SPEAKER_01 0:00

I grew up in the Methodist Church, and the Methodist Church depends on what's called local preachers. And um Can you speak up here somewhere? I'll do my best. So local preachers, Methodist churches don't have an ordained minister in every church. They have a pool of lay people, if you like, who preach and teach. And I grew up in that context. And so actually, I started training with the Methodist Church to preach when I was about 16, I think. And you kind of go on note and you have kind of you go around and you have supervised preaching and reflection, and it's a really, really helpful discipline. But I mean, all that to say is far more people can preach than actually do preach. I think that um so one of the big questions about why you're here today is why why do you want to preach or teach or speak? It might be that you've come just to improve your public speaking skills, but it might be come with a real aspiration to preach. And if you do, then there are some warnings about preaching as well. Don't presume to teach. And particularly in today's society, if you speak, you are going to be very exposed. I personally have been kind of quoted out of context on the internet, you know, from the internet. People take a little section of the talk, or whatever, you know, you are quite exposed. So it's worth kind of thinking about that when you speak and teach in today's world. Uh, and we can get you know put on, you know, we we could be kind of cancelled because of some careless word. But the Bible says be careful what you speak, you'll be judged on every careless word, so it's relevant. Um I think also that when you you speak and preach, your character is really important. And one of the things that that could sometimes come through, in spite of yourself, is the person that you are comes through in the way that you preach and deliver and how you handle the content, however good it is or however bad it is. And there's been times when I've heard someone preach and it's not been a conventionally good talk in terms of its structure or whatever, but there's been something very inspirational about the person delivering it, and vice versa. Sometimes I've heard a very accomplished talk, but it's left me cold because of the tone in which he's delivered. And I I think probably what right at the beginning, who am I? What's my character? Where am I before God as I come to speak? Is this a posture of humility and servanthood that I've got, or is it about, you know, I just want to I want to deliver something, I want to say something, I want to have, you know, it there could be an assertiveness about a desire to preach, which actually isn't great. But um just the other thing to say is that I I'm just gonna give some broad brushstrokes around some values around preaching. And in the Woodlands Church family, we've been articulating some values uh that kind of define our culture a little bit. Can anyone probably tell me what the four things that we preached about um in the spring were? Particularly if you're not on the staff team. Good. Well, you may you may kind of be familiar with these words welcoming, authentic, empowered, and expectant. And probably those kind of cultural aspirations, that's what that's kind of people we want to be, um, do have an impact on our preaching. When I'm giving um well, I've got those things in mind as a backdrop, welcoming. I want when I'm preaching to communicate to everybody that it's a privilege to talk to them, and that I'm so glad that you're here, particularly if it isn't your normal comfort zone. And so, one of the things for us as a church, we have a value of preaching to seekers, to people on the spiritual journey, not just people who are the kind of disciples in the groove. Uh, and so that sense of welcome means we want to be accessible in our preaching. And actually, the New Testament church was a church that expected seekers to be in their midst, and therefore, when Paul's writing about the gatherings, the communication, it needs to be intelligible to the unchurched person, not got so that's that's a that's something for us to consider, and then authentic. I think again people have a nose for authenticity or not, don't they? And and being authentic means this this is this is real to me. Uh, more of that than all empowered, again, I I I I trade on the power of God for preaching. I think there can be a place where you where you stand up in front of people and preach, where my expectation was God, anoint what I'm saying, help. I need your power to deliver this. And sometimes um, if I'm sensible, before I ever preach, I will kind of have a little run through with my wife Tina. She'll then make me rewrite it. But um, usually when I'm delivering in that context, it's very dead and a bit wooden and and not very inspired. But something changes in the context of delivery, I think, because there is a the power of God's present, and we should be seeking that and not just trading off our own kind of learned skills or whatever. It's it's that it's and then expectant that that last thing. I hope that when we preach, we're expecting something to happen in that interaction between God, ourselves, and the congregation. And one of the things that that's that defines preaching, actually, I think, is that the preachers are looking for a response. Um it's a there's an immediacy about the the the pre the preaching, which is slightly different from from where there's a teaching bias, where um things are changing, things are being called out. And and I I personally have had transformational experiences listening to people preach. Have you? So there's a sense in which there's an expectation God's going to do something, and we're gonna leave here change somewhat. So that those are where the four values of of the Woody Church family fit in. But I also want to talk a little bit about our four values for when we gather in terms of the whole service, because we do have