Sample Analysis: Poetry
I have described the basic structure of Hebrew poetry as built around parallel couplets and triplets that are ultimately grouped into larger strophes to provide the overall logic of the poem. An outline of a poem begins with analyzing the smallest units (parallel lines) and expanding to the larger units (groupings of couplets and triplets into “strophes”). As an example, let’s analyze Psalm 46.
Frame: Worldview Questions
As we preachers talk about and practice our craft, we sometimes treat “story” and “precept” as mutually exclusive categories. As in, “are you a precept preacher or are you a storyteller?” But this is a false dichotomy. Jesus taught in parables, but he also made clear and concise declarations such as, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” If we are to take seriously the task of cultural architecture, we need both story and precept.
The story must be told, and it must lead to precept.
Sample Analysis: Prose
Outlining a biblical text that comes to us in prose is a matter of identifying major ideas and discerning their relationships to one another, as well as discovering all the ways these ideas are described, dissected, and developed in the text. I suggested three steps to outlining such a text in a way that will make its structure clear and help us to communicate its logic effectively to our hearers.
Foundation: Story
At the foundation of any culture is a shared narrative. The story of God and his people that we have received in the Scriptures is, without question, the narrative upon which the culture of the church must stand. This story encompasses all human existence, from our pre-history to our final destiny. It offers a comprehensive and absolute way of understanding ourselves, the world, and ourselves in the world.
What Kind of Language? Outlining a Preaching Text
Most biblical texts fall into one of three broad language categories: Prose, Poetry, or Story. Though they often overlap in many ways, each of these communicates, challenges, and shapes us differently. In fact, like the three modes of transportation to Australia, they give us such different journeys that the perspectives they give of the same truth might seem widely divergent, even when the destination is the same.
In your preparation process, these differences become impossible to ignore the moment you begin to try to outline the meaning of the text. Let’s think about each of these language categories specifically from the perspective of how we would outline the text.
Jesus: Culture-Maker
Even as Jesus observed the traditions and habits of his received culture, he subverted it. In subtle ways, he planted an adjusted worldview in the minds and hearts of his followers, and undermined many of the cherished assumptions, as well as the political powers, of his society. This subversion, though subtle, was significant and apparent enough that it led to his death. It was also effective enough that the result was a distinct culture, a new community, that over the course of a few hundred years, in the face of persecution and poverty, proceeded to permeate and transform the collection of cultures known as the Roman Empire.
Andy Crouch: Why We Can’t Change the World
The conversation on Christianity and culture has been enriched and stimulated in recent years by the insights of Andy Crouch. In his book, Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling, Crouch has offered his own taxonomy of Christian responses to culture. He identifies four strategies for cultural change, based primarily on the record of American Evangelicals in the past century.
Preaching on Money, Part 3
When you calculate assets and liabilities, money in your pocket always belongs in the “asset” column, right? According to an accountant friend of mine, this is actually not always the case. The technical term for money that is a liability is “unearned asset.” When a person or business receives payment for services that they have not yet rendered, those funds must be counted as a liability.
A “big story” sermon series first asks the question, “What is God’s purpose?” The next question is, “How has sin mucked it up?” God has given us money as an asset. Sin has made it a liability.
What Kind of Literature?
True fishermen never stop looking for just the right combination of bait and technique to catch a fish in any given pond or stream. Lure, minnow, worms or stink bait? Spinner, jig, or fly? They study fish and habitats endlessly, to make the best possible choices, and increase their chances of catching the “big one.”
I’m no fisherman, but I think I understand their drive. As a preacher, I’m always looking for the “big one” — the big idea of a given passage. But each passage is unique, and it swims in a particular pond or stream. Different kinds of texts work differently and communicate their truths in distinctive ways. If I am to coax the right truth consistently out of every text, I must learn to read each text according to its own rules. Like a fisherman who never stops studying fish and habitats, a preacher must make a life-long endeavour of studying literary genres and forms.
Think Like a Missionary
In the interests of full disclosure, I should acknowledge that my missionary vocation and experience profoundly influence how I think about preaching and culture. I spent my teen years as a missionary kid in Central America. I have spent most of my adult life as a cross-cultural missionary as well. By default, I tend to think like a missionary.
“Thinking like a missionary” will kill any tendency to see culture as a monolithic beast to slay.
Preaching on Money, Part 2
Preaching a “Big Story” series on money will naturally begin with God’s purpose for our relationship to the material world. Once we understand this, we are more prepared to understand how this relationship has been affected by sin, and how Christ has redeemed it. Here is a list of texts and ideas that could help us tell the story of money.
