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Preaching Conference Part 5 By David Cook

Other Talks on preaching can be found at SMBC bibletalks

Okay, thanks everyone. In this session what I plan to do is speak about clarity in preaching
which is just a couple of pages over and then I'll preach the sermon that's on the foot
of the page on preaching letters on Romans 5. So let's look first of all at clarity in
preaching and if you'd like to open your Bibles to Colossians chapter 4 verses 3 and 4. And
this is in the context of what I quoted Andrew Blackwood yesterday from Princeton Seminary.
He was the chairman of the preaching or practical department there, faith, hope and clarity
but the greatest of these is clarity. And so we're going to be looking at clarity in
this next half hour or so. Colossians chapter 4 verses 2 to 4. Devote yourselves to prayer
being watchful and thankful and pray for us too that God may open a door for our message
so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may
proclaim it clearly as I should. You just notice there that Paul asks them to pray that
he'll be clear and he sees it as his duty, as his obligation to be clear that I may proclaim
it clearly as I should. I ought to be proclaiming it clearly. Now listen to what Calvin said
just one month before his death in 1564. He said as far as I know I have not corrupted
one passage of scripture. If I might have brought in subtle meanings, if I have studied
subtlety, I have trampled it all underfoot for I have studied to be simple. And in his
commentary on commentators Spurgeon says of the exclusive brethren commentator J. N. Darby
and I quote, he is too mystical for ordinary minds. If the author would write in plain
English then his readers would probably discover that there is nothing very valuable in his
remarks. And Spurgeon on another occasion said Christ said feed my lamb, some preachers
put the food so high that they have interpreted a text to mean feed my giraffes. So it's not
hard to be complicated. Spurgeon's commitment of course, he said if God helping me I will
seek to be a thoroughly interesting preacher of the word and so illustration serves clarity.
Now in this time I'm going to quote a fair bit and I'm going to quote mostly or I think
exclusively from Preaching and Preachers by Martin Lloyd-Jones. On page 128 he quotes
Luther and he says this, Luther says, a preacher should have the skill to teach the unlearned
simply, roundly and plainly for teaching is of more importance than exhortation. When
I preach I regard neither the doctors nor the magistrates of whom I have about 40 in
the congregation. I have all my eyes on the servant maids and the children and if the
learned men are not well pleased with what they hear well the door is open. And so this
whole issue of preaching so that children can understand I think it's a great goal to
give ourselves. Listen by the way to what Lloyd-Jones said about his experience going
and preaching to the Oxford University. Later after he had preached at the debating society
one of the Oxford undergraduates stood up and thanked him and he said, this is what
he said, he paid the preacher some compliments and said that he had much enjoyed the sermon
but there was one great difficulty and perplexity left in his mind as a result of the sermon.
He really could not see but that that sermon which he had listened to with pleasure and
which he admitted was well constructed and well presented might not equally well have
been delivered to a congregation of farm labourers or anyone else. He then immediately sat down
and the entire company of the Oxford University debating society roared with laughter. The
chairman turned to me for my reply. I rose and gave what must always be the reply to
such an attitude. I said that I was interested in the question but really could not see the
question as difficulty because I confessed freely that though I might be a heretic I
had to admit that until that moment I had regarded undergraduates and indeed graduates
of Oxford University as being just ordinary common human clay and miserable sinners like
everybody else and held the view that their needs were precisely the same as those of
the agricultural labourer or anyone else. I had preached as I had done so quite deliberately.
There is no greater fallacy than to think that you need a gospel for special types of
different types of people and that's what we're aiming for. We're aiming for clarity
in whatever congregational setting we find ourselves. Now I just make some suggestions
as to how to be clear and on the page I've outlined them under six points. The first
point we are to try seek to isolate the one dominant thought of the text. I think we tend
to say far too much and if the preacher gets up and says look I've got too much material
you can be sure that the fact that the preacher has too much material is going to militate
against clarity. So Ian Pitt Watson from Fuller Seminary says the first and great commandment
is that every sermon should be ruthlessly unitary in its theme and of course that follows
on from what John Stott says the difference between a lecture and a sermon is the sermon
should have one major point, it has one main message. Haddon Robinson's idea of the big
idea, it should have one big idea which is the big idea of the passage. Let me quote
again from Preaching and Preachers, this is a great section, page 257. Lloyd-Jones says
he remembers a bit of advice given to him in his first year as a preacher. In those
days it was customary in the Church of Wales for two preachers, one preacher, the senior
preacher to preach in the morning, the junior preacher to preach in the afternoon and then
the senior preacher to preach again at night and so in the afternoon the older man who
had preached in the morning had heard Lloyd-Jones preach in the afternoon and on their way to
supper at the pastor's house the old man critiqued the sermon of Martin Lloyd-Jones and this
is what he said, the great defect of that sermon this afternoon was this, he said, that
you were overtaxing your people, you were giving them far too much. He then went on
to put it like this, he said, I will give you a rule, remember it as long as you live.
Now I think this is a great rule, remember this rule, I will give you a rule, remember
it as long as you live. Only one in twelve of your congregation is really intelligent.
Only one in twelve, that was his assessment, not mine. Now look around the room, I think
there's about nearly thirty of us, that means that there are two who are really intelligent,
two and a half. Only one in twelve, that was his assessment, not mine and he said, remember
that as long as you live, one in twelve. Then he said, you watch what I shall be doing tonight,
I shall really be saying one thing but I shall say it in three different ways and that was
precisely what he did and most effectively. He was a very intellectual man known as a
great theologian but that's what he did. He was the author of several excellent commentaries
but he said one thing and he said it in three different ways. And so Lloyd-Jones goes on
and makes it clear that that is what we are striving for, we are striving to be clear
in our presentation and don't get overwhelmed by the audience. And my experience is, whenever
I'm preaching to PhDs, don't worry about it, don't worry about PhDs because it doesn't
necessarily mean they've got a lot of common sense just because they've got a PhD. So don't
get overwhelmed by that because I think sometimes I heard a terrific preacher from up this way
on one occasion and I knew that he was a terrific preacher. He came from a mechanics background
and he gave me a tape and he said, could you listen to the tape and critique it? And he
was asked to preach before the whole body of his congregation, of his whole denomination
I should say, the whole body of his denomination. So all the clergy were there and the elders
were there and everybody was there. And I thought, what's happened to you? It was unclear,
he was quoting this and he was quoting this and he was quoting this and he was showing
subtly his wide reading. He thought somehow that before an august body of people like
this, he had to show that he was well read. And I think if there's one criticism I make
of what I hear at Katoomba and of myself when I go to Katoomba, I think that a lot
of people who come to Katoomba to preach come prepared to preach to the clergy who are present.
