely delegates to us responsibility for His reputation and message.
It’s got nothing to do with human effort or creative manipulation, rather it recognises that art and communication have divinely-ordained rules. Don’t tell me that Jesus, who painted pictures of plank-eyed people, camels squeezing through needles, and angry vineyard workers didn’t take how he communicated at least as seriously as what he communicated.
I’m not saying that every preacher needs to be a poet, or that clever structure is an adequate substitute for a vibrant relationship with God. What I am saying is that every preacher needs to realise that things like language and format actually matter. A preacher doesn’t need to succeed in creating art, but a preacher needs to at least try.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about spiritual warfare, it’s that Satan is no gentleman. He isn’t one to say, “Hey, James has had a really rough week. Let’s go easy on him for the moment.” Quite the opposite in fact. There may be times where the conflict is more overt, and I am more aware of it, but rarely do the guns actually stop.
As a preacher, I know that the build up to a sermon can be a time of conflict. The act of preparation, with the temptation to take shortcuts or play fast and loose with the truth, feels like a battle. When we’re working towards something specific, we can be conscious of the spiritual struggle, wrestling with motives and prayer, but it’s a mistake to think that after the event there’s a ceasefire. As soon as the seed has landed on the path is the best time for the birds to swoop. The moment the preacher sits down is as good a time as any to push him into pride or drag him into despair.
However, as relentless as the Enemy is, God is even more so. The truth doesn’t ever stop being true. There is not a moment where resisting the devil doesn’t cause him to flee from us. I don’t stop being a child of God because I’ve had a bad week. We are always vulnerable to attack but, equally, the Enemy is always vulnerable to the truth.
Isn’t it nice when you discover that someone has put into words something that you already knew to be true on an instinctual level? A few years ago I stumbled upon a quote that resonated with my soul. As a preacher/teacher, I sort of knew what I was trying to do – I wasn’t really so interested in ‘educating’ as I was in ‘inspiring’. However, ‘Inspiring’ is not usually listed as a Learning Outcome on many course outlines, much to my disappointment. Read more