some values as a as a as a church that normally Sunday by Sunday we'd expect these kind of things to be happening when we meet in this particular church, and those again four W's welcome is there again, welcome worship word and wonders, and um obviously it can be really helpful if those four things complement one another, and it can be really helpful if preachers are talking to hosts and worship leaders, and there's a sense of which, oh, where are you gonna go with that? How are you gonna land? And and there is a commonality, but it's also obvious that in those four things, there's only one of those four ingredients that's not delivered communally. Hopefully, the welcome is very communal and the worship very communal, and the the wonders, ministry time praying for people is very communal. But when you preach, it's you on your own, and everybody else is passive at that time, they're listening to you, and therefore, there's something that a lot rests on you to be engaging as well as bringing revelation, and um I I I yeah, I say there's a lot at stake in that way, and and to be honest, we are not done with preaching as a core ingredient for church life. You know, the monologue sermon has been critiqued. Is that the right tool for the communication of the good news of Jesus in today's world? But um it it does seem to have an enduring power, and it's certainly something which is very pivotal in what goes on. And it has been said, you know, that if preaching is bad, churches will empty, and if it's really good, people will be drawn to it, even in today's um world with so many resources that people can listen to. So preaching does depend a little bit on size, by the way. Keep me on time, Tim. Um and in large church, particularly, um, leadership is mediated through preaching. And I and I think you could think, oh, we've got this is typical, large churches tend to have fewer preachers. Um, and you might think that's odd because surely there's a bigger pool of people to draw from. But it tends to be that in a large church um the leader interaction with congregants has going to be from the platform rather than in a small church where you can get around and know and visit everyone. You know, we probably have a cutoff pool of about 50 people that we can know well, or maybe 150 that we know partially, but when it goes beyond that, we we have different ways of communicating. And so for a lot of large churches, you'll find that the the preaching pool is is smaller, which means that uh a less diverse people get to preach in in gathered church. Also, in in large church, where you have more visitors and more strangers, um people's expectations of of what they're going to get in the communication are higher. I think that we we some of us talk in in church life about the the the um inclusion excellence tension. There's something about being the fan of God, we want to include everyone, but there's something also where we want to have a degree of excellence. And the the rule of thumb is the larger the gathering, the more strangers are there, the more you play the excellence rather than the inclusion. You you you could understand, like in a family party, if you know, if Auntie Mabel stands up and gives a monologue, you think, oh, that's wonderful, it's Auntie Mabel doing her thing. But if you know people have paid um five quid and there's 200 people in the room and Auntie, you know, it's not the same, is it? Anyway, it's just a an aside. Um so how do we then grow new preachers if there is this in a large church? How do you grow new preachers if if there's a lot at stake in the large gathering? And the reality is that we want to grow new preachers for all kinds of reasons, partly because, as Tim said in the beginning, there's something about being able to communicate that's that that has a general thing for human beings and for all of us who are witnesses, but there's a sense of which um we have lots of smaller contexts where we're doing church, we're doing church in the home, we're doing church in our midweek pastorals, we're doing church in our congregations. And people like Ruth, who's a church planter, uh or or Laura, say, where's our preachers? We we need more preachers in our congregations, and um there I think that smaller contexts and stable contexts and places where there is that um you you this is my these are my people, and I'm there I'm with them and they're with me. Um works really well. I think you know, I know where when a young adult stands up to speak, the young adults in the room think, hey, one of us, it's great, let's let's listen well and support and cheer that person on. So we want to find lots of context where where preaching can be developed within the wider family. It's also true to say that there are many churches around our city that are keen to have preachers, and some of you in your speaking formation could be going to uh another church in the city and speaking there and growing your skills, but also serving a corner should say, Oh, we haven't had someone under 30 preaching forever, you know, or whatever, or someone under 70 in some of our cases. Um so just a just whipping through some. I think as I said at the start, there is a continuum between preaching and teaching, but on the whole, preaching is looking for uh a response of the heart and will, whereas teaching is looking for an understanding of the mind. So there's a tension there between responding and reflecting, and um ideally a sermon will combine both those elements. There will there will be a teaching element in that. There may be some some content that uh oh, that's interesting or challenging or inspiring, but it's not just about making those mental connections, but it's about the heart, and different people lean more into one of those dynamics on the continuum than others. Um I I think when when we talk about preaching to people who are seekers who may not understand, one of the questions is often, again, another