July 2009 Archives

Been a while since I've quoted Seth Godin's blog on business, leadership and marketing, but once again he strikes a nail firmly on the head - ask yourself what the church in this country could do if it took this seriously....?

"You've probably seen it. The fish monger sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the fish a bit longer and don't clean up as often, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money... Eventually, you have an empty, smelly fish store that's out of business.

[Godin then says much the same of "The doctor [who] has fewer patients..." and "The newspaper which has fewer advertisers..."]

As Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness," and yet that's what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don't. This isn't a dip, it's a cul de sac. It's over.

Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum... Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.

Change is a bear, but it's better than death."

After a week blogging my thoughts on preparing Sunday's sermon (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs and Fri), the talk itself got 'delivered' and it's now available online if you missed it and want to hear what I ended up with...

A few reflections as the preacher... though I haven't gone around canvasing people's response - you'll have to judge for yourself what the effect on others might have been:

• Positively, I felt that I had successfully manage to wrestle myself away from the obvious - but, flawed I think - idea that this was primarily an incident to do with Jesus just 'doing a miracle of power' or 'meeting people's physical needs'.
• The parallels and interplay with the OT language of "Shepherd and sheep" and of Israel's Manna experience in the wilderness were there - I just hope they made sense!
• It felt, too, that the picture language that undergirded the sermon, taken from a very intriguing book "Sleeping with Bread" (thanks to fellow vicar Martin who mentioned it to me in a completely different context during the week), seemed to 'work'...
• ... and that it led to a strong pair of applications in terms of the discipline of thanksgiving (effectively a very light introduction the 'Prayer of Examen') and to the responsibility to give others something they could hold on to that gives hope.

• Negatively, it felt a bit 'flat' and lacking in lightness, humour and personal touch - I'd got a bit invovled in the imagery and core of the message and hadn't had the time to stand back any further and see how to bring it alive a bit more.
• Spent much less time than normal helping people to standing 'inside the narrative' - I think there was a completely different (and potentially much more effective) way of preaching the same basic talk, by speaking from inside the shoes of a disciple or member of the crowd... ho hum - another day!
• I could/should have made more of the Big Lunch parallel...
  

There we go - thankfully God's much bigger and more effective than my offerings - but like the Disciples discovered of Jesus that day, he makes a little go a long way!

[This is the fifth in a week-long series of posts on preparing to preach - the first, from Monday, can be found here...]

As I have my 'family day' on Saturdays - i.e. the day when I try not to get engrossed in desk or computer-based work and am completely "there" for family and friends - Fridays are my last full day to give the sermon some concentrated time before 'the day'...

Usually - in a good week - by this time I feel like I'm watching a whole bunch of ideas, images, themes and illustrations circling around the sermon like (if you'll excuse a flight of fanciful imagination!) a bunch of somewhat unruly planets in orbit.

At some point before I stand up on Sunday morning, this collection of facts, ideas and threads need pulled together into something coherent, true and 'of God'...

...but on Fridays, I'm trying really hard not to grab at things too quickly. My experience tells me that the longer I leave them circling, the clearer I'll get as to the absolute core of what I'm trying to say. Once that core is solidly in place, the rest falls into place very quickly indeed - often just a few minutes of scribbling - because it's all there, just needing lined up.

The eccentricity of my sermon writing is that the 'lining up' often happens very late indeed - sometimes on my way round the corner to church and (on one or two somewhat scarey occasions...) even during the sung worship before standing up. But the point is that the core work is there - if I've taken the time to sit with the text, listen to what's really going on and what God might be saying, then I'm lucky enough to be able to stand up and say it.

