"Until I come, devote yourself to the publicreading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching."
This will require at least 8 people. From then you you will need multiples of 4.
Number people off 1, 2, 3, 4. Then break up Mark 1.1-34 amongst the four groups this way:
Mark 1.1-8
Mark 1.9-15
Mark 1.16-28
Mark 29-34
Each person will need a pen and an A4 piece of paper - divide the paper into eight even boxes. Then each group needs to draw their section of Mark 1 (story board style) in no more than the eight boxes. Once you've done this, start telling your group's part of Mark 1 within the group (using your pictures if needed). Do this a couple of times, helping each other tell the story that is:
clear (i.e. finding more suitable words/phrases for words/phrases the average person in your culture wouldn't understand; summarise names and places if needed, etc.)
accurate (you can't guess the meaning to embellish the story)
interesting (make use of body language, etc.)
OK, you're no ready to tell the story without looking at your pictures or your bible. Swap the groups around so that there is now someone from groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 in each group. Go ahead and tell the story to each other with pausing or stopping.
_________ How did you feel about hearing the bible this way? According to one set of figures, two thirds of the world are aural learners. Is this going to be an effective way to teach them the Bible? There are a basic set of of discussion questions you can use with this method (which are discussed in pairs before being shared with the whole), e.g. What did you like about the story/first impressions from the story? What questions does the story raise for you? What does the story tell us about God? What does the story tell us about humans? What are you going to change next week because of this story?
h/t To the SMBC graduate (who I can't name for security reasons) who taught this method of Bible teaching at staff equip yesterday.
Having laid out some of the problems facing preaching in church, it would be tempting to just do away with it. The common lament I hear is preaching is dry, boring and painful. And with the rise of the internet and the massive social changes that come with it, maybe preaching has had it's day.
However, being a good Anglican, I want to suggest that the way forward is the via media. I want to find some middle ground. I don't think we need to stop preaching. Instead, we need to preach better, we need to 'preach smarter'. It was encouraging to read Peter Adam describe John Calvin's preaching. Adam goes on to argue that it was Calvin's sermons rather than The Institutes and the Commentaries that were his most significant contribution: "[I]t was more through his preaching than through any other aspect of his work that he exercised the extraordinary influence everyone has acknowledged him to have had" (R.S. Wallace).
Calvin helped create a powerful pattern of vernacular expository preaching. His aim was to let God have his say, to project God's eloquence, to help the congregation to hear the voice of God. Calvin's sermons, heard in Geneva, written down, published, translated and published again, helped to reform Europe. We need to recover the health and vigour of engaged and lively expository preaching for the maturity and usefulness of the people of God, for the conversion of the world, for God's glory. We have much to learn from Calvin's preaching. - Peter Adam, "'Preaching of a Lively Kind' - Calvin's Engaged Expository Preaching", Engaging With Calvin, ed. M Thompson, IVP 2009.
If we want to preach better, or "preach smarter", then we need to recover the health and vigour of engaged and lively expository preaching for the maturity and usefulness of the people of God, for the conversion of the world, for God's glory. Preaching can be powerful when it is done well. Speech is powerful. Calvin's sermons transformed not just one city, but large swathes of a continent. Sure, the sixteenth century was a far more oral society than at the start of the twenty-first century.
But even today a good speech can move people. We've seen that in the past year with Barak Obama's election to the American Presidency. Never before had an election campaign harnassed the power of the internet. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. You name it, Obama was on it. But it was the power of speech that captured a nation's imagination. Let us consider what this wordsmith has to offer us regarding preaching...
It has been said that we stand at the dawn of a new era. As we seek to communicate Jesus and connect with stories, our culture is changing at a rapid pace - and this is why presentation in preaching is important.
We are witnessing the transition between two major communication eras. This is a pretty big deal, as they've only been two communication eras up to now. Firstly, there was the oral culture of communication. Secondly, the culture of writing with the invention of the alphabet and later, the printing press. And thirdly (now), the electronic era of communications, starting with Film and Television, where image became everything. If you think about it, such a major change in communications has only happened once before in human history. So it's no wonder that there is a crisis in today's preaching (and lots of other forms of content delivery).
According to Perth author and pastor Graham Johnston: "The force of the written word has diminished. Words carry no meaning. Enter the image. Images leave the viewer, not with carefully crafted ideas and precepts but with impressions."