Examine the Text
Once you have chosen a text and gotten the big picture of the story around the text and the story behind the text, it’s time to have your own dialogue with the text. Resist the temptation to jump right into the verse by verse discussion in your favorite commentary, or listen to a sermon from your favorite preacher on the same passage. This will only give you second-hand information. You need to have your own conversation, your own encounter.
Moving Beyond “Christ and Culture”
You would be hard pressed to find a major discussion about Christianity and culture in the second half of the Twentieth Century that does not reference the work of ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr. His book Christ and Culture, published in 1951, defined the conversation for a generation. The book had wide and lasting influence for at least two reasons. First, it addressed a topic that many Christian thinkers considered to be of utmost importance. Second, it provided clear and satisfying handles for talking about ways Christians might respond to culture.
Preaching on Money, Part I
As a young pastor, I was reluctant to preach about money. At the time, however, I knew several older preachers who relished any opportunity to tackle the subject. I wondered why this was so. Did they just not care who they offended? Were they jaded to the financial demands on their hearers? Did they just not know that they ran the risk of feeding the “money-grabbing-preacher” stereotype that already existed in peoples’ minds?
Now that I’m an older preacher, I think I understand. The longer I live, the more I realize that the only thing that really matters in my ministry is to make disciples. And the longer I try to make disciples, the more clear it becomes that how we use our money is the truest measure of our discipleship, because it reveals where our treasure really is.
Review: Wired for Story
Can preachers learn anything from specialists in communication who have no direct interest in preaching? We’d better. In fact, we always have. From the New Testament onward, Christian preaching has “baptized” the prevailing rhetoric of each era in service of the gospel. For this reason, I occasionally like to read a book written by a contemporary rhetorician.
The Story Around the Text
Politicians and marketers may deliberately take words out of context to serve their own purposes, but could preachers do the same thing? We should give one another the benefit of a doubt. We need not assume deliberately malicious intent. But we should acknowledge that we sometimes pluck words, phrases, and verses out of their context to make a point that we want to make, regardless of their actual meaning.
Here’s the good news: Ignoring the literary context of a passage may be the most frequently-committed exegetical error among preachers, but it is also the easiest to correct. Here are some steps you can take to get the context right.
Warriors, Pacifists, and Diplomats: Preachers and Culture
A handful of choices define every preacher. From where will the message come? Will it offer answers gleaned from the social sciences, public opinion polls, celebrity talk show hosts, or political dogma? Or will it flow from the acts and words of God discovered and experienced in the Scriptures? What will the preacher’s sermons do? Will they instruct, leading to better informed hearers? Should they offer perspective, encouragement and comfort, leading to better adjusted hearers? Will they admonish and exhort, leading to better behaved hearers? Or will they seek transformation, leading to simply better, reborn, hearers?
These and other key issues fill the pages of every good Homiletics textbook. One question, however, which can, in subtle but powerful ways, define and drive a preaching ministry, is often overlooked: What is the preacher’s, and the sermon’s, relationship to culture? The answer to this question will make all the difference in the direction a preacher’s ministry will take.
Planning a Topical Sermon Series
Many preachers who share my conviction that the best preaching is “expository preaching” would also say that “expository preaching” requires that every sermon series be a meticulous verse-by-verse walk through a book of the Bible. Certainly there is great value and rich rewards in this kind of preaching ministry. However, you may at least occasionally (and perhaps quite often) feel you need to preach a series of sermons on a particular topic. Is it possible to be an expository preacher without limiting yourself to expository sermon series? I believe it is, but how you approach the planning of your topical series is important.
The Story Behind the Text
Not knowing the story behind a text can be like walking blindly into the middle of a conversation. There’s a very good chance you could miss the meaning altogether. This is why we begin to gain an understanding the big picture of a biblical text by studying its historical context.
Big Picture Study, Part I: It’s All About Context
The temptation of any busy preacher is simply to listen to the voices of trusted guides (study helps, commentaries, other preachers, etc) in our journey from the biblical text to the sermon. In most cases, they can get us from “A” (the words of the text before us) to “B” (the meaning of the text before us) efficiently and accurately. However, our goal is not just to get from “A” to “B,” but to guide others in their own journeys from the text to its meaning, and to the demands, encouragement, and perspective it brings to their lives. For this, we need to know the terrain, to explore the lay of the land, to have the big picture.