And the reality is that we're all exactly the same and so we want to show our wide reading
and the meaning of this and the meaning of that and we're aware of this and that and
we lose our sense of clarity. And so that's why I think we've got to strive to get the
dominant thought of the text and make sure that it's that that we are clearly explaining.
Strong structure, secondly, serves clarity. And so again, the movements at the foot of
the pyramid really are the basis for your structure. J.C. Ryle, a Bishop of Liverpool
from 1880 to 1900, Archbishop Lone in his biography calls him the simple man's bishop.
And Ryle preached a sermon to the Royal Homiletical Society entitled Simplicity in Preaching,
which I think lately has come out in Matthias material. But I read it for the first time
in the Banner of Truth book called The Upper Room. And it's a tremendous chapter in there.
And you'll know when you read a Ryle sermon that he says, I want to say three things by
way of introduction, one, two, three. Now I want to say five things as part of the body
of the talk, one, two, three, four, five. And now I want to say two things by way of
conclusion, one, two. And that's the way it is. It's beautifully structured. It's clear.
He tells you what he's going to do and then he doesn't. And so structure and it doesn't,
structure doesn't have to be that obvious as J.C. Ryle makes it, but you need structure.
And so I think we've got to work hard at structure. If you have, if we go to lunch today and we
are served the main course and we are served dessert, you don't take the dessert. Imagine
yesterday if we had the potato and the chicken on top and you got the cheesecake with the
raspberry sauce and the ice cream and just plopped it on top of the potato, mixed it
all up like that, because that's the way it's going to look in your stomach anyway. So you
mix it all up like that and you eat it and we'd look at you and think, what's wrong with
him? What's wrong with her? It needs to be ordered, doesn't it? That's the idea. You
set it out in some order. And so that's when you're preaching the sermon, you set it out
in order for the congregation because you're showing your respect for me at that point.
You're striving to be clear, that shows your respect for me. You're showing your respect
for the word by not imposing a structure on the word. And so that's why I think you've
got to be careful of alliteration, you know, find three Ps in the passage. I can always
find two, but I can never find the third. So you go for the Ephesaurus and have a look
there for another P. I think you've got to be careful about that. But structure is vitally
important. Now, let's just look at an example of structure in Acts chapter 17, Paul's sermon
to the Areopagus. Acts chapter 17. Now, notice what he does. Let's concentrate on the movements
here as I've put on the page there from verse 22 to verse 34. You remember that Paul has
had a look around the city, he's noticed that it's full of idols, he's greatly distressed
at the city of Athens and its spiritual state. Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus
verse 22 and he said, men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for
as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar
with this inscription to an unknown God. Now, what you worship is something unknown I'm going
to proclaim to you. So here's a speech and there's the first paragraph of the speech and you think
that represents one unit of thought. Okay, go on to the next paragraph. The God who made the world
and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands
and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men
life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should
inhabit the whole earth and he determined a time set for them and the exact places where they
should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him
though he is not far from each one of us for in him we live and move and have our being
as some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Verse 29, next paragraph,
therefore since we are God's offspring we should not think that the divine being is like gold or
silver or stone, an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent for he has set a day when he will judge
the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising
him from the dead. Last paragraph 32, when they heard about the resurrection of the dead some of
them sneered but others said we want to hear you again on this subject as that Paul left the
council a few men became followers of Paul and believed among them was Dionysius a member of the
Areopagus also a woman named Damaris and a number of others. Now you notice therefore that what Luke
is doing in outlining that address to the Areopagus is that in verses 22 to 23 he's
providing the point of contact, the introduction and Paul finds the introduction from the city of
Athens itself that is that in his travels around the city he has noted that there are many altars
to idol gods but there is one altar to an unknown god so the Greeks apparently wanted to make sure
that they covered every base as it were and so if there's another god not included in their pantheon
of gods that's the altar to that god. So he doesn't say as I walked around your city men of
Athens verse 22 he does not say men of Athens I see that in every way you are pagan, idolatous,
rebels against god. He doesn't say that he reaches out them you're very religious and as I looked
around I saw an altar to the unknown god and verse 24 to 28 he actually corrects their theology
he corrects their view of god he does that in verse 24 by saying you build temples for god
for the gods thinking that they live in them the reality is that the unknown god has made a place
for you you build a place for him it's the very opposite he's made a place for you because he's
the creator of heaven and earth correcting point two verse 25 you think that unless you feed him
he will go hungry like we might think of a dog the reality is he is not served by human hands as
though he's dependent upon us but he actually gives life and breath to us we are dependent
upon him he is not dependent upon us you build a place for him to keep him covered he's given you
a place you feed him or he goes hungry he sustains the next breath you're about to take point three
you think that he is lost and you need to find him the reality verse 26 to 28 is that he has taken
the first step and he has stepped out he has created the order the structure so that you will
determine that there is an orderer and a structure and therefore he is not far from each one of us
we are his offspring he takes the first step he is not lost we are lost and he takes the first step
in ordering creation in the way it is so that we can discern that there is more to it than the
creation itself next paragraph verse 29 to 31 he comes to the crunch and he makes it clear here
again in a corrective way that it's not that god is the product of our creative imagination
rather we are made in his image we are the product of his creative activity and the ignorance which
thinks that we can make god god commands that all people turn away from that ignorance of
idolatry and the reason verse 31 is that he has set a day when he will judge the world
he's appointed the judge and he's given proof of this by raising the judge from the dead
so the resurrection of the judge is the proof that judgment day will come now notice what the
apostle Paul has done one he has made contact with these people by using something which they
knew very well the author to the unknown god he has not quoted the old testament scriptures as
though they have any authority for them he's quoted their own poets he has interacted with
their thinking about god and he has not compromised himself by accepting it he sought to correct it
that their thinking about god is entirely wrong and then notice that he has called on them to
repent knowing that they were fascinated with the concept of resurrection he has showed what
the resurrection means the resurrection me of the judge means that judgment day is sure and yet at
no point does he actually name the judge the man Jesus he speaks about the resurrection of the man
he is appointed to be judge and the proof of judgment that the day has been set is the
resurrection of the judge therefore just as the judge died and rose so his experience will be the
pattern for our experience death will not be the end for any member of the areopagus because death
was not the end for the judge and then Luke in typical fashion shows us the response to the