tension is do we dumb down what we're saying in order to make it accessible? And absolutely not. I think it's not surprising, by the way, if you go into a context that's not familiar to you, that you come expecting to learn. And so we don't have to kind of reduce everything to the point that there's no learning for people. But I think acknowledging that that there may be difficulties or challenging can really help people feel, okay, it's all right for me to be here, even if this has gone a bit over my head. Uh, and it's amazing what people don't know, because biblical literacy is not common in our culture. I was with you know, a church leader, I heard um talked about someone in his church who was very confused because didn't realise there were two Josephs in the Bible. And so when the preacher was talking about Joseph, um he's trying to equate that with the nativity and everything. Where's this coat of many colours come from? And why did that fit? So just a little acknowledgement sometimes, and and probably that's one of the disciplines that that we have here. By the way, this is someone writing in the New Testament, someone called Paul, you know, just little asides that help people um earth and anchor what's being said. And again, when we preach, uh one one of the things that there could be a temptation for for preachers is to try and say it all in one talk. You know, I I don't know about you, but when I was writing essays, I try to be fairly comprehensive, but a sermon isn't an essay, and nor do we have to get everything that we know into one Sunday. We've got we've got years, and uh ideally when we're planning preaching, we want to feel that there is a developmental flow of what's being communicated that both helps us go deeper in a topic or gives momentum to a church. And ideally, um, we have a calendar year that reflects how we preach, and so um, again, if you if you're thinking about uh about a church like Woody's, we actually do intentionally preach around season. So Christmas is coming. Guess what? We're gonna be using the Christmas story before Easter. We tend to take a gospel series that leads us up the way of the cross. In February, we tend to have a series that's looking at some of the internal um formation um wholeness kind of stuff. That's both it's that kind of time of year after New Year when people do that, but also it's time with our wholeness course. In in September, when we're regathering after summer, there tends to be some vision delivered in the talk. So all of those factors are there in our why we do it like this. And again, um we tend at Woody's on the whole to preach thematically rather than going through a book of the Bible expositionally, and that you know that's a bit contentious because some people really would would love to have line by line, verse by verse, Bible exposition. And and it's great to have that in a church family. And I'm not sure that I necessarily want to have that on Sunday, I certainly want to have it on every Sunday. Um, I think that what we would do is to try and choose a book of the Bible that's strongly strongly relevant to the theme that we're basing ourselves in. If I was giving a talk about worship and communion, I would be drawing heavily from 1 Corinthians. It's the book in the Bible in the New Testament, which which made us on worship. I might also look at the Psalms or I might look at uh some of the stuff in the life of David, but probably there'll be some Bible passages that will really suit the theme. I also think that um we want to reflect the whole of Scripture and bring that in with what we call a Jesus-centered hermeneutic. In other words, we're trying to look at scripture through the lens of who Jesus is, and um, I think that actually is the way that the New Testament itself preaches, and obviously the writers of the New Testament are writing scripture, but they're also preaching to churches in a way. When when Paul's writing to Ephesus, or when the writer of Hebrews is writing to that group of people, they have a message they're trying to give. And what you'll find they do is they extract verses from all over the Bible. If you if you look at the book of Hebrews, which is a book which is really wanting to help people maintain that that centrality of Jesus in the face of a perhaps a regression to a more Judaizing approach, it just draws verses all over the place. But it's worth saying it's much easier for people to preach directly from a Bible passage than from a brief set by another preacher. So one of the things that I do is I I often prepare kind of a sermon series and I'll send out often quite detailed thoughts that I've got about passages and where we're going to go with this theme. Um, so it uh this up to date, we're doing a series on Sunday evenings called The Disciplines of a Disciple, and I've written material for five talks, but it's much harder for people to really necessarily grasp exactly what I was getting at. Then if they're coming direct to a passage and want to extract their own thoughts from it, it it could be easier to do that. And certainly from time to time we will actually just go through a book of the Bible and let people draw what they feel they're getting uh personally from that, and and particularly we'll do that at a time when we don't need the momentum of leadership and teaching combined. And I I perhaps I I I hope I'm not confusing about that. Just going back to what I said about large churches, is that often we're not we don't we're not just trying to kind of um fill the time, we we've we've got a sense of this is what we're trying to press into as a church, and we wanted to deliver that through our leaders, and so most of the when you're in a phase where momentum is really important, it's really important that you've got the right people on the right topics. But there are other times where we're a bit more chilled, and and people you you can give space to people to develop