I've a few clear ideas floating around about the Feeding of the 5000... not sure what will make the final cut of course:

• Parallel with Israel being fed by God with manna in the wilderness
• The image of the Shepherd (i.e. "...they were like sheep without a shepherd") - much more a military/leadership idea for God's people in the OT than a gentle pastoral one... and one which is particularly associated with people like Moses (see the manna connection above) and Elijah and their ilk.
• That Jesus always has bigger 'fish to fry' (excuse the pun) than merely 'meeting people's needs' - what people really need is to be given hope in the God who's reclaiming occupied territory, bringing in the Kingdom.
• A wonderful illustration to do with orphans rescued from the rubble of bombing raids in wartime Europe, going to sleep with a piece of bread to hold - the adults who cared for them found it was the only thing that helped them really believe that there was hope for the morning, when in the past they'd lost so much.
• That Jesus' first response is to ask the disciples to step up to the plate - that God's response to our prayer "why don't you do something God?" is often "why don't you?"

...and plenty more.

We'll see what happens come Sunday!

[This is the fourth in a week-long series of posts on preparing to preach - the first, from Monday, can be found here...]

Sitting with a text long enough, or walking with it through the week (more realistically) gives you the chance to get past the obvious (especially in such a well-known story as here) to the things that ought to make me sit up and take notice as a preacher...

• Jesus doesn't do this sort of miracle very often - we know for a fact that there was plenty of hunger and real poverty around, so why here and why now? It's nearly as perplexing as the Wedding at Cana miracle - we can understand God providing when there's danger of starvation, or risk of injury if they'd been sent home, but neither is the case. God-in-Jesus doesn't seem to fit our sense of priorities in meeting need...
  
  
• What's the big deal with numbers (5000, twelve baskets) and why all the details (green grass, sitting in groups)?
  
  
• Might the crowd have picked up echoes of Hebrew Scriptures as they sat and ate - God's provision of The Manna in the wilderness strikes me (and many commentators) as being a clear parallel... was that on Jesus' mind too?
  
  
• How unusual would it have been to have a crowd like that up on the hills - would it have been threatening to the authorities (Wright sees it as a threat of revolution - but turning out to be something rather different from what the Romans might have expected)?

That first question is the biggie for me - it's simply not enough to draw a straight line between: "Jesus provided for the crowd" and "God provides today"... because he doesn't (at least, not in that way: the queues of starving children don't often get bread and fish handouts miraculously) and Jesus didn't then... Nor is it good enough to use the "share what we have with God and he will use it..." as the core of the message, since it clearly isn't the core of what Mark is writing (he doesn't even mention the boy with packed lunch!).

The 'trick' with sermon-ing is not to run away from the questions, nor try and answer them too quickly, but to keep coming back to the text with the questions it raises, bringing what you've been reading, praying and thinking - and then to see what it sets you off thinking and asking some more. The prayer is that you 'spiral in' towards what God is saying in a way that is as faithful to your context and to the Word of God as possible.

We'll see where Friday takes me!

[This is the third in a week-long series of posts on preparing to preach - the first, from Monday, can be found here...]

Time spent at my desk preparing a sermon is real 'tip of iceberg stuff' - it's important, measurable (and therefore helps me feel I'm actually 'getting somewhere'), but it's connected (in a good week!) to many hours just listening.

Listening isn't quite right, though - that's a bit active for what I'm trying to describe here: not the "What do you want to say, God?" listening or asking a friend or colleague for an opinion...

...but being receptive.

If I start chewing on a passage on Monday, that tunes me in to sift through the events, conversations, reading, TV and feelings of the week, like creating a filter or fishing net to catch something specific, something that will illuminate or open up the passage itself.

I think of a conversation I had over lunch with a friend - also a Vicar - this week as we got talking a book he'd been reading (unrelated to the feeding of the 5000) and as he retold for me the story that undergirds that book's particular approach to prayer.

It's a story that immediately got my attention (I've ordered the book - it arrives tomorrow!) because it felt like someone had switched on a light and shown me the clear outline of something I'd only dimly glimpsed and more-or-less ignored in the narrative.

Now I don't know if it'll make 'the final cut' (you and I will find out on Sunday!), but the process of coming at this from all sorts of angles, listening with an ear to echoes of scripture is absolutely vital. It take the Bible out of the atmosphere of the study into the world of experience, event and feelings. I might end up with an illustration, a quotation or the whole shape of the sermon - whichever, the sermon will be much the richer for it.

Commentaries - books of comments (from the highly detailed and technical, to the sermonesque) on Bible books - invoke pretty varied reaction from preachers.

