John Stott called it ‘double listening’, urging that the preacher must exegete, not only the Bible, but also the culture. Not only to the eternal word of God, but also to the changing context in which that word is to be proclaimed.
Colin Adams would agree, and says that he has been thinking about questions such as:-
When we read a narrative from the Old Testament, we want to honour it as God’s word written, and yet we may be unsure how to do so. So we end up – all too often – mistreating and misapplying it in one or more of the following ways:-
No, this isn’t advice for parents reading The Chronicles of Narnia to their children at bedtime.
It is, rather, a set of tips to help the preacher get inside a piece of biblical narrative in order to find out how it is put together and how it works as a story. This is the preliminary work that a preacher needs to do in order to preach from the story in question. It is specific to narratives: letters, poems, proverbs, and parables required other approaches.…
Peter Mead has posted a checklist of 20 questions (well, 88, actually, but they boil down to 20) about a preacher’s delivery.
I summarise:-
Clarity in oral communication comes naturally to some gifted communicators. The rest of us need to work at it. The following is based on this post by Andy Naselli, which is itself based on Millar & Campbell’s book (details at the bottom):-
Randal Pelton quotes from Linda A. Mercandante’s 2014 book, ‘Belief Without Borders‘:-
“It has always been obvious to religious leaders that there are many ‘fuzzy’ faithful sitting in their pews; people who are neither completely clear, completely in agreement, nor completely faithful to the tenets of their religion” (p. 11).
Obvious or not, says Pelton, preachers would do well to work out strategies for speaking to these different groups of hearers:-
To the slightly confused I could say: “Let me try to make that clearer.…
When preachers compare the response of the crowd on Palm Sunday (“Hosanna!”, Mk 11:9; Mt 21:9; “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, Lk 19:38) to that of the crowd just a few days’ later (“Crucify him!”, Mk 15:13; Lk 23:21; Jn 19:15) they often explain this in terms of fickleness (“How quickly they change their minds about Jesus!”). I’ve done it myself.
So also in the hymn ‘My Song is Love Unknown’:
Sometimes they strew his way/And his sweet praises sing…Then “Crucify!”…
At Christmas, fact and fiction, truth and legend, are mixed so thoroughly that even preachers include what they should have left out, and leave out what they should have included.
The late Dick France wrote:-
…‘Most people’s awareness of the Christmas story is derived mainly from school nativity plays, in which Luke’s tea-toweled shepherds rub shoulders with Matthew’s magi (promoted to royal status), and a surly innkeeper and his wife are surrounded by infant angels with tinsel halos.
‘Doctrine is but the drawing of the bow. Application is the hitting of the mark.’
Thomas Manton (1620-1677)…
Peter Mead recently offered a set of helpful hints. Preachers of all ages will, I think, find them thought-provoking. I have cast them somewhat into my own words:-
