Excellence in Preaching: Studying the Craft of Leading Preachers (IVP, 2011) presents the composite of a good preacher. Simon Vibert of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford has written this book profiling some of the most gifted preachers in the Western Hemisphere. The preachers profiled in the book illustrate 12 things good preachers do well.  

• Tim Keller – Awareness of cultural and philosophical challenges to the gospel
• John Piper – Inspiring a passion for the glory of God
• Vaughan Roberts – Allowing the Bible to speak with simplicity and freshness
• Simon Ponsonby – Being a Word-and-Spirit preacher
• J. John – Using humor and story to connect and engage and dismantle barriers
• David Cook – Creating interest, applying well
• John Ortberg -  Preaching with spiritual formation in mind
• Nicky Gumbel – Making much of Jesus Christ
• Rico Tice – Preaching with urgency and evangelistic zeal
• Alistair Begg – Persuading people by passionate argument from the Bible
• Mark Driscoll – Teaching with directness, challenge and relevance
• Mark Dever – Exposing all of God’s Word to all of God’s people

In sum, Vibert says good preaching requires that you:

1. Be relevant and interesting, showing how the Bible applies to life today. Immerse yourself in God’s Word so that you are speaking form his and not your own agenda. Also help people to appreciate that God’s agenda is controlling what you are saying.
2. Feed your congregation with the Word, but also encourage an appetite for more. Work hard to make your sermon clear, simple and memorable, using repetition, alliteration and rhetorical techniques that work for you. Use language and words as well-sharpened tools of your trade. Communicate the importance and urgency of what you are saying, allowing it to move both you and your congregation.
3. Use humor and story to reveal your humanity. And be careful to do this in a way that helps the congregation to see that you have found your joy, purpose and meaning in God.
4. Speak naturally and personally. Reveal the ways in which the messages has had an impact on you individually. Don’t be bookish, but be people-ish. Don’t disconnect with people in order to prepare a sermon, but rather prepare by loving, praying for and rubbing shoulders with those people to whom you are preaching (153).

There is also a website which provides additional resources.

The fourth practice of the church in John Howard Yoder’s book Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before a Watching World he calls the “Fullness of Christ”. Based on Ephesians 4:11-13 and 1 Corinthians 12, Yoder defines the fullness of Christ as

A new mode of group relationships, in which every member of the body has a distinctly identifiable, divinely validated and empowered role (47).

Ephesians 4 teaches that an element of Jesus’ victory won on the cross and resurrection was the gifting of believers for ministry. Paul’s vision leads to a radical practice for which the slogan “Every member a minister” is the rallying cry.

The metaphor of the body of Messiah, with Jesus as the head, relativizes hierarchy and establishes reciprocal accountability and interdependence while at the same time maintaining distinction among members.  This is not an anti-structural position, but a stance based on the analogy of the human body where dignity in complementarity is upheld. God is not making everyone the same, but “is empowering each member differently although equally” (55).

The practice of the church is to transform , to reform, “to reorient the notions of ministry so that there would be no one ungifted, no one not called, no one not empowered, and no one dominated” (60).

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and to be born this day of a pure virgin: Grant that I, who have been born again and made your child by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through my Lord Jesus Messiah, to whom with you and the same Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Merry Christmas from the Willitts’ family.

In this fourth and final week of Advent we lit the candle of Hope. The devotion we followed labeled the four candles: Promise, Light, Love and Hope. Each week we’ve been anticipating the coming of Jesus. We’ve meditated on God’s promise to send his Son to be the light of the world, the very embodiment of God’s love and in whom by the presence of the Holy Spirit we have hope.

This week we lit the rose candle as our fourth. However, that was out of order as one of our readers helpfully pointed out. I should have lit the rose candle in week three. Oh well! No harm no foul. This low church baptist is still figuring these things out. I will get it right next year!

The notable element this week was “the candle incident”. At some point on Wednesday, Zion took the rose candle and apparently whacked it against the table breaking it in two places. I didn’t discover this until the evening when we were sitting down for the devotion. The rose candle wasn’t with the others. I asked if anyone knew where it was. Zion went to the trash can and pulled out the broken candle. With no time to replace it, I simply taped it.