Some fear that they can squeeze out creativity and simply listening to the text and God's Spirit speaking through it. Others head swiftly in the opposite direction, fearing heresy, ignorance and the likelihood of simply using Scripture as a mirror to reinforce our preconceptions and prejudices.

I certainly use them myself, but as just part of the preparation process.

A good commentary can really help light up a text from a different angle, clarify a word or phrase lost somewhere in the journey from original language to English, or simply provoke me into disagreement - sometimes the most creative reaction of all.

Like planning a walk, guidebooks and maps can help you not to get lost, or get so engrossed in following a dead-end path that you miss the fabulous view from the top of a hill... but they're no substitute for doing the walk yourself.

That's why I always try and 'start the walk' (i.e. start to read the passage itself and turn it over) before I open the first commentary - it's often those first impressions that last through to the end of the week.

But I get there eventually - this week it was day 2 when I started reading the first one and I'll no doubt return over the next few days.

I'm using three with Mark - Wright, Edwards and Lane (for those who'd like to know!) - and they all have their strengths and angles... between them I hope they mean I don't miss too much that might be significant and probably avoid some major potholes along the way.

Been meaning for a long while to post a series of thoughts tracing my approach to a sermon from Monday through to Sunday - thought I'd keep it for a fairly clear week so that it didn't consist of "Monday - ran out of time...", "Tuesday - really must start..." etc., but since that fabled "quieter period" never seems to arrive, now's as good a week as any!

I'm preaching this Sunday (19th July) on the next part of Mark's Gospel - you can listen to some of the other sermons in the series here - and we've arrived, by a rather nice coincidence (given that it's the community Big Lunch street party that day) at the feeding of the great crowd in Mark 6 (read it in the NIV here)!

A few thoughts to get us going on Monday morning...

• The passage
  The biggest challenge here is over-familiarity. Even amongst the less-churchy (and there are many in All Souls for whom this is their first adult experience of belonging to church), it's one of the best known of Jesus' miracles. As a preacher, there's a tension between looking for something unexpected and attention-grabbing, whilst staying faithful to what's actually written down.
  
  
• The Sunday
  The coincidence of this bit of Mark with the Big Lunch is a gift not to be missed - and we're hoping there just might be a few extra visitors in church that morning too. On the other hand, I need to be careful not to let the occasion pull the passage out of shape unrecognisably.
  
  
• The process
  It may sound odd, but the biggest thing I've learnt over ten years of regular preaching, is to force myself to leave the actual writing of the sermon itself as late as possible in the week. These first few are all about trying to climb inside the text, pummel it with questions, let God challenge and shape me through it... only then to start asking the finely-focused question: "And what do you want to say to All Souls this Sunday?".
  
  Ask that too early and the text becomes merely "sermon fodder", the source of "three points beginning with P" - this is the Word of God, living and active... simply trying to get a sermon out of it squashes it flat.

So today's job (which I've started first thing this morning) is simply to read the text, looking for things I've missed before (given that it's so well known to me) and begin to turn over what's going on within the narrative of Mark's story and in the life of Jesus.

A little more on that later today if I get time...

Sometimes Twitter has its uses... John Piper (U.S. preacher and prolific writer) has just started 'tweeting', giving his justification here (deliberate pun - if you've been following the Piper vs Wright debate!) - and his twitter feed from a few days' ago carried a link to the pdf of a famous C.S.Lewis piece, The Weight of Glory [links to pdf download] - one we looked at briefly in a short course last year.

That first paragraph, which Piper describes as "One of the most important paragraphs I ever read...", ends like this:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward ...in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
[C.S.Lewis, The Weight of Glory, publ. 1942 in Theology]

It's a paragraph I remember us dwelling on at the short course - enjoying the unexpected and powerful imagery (classic Lewis) and the surprise of finding that the Christian faith is more about "desire" than "denial" - the crucial, life-changing question being "What do I desire?".

The question reverberates about my day today - what do I desire from it for me: merely comfort, or success or approval? - as much as around the whole of my life-before-God.