message which was a divided response and here in verses 32 to 34 notice what he's saying he's
saying that there were some who sneered there were some who wanted to know more and there was some
who became followers of Paul and believed and he names a couple of them so you see here therefore
that this is a well-ordered address in the way Luke presents it Paul may well have said more
but this is the body of what he had to say and I put it to you that it a well-ordered address is
a sign of respect for the congregation if you know me you know that my attention span is short
you don't want to compromise by telling me I'm right when I'm wrong you want to clearly place
the gospel before me and so that is our obligation and so I think that that address
and its construct is a good model for us as we seek across a culture into our own culture to
communicate the gospel thirdly third issue here on the outline beware of too many quotes because
they cloud clarity and take away from authority I've mentioned this before that we feel the need
to put more quotes in our material depending on how we rate our audience but one in 12 is what
Lloyd-Jones said now listen to Lloyd-Jones again on page 126 I will never forget I shall never
forget preaching some 27 years ago at a college chapel at the University of Oxford on a Sunday
morning I'd preached in exactly the same way as I would have preached in anywhere else the moment
the sermon had finished and before I had scarcely had time to get down from the pulpit the wife of
the principal of the college came rushing up to me and she said do you know that this is the most
remarkable thing I have known in this chapel I said what do you mean well she said do you know
that you are literally the first man I have ever heard in this chapel who has preached to us as if
we were sinners all the preachers who come here because it is a college chapel in Oxford have
obviously been taking exceptional pains to prepare learned intellectual sermons thinking we are all
great intellects to start with the poor fellows often show that they don't have too much intellect
themselves but they have obviously been straining in an attempt to produce the last ounce of
learning and culture and the result is that we go way absolutely unfettered unmoved we have listened
to these sermons and our souls are left dry they do not seem to understand that though we live in
Oxford we are nevertheless sinners now that was a statement of fact by a highly intelligent lady
the wife of the principal of a college and then he goes on he talks about this whole issue of
having to bring in lots and lots of quotes only use a quotation he says on page 222 when it seems
to say perfectly the thing you were trying to say it says it better than you can say it it says it
you know in what seems to you to be an almost perfect manner you may think that I'm making
too much of this matter but I can assure you that I'm not too many quotations in a sermon become
very wearisome to the listener and at times they can even be ridiculous I remember having a
conversation one day with a man who had been professor of poetry at Oxford and was also a
clergyman we were talking about this very matter and the way in which it was becoming quite
ridiculous he told me that the previous week he had been listening to a sermon in Westminster
Abbey in London the learned preacher having produced a massive quotation showing his profound
reading actually said at one point in his sermon quote as Evelyn Underhill has been reminding us
recently God is love end quote well John had been reminding us before that before Evelyn Underhill
actually discovered the truth so you've got to be careful and I think it's a good thing number one
if you find something that says exactly what you want to say and it's in a commentary well
I guess there's no copyright on it you say it unless it's significant that it comes from some
author well you say it rather than quoting Scott or Carson you say it yourself you're not a sermon
is not an essay where you've got to add footnotes you say it and the other rule as I said yesterday
if you can't memorize it then don't use it that's the best thing but if you can memorize it it's
much more powerful if you can say it from memory fourth point be dialogical we're talking about
this yesterday one of the features of Billy Graham's preaching you often hear him say the
bible says the other thing that dominates Billy Graham's preaching but Billy you may ask and
that's exactly the question that you are asking but Billy you may ask and you think yeah that's
what I want the answer to he anticipated my question without having to be asked the question
and that's dialogical preaching which you find all throughout Romans do I hear someone say well
what advantage is there in being a Jew do I hear someone say well if justification is the case does
this mean I can go on in sin you see Paul anticipates the question at every point and so
we are too as well now the second last one watch your vocab and grammar this is the second time
I've done this series of lectures outside of college the last time I did it was really a very
difficult time thank you for being such a nice group but the first time I did it it was really
very hard and and when I did this lecture as the very last lecture and it had been a hard week
because I had to argue that the bible is the word of God which I take it as read here and I had to
argue about all sorts of things but what I'm about to say caused the biggest furor
amongst this group which is in another city here in Australia because they argued with me who was I
to say what was grammatically correct you see this was the issue and I thought isn't I hadn't
anticipated post-modernism that actually infected even the way we talk now you won't be game now to
react to anything I'm going to say having said that but it was remarkable I thought mad I was
gobsmacked man isn't that incredible they were opposing what I was saying now watch the use of
vocabulary and grammar now Spurgeon said the art of expressing the commonplace elegantly
pompously and bombastically this is what he said its utter extinction is a consummation devoutly
to be desired so he does exactly the thing the art of expressing the commonplace in a pompous way
its utter extinction is a consummation devoutly to be desired be careful so I reckon these are
the things number one be careful of political speak um don't you didn't you love that assistant
secretary of state Richard Armitage from the United States I saw him on Kerry O'Brien's
today tonight program he was wonderful Kerry O'Brien asked him a question and here you think
this bloke's a politician but he's answering the question it was just remarkable Kerry O'Brien he
kept calling Kerry O'Brien Mr O'Brien Mr O'Brien and he kept answering his question I thought what
am I loving about this I'm loving it because he's a politician who's answering the question
that's rarity in Australia and I think if you look at political speak words are used and they
don't say anything it's just verbosity now think of the words you use that are just verbose indeed
the favourite word of lawyers barristers indeed your honour it's just a gap it's just a plug
to give you a chance to think I actually believe what's the difference between I actually believe
and I believe actually actually now be careful as well of academic speak I heard a sermon recently
in our chapel in which the bloke is talking about existentialism for goodness sake existentialism
this is an a priori argument presuppositionalism we had a guy go to bible college from our last
church and he came back and preached on the hellenistic mindset of the first the new testament
good grief the hellenistic mind I've got a sister whose name's Helen is that what he's talking about
oh he said no no it's the greek background well I said well use the greek background tell us
the greek background don't use the word hellenistic go for the plain clear word what Tony
Morford calls the 20 cent word rather than the five dollar word now John Stott in his excellent
book on the preacher's portrait talks about the preacher as a father a father's love will make us
simple in our teaching with what patient simplicity does a father spell out the alphabet to his child
he humbles himself to the child's level he forgets about his own intellectual accomplishments
his prizes his doctorates and he is quite content to go back to the rudiments of learning for his
child's sake we must do the same if we are true fathers to our people if we love them
our objective will not be to impress them with our learning but to help them with theirs J.C.
