Oxymoron: Relaxing Rev

Sun-laden beaches, tranquil strolls, long coffee-slurping afternoons. Who couldn’t relax in such an environment?

Pastors.

I answer both from personal experience and from hearing holiday reports from other vacationing shepherds.

So why is the holiday experience such a challenge for our select group? Upon returning from my own weeklong trip yesterday I jotted down a few thoughts. Let me know if any of this rings true for you too.

1. Pastors worship work and don’t appreciate rest.

2. Pastors think deep down that the world of their church revolves around their sovereign power and presence (how will they survive without us?)

3. Pastors are functional by nature, yet by very definition holiday’s are often devoid of functionality.

4. Pastors are often flock orientated not family orientated. For many of us casually conversing with our families for a prolonged period is unusual and, embarrasingly, difficult.

5. Pastors are often poor relaxers in the hustle and bustle of everyday life; this means that when full blown vacation comes they haven’t had much practice.

6. Pastors like to be solving problems. Holiday’s are too easy.

7. Pastors - many of them anyway - struggle with ‘guilt feelings’ that they are slacking. This is because they believe in unbiblical slogans like ‘I’ll have time to rest when I get to heaven, but not before then” and such.

8. Pastors, usually technologically connected and information overloaded, suddenly feel ‘out of the loop.’

9. Pastors, either out of insecurity or fear, need to endure the thought that someone else is filling their pulpit.

10. Pastors, now with some free time on their hands, can’t help but embrace the opportunity to plan ahead.

11. Pastors schedules are typically highly structured; holiday’s are full of unstructured time.

12. Pastors are too exhausted to enjoy the break.

Doctrinal Preaching Is….

“Doctrinal preaching is the magnifying of Jesus Christ through the explanation and application of the basic truths of the Christian faith. Doctrinal preaching must have an object. We cannot have faith in faith. Doctrinal preaching must have an object. We cannot have faith in faith; we do not worship worship; and doctrine cannot exist for doctrine’s sake. Doctrinal praching carries out the mission of magnifying Jesus Christ. To magnify Jesus Christ is not literally to make Him bigger. His influence is already felt in three worlds: heaven, earth and hell. Heaven is his throne, and the earth is His footstool. He fills the universe with His power. Rather, to magnify Christ through doctrinal preaching is to present Him in such a way that the hearers see Him in a more glorious, majestic, holy, sovereign, just, faithful and mighty manner than they have ever seen Him before.”

(Robert Smith Jnr)

Main Points and Subpoints

During the last session of The Preaching Course we covered the topic of main points and subpoints. Unfortunately, the audio recording didn’t work. However I’d commend to you Bryan Chapell’s excellent audio on the same subject.

The Ascension!

Never heard a sermon on the ascension? I had the joy of preaching on Luke 24:50-53 last night, closing out the gospel on this glorious topic. My outline was:

1. Witness the ascending Jesus! (50-51)
* witness Jesus leading
* witness Jesus blessing
* witness Jesus rising

2. Worship the ascended Jesus! (52-53)
*the earthly location of their worship
*the expectant posture of their worship
*the exhuberant core of their worship

You can listen here.

Stott: What The Congregation Should Remember

“They [the congregation] will not remember the details. We should not expect them to do so. But they should remember the dominant thought, because all the sermon’s details have been marshalled to help them grasp its message and feel its power.” (John Stott)

Young Lloyd Jones’s Sermon Feedback

‘The great defect of that sermon this afternoon was this…that you were overtaxing your people, you were giving them too much…you are only stunning them and not helping them.’

(Comments from a mature Welsh preacher to the sixty years younger Lloyd Jones, upon hearing the Dr preach for the first time)

Why Sermons Are Like Telescopes

“I think that a sermon should have like a telescope but one object in the field.” (Charles Simeon)

(Photo by Brapke, Creative Commons License)

Dennis E Johnson on Training Young Preachers

What would be some of the basic areas you would cover in training lay preachers who have had no theological training whatsoever?

In training lay preachers I would focus on making sure they have a solid grounding in systematic theology that is based in Scripture and proven by the church over the centuries. This will help keep them on an even keel when winds of doctrine, promising “new” insights, blow across the church. Then I would focus on a basic hermeneutic or method of interpreting Scripture, in light of the way language works, and in light of the context of the Bible in the history of redemption. Finally, I would emphasize, for any and all leaders (whether those who can attend seminary or those who cannot), the importance of godly character as Paul places that “center stage” in his lists of qualifications of elders in 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1. These attributes of humility, holiness, integrity, etc., must be grounded in a firm grasp of the gospel of God’s grace, given in Christ and received by faith alone.

Find here the whole interview with Dennis E Johnson over at Expositionalistix. Personally, I would highly recommed Johnson’s book “Him We Proclaim” (reviewed here).

A Good Idea for Big Ideas

Brian Jones has written a really stimulating article on putting the big idea in a more application-focused form: Teaching Students The Applicational Power of the Big Idea.

The 3am Test

“If your spouse or roommate were to roll you out of bed at 3 A.M. and ask, “What is the sermon about this Sunday morning?” if you cannot answer in one crisp sentence, the sermon’s not ready to preach. You need an idea people can grasp. If the sermon’s idea is, “In the Babylonian incarceration of God’s people, they suffered for seventy years to determine what God’s plan was and never could determine it…” and you keep talking, that idea is not going to pass the 3 A.M. test. We need something like “God remains faithful to faithless people,” something that’s crisp.”

(Bryan Chapell, interviewed on Preachingtodaysermons.com)

Risen - Just as He Said!

This morning’s sermon from Luke 24:1-12.

Also, a Tim Keller quote I shared from his helpful chapter on the resurrection in “The Reason for God.”

“Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case. The resurrection also puts the burden of proof on its unbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternative explanation for the birth of the church…” (pg 202)

Happy Easter!!

What’s the Big Idea? - Audio

I spoke at The Preaching Course last Tuesday night. Unfortunately for my audience, I was still suffering from jet-lag. If you’re interested in the subject, however, you might still want to eavesdrop on my first talk: “what’s the big idea?” In this we considered two main questions. 1) Is there a need for a big idea? And 2) How might we go about defining it?

(Photo by ZakQ100, Creative Commons License)