Johnston overstates things when he says the power of the written word has diminished - I disagree with that. But he makes an important point about image. Since the rise of television, image and perception have become much more important in communication. And if we thought television had radically changed communication - along came the Internet. Effectively in the last decade the Internet has reshaped everything. Cultural critic Lee Siegel argues: "The Internet is possibly the most radical transformation of private and public life in the history of humankind."
The Internet: it's huge. And it changes everyday.It's changing the whole arena of communication and even society itself. The Internet is changing the people the church preaches to, especially young people. Because of this the Internet presents great challenges and possibilities for preaching today and tomorrow. To throw some perspective on this, it took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million people. Television took 13 years, the Internet took 4 years, the i-Pod did it in 3 years and facebook did it in just 2 years. Internet use has even surpassed television viewing.
It's because of all these major developments that we go to the Internet and learn some lessons for preaching in today's world. There is more to come...
One of the problems with preaching today is that presentation matters. Actually, what I mean is that presentation is important, and we're neglecting it. As good Evangelicals we have a strong view of scripture: that is powerful and change peoples lives. We believe in the centrality of the word in preaching, empowered by the Spirit. We believe in good exegesis that is driven entirely by God's word. So does presentation matter?
My answer is yes, it does. In preparing our sermons we spend so much time working out our three points (preferably alliterated), a humorous introduction and some sort of application at the end that includes Jesus. And what we are producing is an half-hour essay that has been fitted into that format and read out loud. We need to do better than this.
But before I go further, I must say two things.
Presentation means more than eloquent words. The Apostle Paul was quite clear that when we taught it wasn't going to be the beauty of his words that changed lives (see 1 Cor. 2.1-2). Presenting when doesn't mean we sell out to a rhetorical exercise. It's about serving God well; and some of the preaching in the church today just 'doesn't cut the mustard'.
Presentation is doesn't necessarily equal spin. In a world were people are cynical of most things that they hear, preaching spin would be far more dangerous than delivering a 30 minute essay. The best preaching is personal. As I will explain in the pomo series, good presentation requires authenticity, not spin.
Some of you would have heard about the famous Joshua Bell YouTube video.
Back in 2007 Joshua went into a Washington subway with a violin. Wearing jeans and a cap, he started busking. In the 45 minutes he played, 1097 people passed by. Hardly anyone stopped and only 27 people gave money. All up he earned $32, less than a dollar a minute.
Away from the subway, Joshua Bell is an accomplished violinist - one of the modern worlds great. A couple of days earlier, playing a violin handcrafted in 1713, valued at $4 million, he’d packed Boston’s - Stately Symphony Hall to great acclaim. Tickets were $120 each. He earned $1,200 a minute!
Same bloke... same violin… same pieces of music… same brilliant performance…His presentation of himself and his performance - were the only variables.
Presentation matters! Presentation counts! Preaching a 30 minute essay isn't good enough any more. We need to prepare what not just what we say, but how we say it. If we should learn anything from the 2008 US Presidential campaign, great oratory and careful presentation is powerful. It can lead you to the most powerful office in the land (although Abraham Lincoln had already taught us the power of words: his Gettysburg Address, arguably the greatest speech in American history, was over in just two minutes). But for us who proclaim the resurrected Jesus, it's never just about great oratory. The best sermons are personal and authentic.
Preaching like this has great potential. According to the great author on preaching, Haddon Robinson:
"The effectiveness of our sermons depends on two factors; (of course)what we say – but how we say it...The age of the preacher is gone, the age of the communicator has arrived".
It seems that there is a crisis in preaching. How often do you hear church goers complaining about the length of the sermon? Or how boring it is? Or how irrelevant it is? I heard Leigh Hatcher talk about 'Preaching in a 'look at me' world', and I'll try and post some of his thoughts up here. But to set the scene, here are some thoughts on preaching by some well known contemporary preachers.
John Stott:
"The standard of preaching in the modern world is deplorable. There are few great preachers."
John Woodhouse:
"Much of modern preaching is deadly dull, and we long to hear preaching that is alive."
Peter Jensen:
"We need to look again at what we do in church, our reading, our prayers, (YES!!) our preaching."
Bryan Chapel:
Congregational interest in any message is a minor miracle - that no minister should ever take for granted."
Martyn Lloyd Jones, on the British experience going back to the 1960’s!!:
"Many of the younger reformed men in Britain are very good men who have no doubt read a great deal, and are very learned, but they are very dull boring preachers."
Richard A. Jensen:
"There’s a crisis - in the theory and practice of preaching."