Ryle has asserted that one of the secrets of the evangelical revival in the 18th century England
was that its leaders preached simply to attain this he said they were not ashamed to crucify
their style and to sacrifice their reputation for learning they carried out the truth of Augustine
a wooden key is not as beautiful as a gold one but if the wooden key opens the door and the
gold one doesn't then the wooden key is far more useful and that's what we're after Wesley said
I designed plain truth for plain people I labour to avoid all words which are not easy to understand
existentialism and then all these words that are coming and the new perspective I'm fascinated by
this new perspective because our students are learning about it at some point I said
tell me about the new perspective I can't find one who can tell me what it means yet
and this guy who talked about existentialism I said explain it to me he couldn't explain
it to me I still don't understand what it means but he used the word so we've got to
be careful not to do that now listen to this letter it's a real letter
normally the writer says writing to me I would not trouble you or myself with this letter but
I believe that method is an ally of good content in presentations and missionaries need all the
allies available he's heard one of our graduates who'd just spoken this experience the experience
that promotes this letter leads me to wonder if this very important area is covered at all by
your syllabus if not then perhaps consideration could be given to doing so the gentleman in
question here made every possible speaker's mistake he spoke far too quickly he thought
that we live in Australia with 16 million others he spoke with a rising inflection of the at the
end of each sentence that usually characterizes the undereducated and in a higher rather than
lower vocal pitch all contributed to an unconvincing and powerless speech and one
that irritated me profoundly it astonished me that he was the product of a practically oriented or
any bible school where public vocal communication has to be essential one would think yours
faithfully he signed the letter and he's a man younger than me who wrote that so there's people
out there like that sloppy grammar obscures and distracts attention so I would say here are the
most common examples of sloppy grammar use the plural of you is you now that doesn't have to be
said he doesn't the plural of you is you now here is a much more common one for preachers
what does this mean for you and I if you and I are the object of the verb it is what does this
mean for you and me if you and I are the subject of the verb you and I is the appropriate thing to
say you and I are going walking what does this mean for you and me now I don't know why we say
that but we do say it so why not just say why does this mean for us that's easier but you and I
sounds right to me but it is not right and I can remember in we were having a school teacher in
our congregation he called around to me one day and he said look I cannot stand the way you say
you and I as the object of the verb you must say you and me and also while we're on the subject
it's not etc it's etc etc right and it is not when one item is being used it is not data it is
datum the plural is data the singular is datum and finally criteria is plural and criterion is
singular please correct your manuscripts and I thought well fair enough fair enough I mean that's
the way he went so so that's another common one get onto those now here is the most common one
that I found in the newer generation of students and I find this consistently people who drop their
g's and not only drop their g's so nothing anything nothing nothing anything something
but people these days for some reason add in the k nothing anything something so we've got and
that's the one that got me in trouble you know because someone said oh but most of my people in
my congregation say something or nothing and therefore why should I be different well you've
got to determine what is correct grammar and it's n-o-t-h-i-n-g it's not i-n-k so nothing anything
something slaying can be off-putting normally if you don't say it then don't say it in the pulpit
I remember when I first came to college 18 years ago a student came up to me and said
oh the college lawnmower's stuffed I thought what well now 18 years later sure I know exactly what
he means but I mean you're not going to say that for goodness sake you're not going to say it from
the pulpit work out what you're going to call the congregation folks friends brethren brothers
and sisters what are you going to call them don't assume that I know what GDP is the abc never
assumes that I know who the prime minister is today the prime minister john howard said this
doesn't assume that I know who he is so don't you assume that I know who f-e-b-c is or who
s-i-n is or who o-n-f is then just throw out all these abbreviations I don't know who a-w-p-m is
unless you tell me the premier bob carr and so the other thing is what's your bad habits because they
can visually distract people which is an enemy of clarity don't look out windows
so I remember hearing a bloke give a speech one time in a church hall and he said it's been a
great delight to be with you thank you so much for the ladies for cooking the meal for us thank you
and you think come on look at it set your eyes down jiggling coins in your pocket see that's
what bob hawke you often find he'd no bob hawke would always be playing with his wedding ring
but a number of people get up and they've got coins in their pocket and they stand
up and then they start jiggling when they start sleeping so be careful be careful of sweat rings
around the armpits okay so if you've got a shirt on like this this is not a great shirt for
summertime because it's a darker color and the sweat ring will show itself so don't go pointing
so i see the big sweat mask and if you've got a short sleeve shirt don't point out because i
can see down the hairy armpit these are all very basic things aren't they if you're female and
you're standing up to preach make sure there's no great light behind you standing up to speak make
sure there's no light behind you because you can see through so be careful of that make sure your
zips are done up for goodness sake wherever they are get the licked and the right height and be
careful of bad breath bad breath when i was counseling for the billy graham crusade in 68
they produced little bottles of breath freshener and you'd go down to counseling and see all these
counselors like this
that's right you do you develop bad habits and it's very hard to break the bad habit i mean i
know i've got a bad habit i'm not going to tell you what it is but i am always aware of it and
i've always got to try and work hard at it if it's really hard to break the bad habit which you've
got in preaching we had a great orator at trinity grammar school the last headmaster was just a
wonderful orator but he'd always and he even though he grew up in coonamble he used to say
let's just speak like this and that wasn't his bad habit i don't know where he got the accent
but he was a wonderful orator you know he'd give these speeches at speech day which went
on for 50 minutes and you think keep going this is wonderful stuff as i was coming here today
mr chairman i looked around and i thought of shakespeare's words and off he'd go and back
the glass would go and off they'd come into the house and back they'd go and you'd think
for goodness sake put them on or take them off do something that's really a bad habit
yeah they are yeah
the other thing the other i reckon with this thing about bad breath and it is a problem
especially after you've been preaching because you get rid of your good breath and if you've
had coffee cool it stinks you get one of those you know those new things they've just put out
that you put on your tongue and it dissolves it's the best thing because there's nothing worse
than chewing in front of people you know so if you just put one of those on your tongue it
dissolves in seconds and it gives you fresh breath now a friend of mine says it also gives
you tongue cancer but anyway that that remains that remains to be seen but you know what they're
called those ones they're they're not breath pearls they're just little slabs just little
like a little listaments you stick them on your tongue and it dissolves just like that and they're
great they're um yeah listerine isn't it it's listerine in plastic form and it just dissolves
on your tongue and you can and they're fairly expensive as soon as you
as soon as i tell you it when i'm a katumba i know as soon as i go down from the platform
there's going to be somebody to talk to me so going from the platform down i put it in
and between it takes three or four seconds and it's gone like that and it gives you really fresh