their own exegetical skills, and um and and we use the summer for that a lot actually because and and I thought that's really refreshing. So, just as I come into lands, um, some values and tips that are personal to me. What's your personality type? Are you an intuitive? Are you someone who who loves to kind of or research? And in fact, you you really need to be secure by making sure you've done your homework well. And how much prep do you need? John Stott, famous um uh now deceased preacher, would say you need um an hour of preparation for every minute that you speak. And um, I think that's that's particularly true. First of all, if you are needing to do a lot of reading around the subject, and also, and and it goes without saying probably that the less experienced you are, the fewer opportunities you've had to preach, the more time of prep you'll need. It's a bit like a school teacher who's been in the business for 50 years will be doing hardly any prep, whereas someone who's a newly qualified teacher will be spending hours doing prep. And it's a similar idea, really, but um you need to be adequately prepared. So I spend very little time in preparation these days, but on the other hand, I have been preaching for 50 years. So, in a sense, I've had 50 years of preparation, that means that my current preparation time can be very marginal. But I am aware that for some people the time pressure, the cost of preaching, where they're at is significant, and therefore the frequency in which they preach is limited because it's very costly for them and for their families. Um, I think for me, my preaching represents my personality, and my preference is to engage relationally and conversationally with the congregation. And in in some contexts, my you know, like I preach at high grove last week, and and I ask questions of the congregation and comment on their answers back, and I enjoy doing that. And for me personally, I very seldom use PowerPoints, partly because I'm lazy about producing them, but partly also because I think too many PowerPoints interrupt the kind of engagement that I'm personally looking for with the community. But for other people, and potash, particularly if they are leaning to the teaching style, a PowerPoint may be more helpful for what they're delivering. And of course, every now and then a visual image will just really help all of us to engage. Um but I think that's one of the context, the greater dialogue possibility is. I think um it's really helpful to think when you're preparing what's the kernel of what you have to say, what's the one thing I'm really trying to get across? What's the one thing that that excites me? What's the revelation I'm carrying? And and and Tina, when when I'm talking to us, we'll also say, What's your heart? Share your heart, don't just share information, share what's your pack, what you're passionate about. And I think that that heart sharing is um it's it's drawing, actually, isn't it? It it people do respond to to those realities. I think the discipline of preaching brief is really important. At our eight o'clock service, when we started that, I was aiming for 12-minute sermons. 15 if you're good, you know. Um if you can't be good, be long is not a good axiom. But um, it's it's kind of it's harder to preach briefly than than than long. And and one of the big faults for starters' offers is that they'll think they're gonna go for 20 minutes and they're offer 45. Because I I don't know what it is, but it but it's a reality. I think it's really helpful if you could find a memorable axiom, a pithy kind of saying that sums up what you're trying to say. So, an example for me is sometimes when I talk about church, I say big church for inspiration, small church for participation. It's an axiom, it's very memorable, but I also think it carries a lot of content, it helps people understand what you're trying to do in church. Jesus had an axiom salt and light is one of Jesus' memorable phrases, which just tells an awful lot, but it sticks with us, doesn't it? I think my sermons are always better if I've shared them with a critical friend first, and um I somehow don't want to do that because I like what I've prepared, but it will be better if I've done that, and particularly, you know, I've gone through phases where I've not done that. I've just started doing it again recently, and I've just thought I'd these are better. Um preaching is very vulnerable, but we also need feedback. That's a challenge. When you stood up and given a sermon, you just want people to say that was great, thank you. And often people will do that. That the that was great, but doesn't really help you improve as a preacher, and we do need feedback, and um, it might be helpful. I have a feedback form which I'll share with you in a moment, and I'll just say a little bit about why those the stuff's on there. Um, but it's it's okay not to be perfect. This is very subjective. You probably weren't as bad as you thought when you thought you were terrible, or as good as you you thought you were when you thought you were brilliant, and um, it's really helpful to listen back to yourself. We we we record many things, and it's it's awful listening back to yourself, but it's very, very helpful, and and you notice things like what I do with my hands. I didn't know I did that with my hands. And um have I run out of time now? Right. So I'll press I'll when I get a chance to talk about this this guidance sheet and and why that particular product is there at a later time in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Um just so that we uh have a given file. Um uh just so you're not at the two more time, uh what would be one thing from what Dave just said that you hadn't thought of before, and they might take away as a little kind of thing with you. So just talk to the person next to you. What's one thing that Dave said that you think I might take that away? Uh I hadn't heard that before.