I thought for the final reflection on Advent with a young family, I would include a video of our Christmas Eve Eve devotion (we had it on Thursday night). It was not our best effort, but there are some great moments. The video certainly captures what we’ve been doing these four weeks leading up to Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Most pastors in ministry I know had a vision of what they wanted to be as a pastor before entering the ministry. Many still do. But a good many of those pastors are now frustrated, or unsatisfied or angst-filled because they are not being the pastor they want to be.

Recently I was having coffee with a pastor friend and we were talking about pastoring. He was expressing frustration over the demands of pastoral ministry. The busyness of leading a large congregation. As the senior pastor in a traditionally senior pastor led church, he was involved in almost everything: problem solving, staff mentoring, vision casting and leading, running the church, preaching and teaching and contributing as the church theologian. Here’s the thing: He’s good at all those things (he’s the most qualified in the room) and he enjoys elements of all of them. But the collection of these tasks are not what he wants to be as a pastor.

In the course of the conversation I used the phrase “the pastor you want to be”. He stopped and looked confused. As if, and I’m assuming here, he did not think he had a choice in the matter. But the truth is, he does. He can be the pastor he wants to be. Not every pastor has the same vision of what it means to be a pastor. And there is not one biblically sanctioned vision of the pastorate. The kind of pastoral ministry you have has to do with the kind of pastor you want to be. One’s own passions, gifts and personality should shape pastoral identity.

What kind of pastor do you want to be?

This conversation was fresh in my mind when I recently read Eugene Peterson’s reflection, “The Unbusy Pastor”, in his Memoir, The Pastor (Harper One, 2011, pp. 277-82). It is in a chapter by the way with a great title: “Invisible Six Days a Week, Incomprehensible the Seventh”. Both the chapter and the passage are a must read. But not because everyone should adopt Peterson’s vision of pastoral identity. I think, of course, we should all take stock of the busyness in our lives. Some of us, myself included, are addicted to the chaos of busyness. His reflection is convicting. But pay attention to his courage and tenacity in pursuit of the pastor he wants to be. Peterson inspires pastors not to settle for less than their unique vision of pastoring – whatever that looks like.

[Read more...]

Purify my conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Messiah, at his coming, may find in me a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

It’s Christmas. So put up your nativity sets. Polish up your star of Bethlehem. Feed the donkeys. Put your plastic baby Jesus in the manger. I guess we should dress up as shepherds, wise men, and angels. Let’s do the nativity all over again as we do every year. Get some cute little girl to play Mary, hold hands with a cute little Joseph. Watch them bring frankincense, gold, and myrrh. We can sing “Little Drummer Boy” and “We Three Kings”. If we want to get theological we can argue about whether Jesus was born in a stable, a guest room with animals, or a cave. We all know the story.

But let me ask you this. What if we could do the nativity story written by Stephen King? What would it look like? [Read more...]

Now I’m no atheist. I think atheism is very “retro,” very 1950s and 60s, back in the hey day of logical positivism, but it is not a serious intellectual option for me. Even the new atheists tend to be cranky, snide, and hate-filled old men who do for the good of humanity what Hannibal Lecter does for vegetarianism. Also, I don’t like the Greens Political party, not because I don’t agree with some of their policies on treatment of refugees and environmental management, but because it is blatantly obvious to me that a great deal of them would like to throw me and my family to the lions at Toronga Zoo – they really do hate Christians – or at best they might reluctantly allow me to exist in their socialist utopia as long as I promise to live underground where I’m never seen or heard. So, it is all the more striking when I say that I’ve come across a half decent Christmas address by an Atheist Green’s Politician named Dr. Russell Norman,  a member of the New Zealand Parliament.

Pretty good for an atheist, a Green’s politician, and a New Zealander (HT: Sean du Toit).

Just wish I could him give a quick 1 hour lesson on history and the Gospels.

Here’s the first par of the speech: [Read more...]