breath now the problem with that is that it makes when you've got very fresh breath it makes you
very sensitive to people who don't have fresh breath and you think oh cool you know and so but
but you're not offending them so that's the main thing if you were to mend you might get all wise
yeah yeah that's true
okay and the final thing i'd say is back up your assertions with uh when you've made your
explanation back it up with illustration and i've talked enough about illustration
so now does anybody have anything they'd like to add that might help us with our clarity yes david
an over desire to be eloquent
yeah yeah i think therefore what you've got to try and do is you've got to say does this serve
clarity does this serve a faithful presentation of the gospel you see when i got that letter
of million and australia well i think that where i find a student with that sort of issue
i would say to them look go to a speech pathologist and they'll give you some
simple exercise because if you're going to be a preacher you've got to be able to speak
and so you often find well people with a slight speech impediment that they might have grown up
with it's very difficult to break through that but simply by going and speaking to a speech
pathologist they can give you very simple exercises whereby you can overcome that a
friend of mine who's a judge has got a speech impediment which he's had since he went to school
with me but he's sitting down because it just sounds funny as a judge when he gives his
determination that he's got this impediment so he sat down with a speech pathologist and it's
almost broken it now that lady ita buttrose remember her and she's she's worked really hard
at that and it's you can hardly hear that now and so if she's done that then even if i've got a
speech impediment i can i can work hard at overcoming it because you don't want to cloud
your presentation so if this guy just gets upset because i'm saying etc and i'm saying etc
basically because that's the way i've always said it then i can learn to say etc
if that's correct well then why not be correct it's just taking away
another potential excuse they may have for not responding to the gospel
is that okay does that answer the question yeah yeah yes
um
well i mean to me when you arrive at a place you want to check the height
of the lectern because i'm tall i want to let them this is a great lectern it's got lots of room
it's terrific and then the next thing is i'm always looking for a microphone sound system
for fools so at our college when we're putting the sound system in i said look can you just put
a sound system in that all i have to do is turn the switch that's all i want to do but there's no
sound system like that so with ours it's always more complex than that because i reckon if the
devil's going to interrupt he'll interrupt through the sound system we need to be able to hear the
surest way of keeping us from repentance is keeping us from hearing the gospel and so he'll
get in through the sound system i went and spoke at a chinese you know in a chinese restaurant in
stratfield recent not in stratfield in chatswood and they had this tiny little lectern and they
had a little microphone with the microphone with the sound box about that size behind me
and about in the restaurant there must have been 200 people and in order to fit more in from
outside the church they'd sort of just taken a little area of the restaurant and had the public
go into that area so they're talking and laughing and i've got to speak to these people it was
impossible because you couldn't get any sound up through this little system it was just it was just
impossible communicating and these people are laughing and talking anyway so you've got to look
at your whole sound system and somehow get in a simple sound system that really works well like
the sound system last night it's good in that church because there's a bloke he's out in the
sound room and he's adjusting it all the time so i think you're right and one of the best things is
these clip-on mics like this one here and you can just the radio mic you can turn it on and off
but always check your sound system and always check your lectern and if the lectern's too low
then put it on bricks or something get it up to the right height because you'll always be being
put off what these oh these no that's that's a that's a recorder no i don't think you can
can i don't know anything about it but i think you've got to have individual yeah yeah
so you've got to watch your peas because they explode in the mic yeah okay yes
i always say different problems but i know that many people say this is really good yeah
if i find annoying if you're talking to people but you know it's fun but i think that's the
main fact that we're knowing it makes a great space where you're saying different forms
actually distract yeah yeah so you should all be saying different too
well yeah yeah that's right where it moved yeah and the same thing as well as the using the
the monolithic case after the picture which i had that was more and more give us an example of that
what are you going to tell them oh right that's a good question right yeah um
yeah so you've just got to you can't stand out like i find i like when we used to go to
mcdonald's with the kids i'd always tell them to go and order chips don't order fries it's chips
but there's no point anymore we've lost the battle yeah yeah so you're right at some point
i guess you've just got to make a move but as long as there are people out there who
write letters like that i think we've got to be sensitive to them yeah yeah
yeah turn the light on it's more now yeah yeah john
one thing that's still common that's what it means is that
yeah don't i just um when i come to these things i'm done i think i'm going to stop
fiction because um we are individuals that i read the new testament and the and the old testament
you know there were farmers and there were fishermen and there were all sorts of people
and uh we wouldn't need to be ourselves don't we yeah but when we're communicating when we're
trying to talk to the father or son or a daughter or we're talking to our mates or neighbors and that
i don't even understand what i'm saying in regards to grammar i never even thought
like i'm trying to communicate something that i have in my mind
um
yeah but you're not
not. But you're not terrible at English grammar because it seems to me that English grammar
comes naturally to you because of your upbringing. That's why I was taught to say you and I.
I think I'm discerningly I was taught to say you and I to everything. So it's you and I
whether it's the object or the subject and I've just got to try and learn to say you
and me on occasion. But you don't generally speak and say yous.
I'm not understanding you.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, anyway, I agree with you. We shouldn't be so pedantic.
All I'm saying is that out there there are people who will, may not even listen to us
if we're going to be sloppy in the use of our grammar and therefore we've got to adjust.
Now it seems to me that you've got to be careful of the vocabulary you use and you've got to
be careful of your grammar. But don't go away discouraged and think I'll never preach
again because I can't do it grammatically correctly, grammatically correctly.
I've got a lot of sympathy data for what you're saying because I'm pretty pedantic myself.
But it seems to me that the New Testament was not written in classical Greek was it?
No.
It was written in the language of the marketplace. And maybe there's some point to what's being
said here for communication. We might have found some evidence of being sloppy but we
might also turn on the whole bunch of other people who think we're a bit ponchy to talk like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, see the reaction's coming you see. If you want to say something
Dave, if you want to jump up and say something.
Yeah, I think the whole thing is ridiculous.
Okay.
I do have a question.
Okay, Andrew.
Well, I just want to say that talking about grammar is something that people of my generation
don't understand. So I was put very, very basic grammar and I think most people around
my age and younger have actually no idea what you're talking about in terms of ending sentences
with prepositions. Most people don't even know what a preposition is for my generation
and younger. I mean, I'm a little bit quick. I'd actually look at Greek but most people
won't actually understand any of that. And I think that's one of the reasons why grammar
has actually become a lot more flexible than you started.
Yeah.
I just want to ask a question about following on from Don and the individuality of the,
like I'm in a relationship with people I pass with and what places there's been my personal
quirkiness in the way I preach with them?
Well, yeah, but what I'd want to say to that is that your personality is unique and it
will come through no matter what you say but it won't come through necessarily. Your
grammar won't affect your personality coming through. It just seems to me that if we are
preachers then the basic tool of trade we have is a word and therefore we should be
thoughtful about how we use the word. And I don't think that that should quell our creativity
or anything like that. You just should be yourself. So I listen to these kids in my
son's age game. They are a sick dog. So if I went along to them and said, wasn't that
a sick dog of a game? They'd think, oh, come on, you're old. Don't try and be young.
Don't try and be anything that you're not. So I reckon, I remember when we were at school
we had a really old maths teacher called Barney Noble and one day he came into the class with
ripple sole suede shoes which were very cool in the 60s and old Barney, he was really old,
he must have been in his late 40s, and he's wearing ripple sole suede. Don't try and be
anything that you're not. And so I reckon that's important that kids can see through.
And so just be yourself. But that doesn't mean that just being yourself you're going
to be inappropriate. And so my concern is I'm a servant, I'm a servant of the word,
I want to serve you with the Gospel and so I'll try and do that as clearly as possible.
And I'll try and do that in a way that's as inoffensive around the edge as possible.
So last night I thought, I don't know what I should wear to preach these things in Baptist
but there might be some old Baptist there. I hate ties so I'll wear one.
If Timothy as an adult could be circumcised for the sake of the Gospel, I can wear a tie on occasion.
Okay? And I reckon that's what you say, rightio, what can I do here that will take away
every excuse that people have for not listening to me? And so you work that out.
I think in certain contexts you can be more relaxed. Like I'll give you an example.
This book that's been written, edited by Michael Allput and it's called Old Truths Forever New.
I didn't want to call it that. I wanted to call it Starting Strong.
And immediately I thought, if I call it Starting Strong, there'll be someone out there, I'll get letters.
You've put a participle with an adjective. Participle shouldn't go with adjectives.
Participle should go with adverbs, starting strongly. And I'm, but starting strongly doesn't,
it hasn't got the same weight. So I go along to Michael who's, you know, very thorough.
He said, no, you can't put a participle with an adjective. And I thought, oh well, Old Truths Forever New.
So, you know, there's lots of different people out there. Yes.
One more question. I just want to know whether, sometimes you say,
take your own time to contemplate, or at least hold ground, I think, for a second.
Because we anticipate the audience, and then we try.
Anyone can top down the language that you said earlier.
And the second thing I would like you to come into is, what's your view on the use of a script,
in case you didn't, because I would like to say that part of our problem entirely is that
we don't spend enough time in preparation to work on how we would expect things,
expect these technical things to be in study, and therefore, I know myself,
I don't spend a lot of time trying to work on that, and I have it written down,
and I'll talk about a cliche, but then later we'll try to explain a difficult concept with a cliche,
which is also very important. So, could you comment on what your view on the script is, versus...
Yeah, okay. Well, I'll tell you what I do. I mean, that's the best thing I can do.
Here is the series of sermons on 1 Thessalonians, and I use a book like that, right?
So, there's no computer printout. I find if I ever preach from a printed text, I tend to read it.
And so, I never preach from a printed text. Now, the next sermon that I'm going to do,
I'll just give you an example and show you what it looks like. Here's the first page.
So, it's called Hopelessness, 1 Thessalonians 4, and the sermon proceeds like this.
So, there's the first page, there's the second page. If you read that, you couldn't understand it,
because it doesn't have every word, but it does have sufficient words for me to understand it,
and I've got a few confessions there, and a few quotes that I'm going to be reading as well.
Now, to read that, it's got,
Nothing so... I'll read it literally. Nothing so concentrates mind as the prospect death.
Soldier knows. Condemnation, capital pun, no point thinking of the future.
There will be no tomorrow on earth anyway.
Most of us dash death remote dash harbour dash life endless here dash one day but not today.
Now, you don't understand that. I haven't written every word down, but I know exactly what that says.
Now, the next point from this will be to go to a single page,
so that the single page summary will look something like that.
So, last night I preached from... I took the sermon, which was the longer manuscript,
and I preached and I summarised the sermon into a single page. Now, I'll just see if I can find it.
Why are you looking for that? What's the specific colour?
Oh, nothing, just contrast. You just contrast. I can't find the sermon, I think,
but it basically looked like that, because there's another sermon that's been outlined,
so it basically looks like that. So, I go from the summary, and if I'm ever going first person,
and this is what scares me about first person, I won't go with anything,
but I'll have got my manuscript, I'll have written it out, I will write out my summary,
and then I'll write out my summary. Basically, that's the way I used to study.
I'd get my notes, I'd make a summary, and then I'd write out a copy of the summary,
then I'd summarise it even more, more, more, more.
So, in first person, I don't think you can be referring to notes.
So, when I'd go exercising, I'd walk around the block and I'd be reciting the sermon.
So, one of our graduates, Sam Chan, who's studying at the moment over at Trinity in Chicago,
he's preaching all the time. He said,
the great curse of my preaching is I can no longer preach with notes.
So, that is a great curse, because a lot of his week's going to be spent in memorising
exactly what he has to say, and he just can't use notes, and hadn't Robinson was like that.
When he came, I sat behind him, and he did not use a note in a full week of preaching.
He did not use a note, and yet, sorry? Nothing. All he had was his Bible there,
and he had no notes in it. And yet, he's preaching in an articulate way, not missing words.
He probably has done it before, but he did not miss a beat with no notes.
Would that be a real issue for us?
No, because he's itinerant. He might be able to say, I can't do that.
No, and I think that if you go into, you don't want to concentrate on preaching without notes anyway,
but when I have preached without notes, I find it has been helpful for my eye contact with the audience.
It would be good to see a video of yourself, how often they're looking at the top of your head.
Your head's down in your notes.
What would you say to those who have just been reading our sermon?
Oh, I think you've got to get away from reading your sermon. You've got to try and...
Keep working at it.
Yeah, keep working at it.
And I think if you can eyeball this, that's really important to have some eye contact.
Professor, you haven't had the security to read it.
Yeah, that's right. Yes, Paul?
Can I go back to the units of thought, just for a minute?
Adam talks about the fact that often we in a unit of thought have the positive front
and we preach the negative front or it has the negative front.
Preach it positive, so did you say something about that?
So, what am I saying something about? That if we preach it contrary to its direction.
Well, I think that's just one of those things where you've got to work and think carefully about the text
so that you do understand what the trust of the text is.
And I think that's why it's good to be thoughtful about it.
Yeah, yeah.
David, I'm sorry. I've actually been trying the preaching period,
preaching confidence and faith in myself.
And I think it's actually helped. I'm preaching at all.
I'm finding that I'm preparing much better.
But I think I'll be even better after this week.
But I found you mentioned really helpful in the question of clarity,
which I think was the most challenging question.
Oh, that's good.
So, thank you very much for that question.
My question now, or calling yourself...
Leave your contribution at the door.
We really do live in a chippy sound.
Because I remember a student using the word scumbag.
Now, I've got a lot of reasons for this, probably quite appropriately.
But it was funny. And so, as you can get,
I've invited the Secretary of the Ministry of Education on our nomination team
and we're preaching a weekend house party for three trips together.
Scumbag.
Quite a few times.
And no one helped on me.
No one actually remained like that.
And it sort of made me think, oh, well, maybe different audience,
maybe the word has become common.
So, something like that.
I remember, originally, I was really toil with this question,
how do I describe the weekend?
I wanted to...
We were pretty pretty on the picture.
We were scooting through it, and I had to just check up like that.
And I really wanted to draw in how she would...
And the audience would go, great.
How she would draw in some kind of genealogy by her arm.
She's just someone who comes from outside,
a human who comes from outside of it.
And it's an amazing story, it's great.
You have to perceive the things that you do,
you don't take away.
And I thought, I think it was a prostitute.
It's just, I don't do anything anymore.
It's the word prostitute.
It's almost acceptable.
Some people even think of the word prostitute as being a glorified...
And it's howled at any different?
Yes.
It's howled at any different?
Well, probably it's just an old word that people don't use anymore.
But I changed the way it was.
It was deliberate, it was provocative.
But you know what I did before I did that?
I got myself a primary school dictionary.
It doesn't have the S word, it doesn't have the S word,
it doesn't have the D word, it doesn't have that word,
but it has the word plus.
Yes.
Like a primary school dictionary.
So I thought, I'm getting on, you know, I'm not on the edge here.
But I'm going to get on there.
Now, I'm too responsive.
I had four people get up and walk out.
I think I had two guys get up and go,
they might have walked out first and then followed me.
And I had somebody else come who was glad,
a Christian student like that,
lived in that Christian environment,
but never really for themselves until the grace of God.
He came and told Burt and I said,
you're the most powerful person on the grace of God,
and you're Burt.
And it shook him about.
And I was pretty upset by the people working there,
because it really wasn't an issue for me.
And I didn't want to deliver it because I'd like to, more like that.
So I didn't want to shock people and sell it to people.
It was a bit of a tough one.
But I found that I thought about the people who walked out
and I needed all of them working for Triple J Brain.
And when I saw that, I got it,
and I accused them not to because they swear all the time about it.
I think the F word is always, you know, just a word.
And I thought, are we Christian?
Probably not having the wrong people, I don't know.
If you engage with God that is responsible for God's grace,
because he has been for a long time.
So, I don't know, it's a hard thing.
Will we ever get to the point where it will be okay
to use the F word from the pulpit?
You could never imagine it, could you?
But could I have imagined that 50 years ago,
the ballet dancers at my mother's home would say,
isn't it awful not ordaining homosexual clergy?
It's incredible, isn't it?
So, somehow, we've got to hold the line.
It might be interesting to say,
well, what word would you have used to describe Rahab the harlot?
The safest way to describe her
is exactly the way the Bible does Rahab the harlot.
She was a prostitute.
Now, I don't think that would be offensive to anybody.
Sex work has been suggested over here.
I don't know.
I would have thought that fluff is going too far.
The thing about fluff is, I don't care about the relational damage
that I'm doing by flicking with all these guys.
Probably our marriage and fluff,
it communicates with somebody more than me.
As you can see, I'll just do a bit more.
Yeah.
John, what do you want to say?
You're sitting there like you want to say something.
You don't?
No? Okay.
Yes, David?
I want to thank you for having me.
Yeah, thank you.
Alright.
I knew you wanted to say something.
I'm going to make a description of that for you.
Yes.
I'm simply not concentrating on my own underlines.
I know some people who don't write a script at all.
And the danger is that they can tend to waffle at it.
Yes.
And they lose clarity.
Some of them might be young,
they can still be quite good preachers,
but they just lose the clear edge.
But if you've actually sat down and spent hours
thinking about the actual words you're saying,
and whether you do that in a full script, as I do,
and from the way you start,
or whether you only script those particular parts really.
Yeah.
But I won't, I won't,
I don't know if some American preachers are going to have to
do a script on Al Martin or something like that.
Yeah.
Al Martin.
Yeah.
But he always, he always expects from a full script.
And I was impressed by a suspicion of his words
and his expeditions.
Yeah.
And the clarity of it.
Yeah.
And he said that he achieved that by
Writing out a script.
Yeah.
He never read it.
Yeah.
But it was always there before.
Yeah.
And he can see it and he knew exactly what he was going to say.
Yeah.
And I said I copied that earlier.
Yeah.
And I hope that that's...
I find most students now go from a typed manuscript on their computer,
a computer printout.
But I was interested to see Dick Lupus's manuscript was,
say, a page with circles and highlighting and arrows
and things going everywhere.
And John Chapman just goes from a half a page really summary,
one, two, three, and you think, well, it's very much just a summary.
But again, that's okay if you're an itinerant
and you've done it before and you can do it again that way next week.
I find having the security of having the manuscript there
at principal vow is important.
It doesn't mean I've got my head buried in it, but it's there.
And I feel that sermon on Thessalonians, right, that's prepared now.
But before, one thing I do, if I'm going to repeat a sermon,
I never repeat it in the same way.
It's interesting that at men's convention at Katoomba
where you speak on weekend one, I think every time I've been there,
every speaker has changed for weekend two
because it's an amazing thing, preaching, isn't it?
You don't know what it's like.
You don't know that the weakness in a sermon is that you've given it.
Once you've given it, you say, oh, I should have done it this way, that way.
And I find that you go up there and you preach it once
and the following week you do it identically and you never do it identically
because you think, no, I should have done it this way and so you adjust it.
And so when I'm preaching, like that sermon last night I've preached before,
but I won't preach it in exactly the same way.
I'll redo the summary.
I'll think of other things about it.
My wife regularly used to make comments, I came from a cool ministry
and my first version, so I've come over to our team in Katoomba,
she would always comment the second time I did it,
which was a 10 bar in the main service, was always far better,
but it was the same ministry, but I would add or take out as I was in weekend two.
But see, I found also that in Weewa, when I was in Weewa,
the normal congregation on a Sunday morning,
because we were basically the only church in town, Protestant church, was 200.
So you'd have 200 people there.
And then I'd go from that to Wobbegar where you'd have 15.
Now, which was the easier group to preach to?
To 200 every time, always.
So a very small group is much harder to get going
because the bigger group gives you much more feedback.
I just wanted to comment on what John just said,
that there was a great discussion at one of the Bama Teresa conferences
when Douglas was filming about, and I think Al Martin was the other speaker,
apart from Leach trying to out-heal the other in the presentation
that allowed us to put in presentations because he and Mary were kind of civilizing
on Weewa Creek with manuscript or without.
There's a lot of pre-church that people didn't see.
They let up to Weewa Creek without manuscript.
That's the way they've been trained to do so.
But it's gone on time.
Okay, someone else?
I'm not going to try and preach now because we're too close to lunch.
So do you want anything else to say, Dale?
Can you comment on who you saw as your voice
when you saw the audience and it's not listening?
I don't know. I don't know.
Look, I don't know.
Does someone want to comment on that?
I don't sort of do that.
I don't go in for that.
I don't rehearse in that sense.
I know people who stand in front of a mirror and rehearse.
There's that lovely thing in leadership
where the pastor's preaching his sermon for Sunday
and his wife's got her hair in nets
and she's standing at the eining board like this
and he's calling out, Repent!
And he sees Harry and she's standing there eining on the eining board.
I don't rehearse like that.
There's that lovely story of the pastor who comes home
and he's just preached a horrific sermon
and he says to his wife,
I wonder how many really great preachers there are in our denomination.
She says, one less than you think.
That's a beauty.
So I don't know.
Some people, I give the sermon a read-through
but I don't actually stand up
and determine, I'll lift my voice here, I'll lower my voice there.
I don't do that.
I think you can be too straight-jacketed by method
and I don't want to be straight-jacketed by method
because I think the whole issue of true-through personality is true
but it's not a good definition of preaching
because it makes no reference to the Spirit of God
and the Spirit of God must take the preacher of the Word
and use him.
And so there's a sense in which when I go into the pulpit
I've got a basic manuscript but I want to,
you know, the way in which I communicate it, et cetera
is something that the Spirit's got to bring to you.
I don't think about voice up, down, low, pitch or whatever.
And yeah, maybe some people do.
Does anybody do that?
I've been coming from a listening point of view
and when a preacher, not if it's an illustration story
that's smaller, gets excited about it,
but if it's an actual pitchy, if it is too loud,
it makes me draw back.
Yeah, draw back.
So you don't want to be shouted at, do you?
The other problem is getting your volume in church like that
is elderly folks who actually knew it.
Yeah, yeah.
What's the microphone strategy?
And there's a loop here too which is terrific, a loop is great to have.
Yeah.
David, this is from yesterday.
You spoke about, you know, not really being into jokes.
Yeah, jokes, yeah.
Joel Chappo is a guy that, you know, I would expect,
he's a good preacher, he does use jokes.
No, but often he doesn't use jokes, he uses funny incidents.
Now, when you said I'm not into jokes and things like that,
I'm not into jokes, full stop, but I am into things like that, you see.
I'm not into jokes though, have you heard the one about?
But Chappo mostly, I think John, uses incidents that have actually happened
and they're really funny, but that's not a joke.
I think that's a humorous story and I think there is a difference.
Because a joke is, I think it's manipulative,
it's trying to get people on the side in a foreign way
because the joke's not your experience, you see.
And so I want to make that point.
I'm not saying don't use humour, I'm saying don't use the joke as such.
Because I heard an evangelist one time in a dinner meeting
and he was halfway through the talk, heading towards the appeal
and all of a sudden he imports a joke.
And I think no, it just feels like you're trying to sell us something
and get us on the side.
But Simon Manchester, I don't think I've ever heard him preach without a joke.
He always starts with a joke and it's always funny and he tells it well.
Is the joke a very thin link?
No, it's a very, very thin link to the main point.
But he always makes a joke of that and by that he comes to it
and you think oh yeah, it's a bit of a thin link,
but he makes a joke of it so you laugh at that.
So for me personally it's better not to tell a joke,
but you can tell a humour story that's actually happened to you.
I've got a question for you, another question for you.
I've got a friend who I hear a lot of people try to preach to me
and he always used to start the story from his childhood.
And I asked him if he could start a different music story.
I think I know all about his childhood now and he was like no.
Yeah, or about your children as well.
Oh, is there yet?
Yeah, there is because you can start telling stories about your children as well
and they don't want to hear a story about them every Sunday when they turn up.
Or you can start telling stories about your wife or whatever your passion is.
You've got to be careful.
What about telling stories about rugby?
I mean come off the grass, more than half your audience most Sundays are going to be female
and they don't understand rugby and most males don't understand.
No, wait on, just hang on.
I see, steady, steady.
Most males, I was about to say, most males don't understand rugby.
I'm talking about rugby, I'm not talking about rugby league, I'm talking about rugby.
Most males don't understand about rugby.
I've been watching rugby for 30 years, I still don't understand the game.
When you start talking to me about rugby and get involved in some story that means
that I should understand the offside rule in rugby or soccer, I'm gone mate.
So, and I think that there are things that women don't think about
and there are things that men don't think about.
All I'm saying is that when you're preaching to a mixed audience, be sensitive as a male
that you are talking about things that most people will understand.
And I think if you've got to explain an illustration, like in golf,
the idea is that you hit the ball from the tee to the hole.
If you've got to understand it, it's not going to work.
Yeah, so you've got to be careful of sporting ones.
Anything else? Now did you have something you wanted to say there Kath?
Me?
Yeah.
No.
She loves you.
I was just brought up on rugby when my father was killed up in the next
every Saturday, that's why.
Yeah.
No, all I can do as a dog, it's very easy to understand the dog story.
Especially if he's only got one trick.
I gave him permission to use it.
Yeah, thanks very much.
I was standing up to speak and saying, Ruth's always saying, you know,
you can't do it every day, can you?
Okay, well I'll stop now.
I think what we'll do after lunch is we'll look at one parable
just to get in a different type of genre.
Okay, that'll be it.
...culture and our national script.
Yes.
The cultural thing seems very dangerous.
Yeah.
In the end some people, it provides its whiz for wiping out
great land restrictions.
Yeah.
And yet, we want to get the true transcription, not the...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We really want to know, always, which bit of scripture,
when we go to a cultural fiction film, which bit we must not wipe out
with the ideas that we've discussed.
Well, yeah, and that's a very good question
because you've got to say that you are reading the scripture
with your own cultural setting,
your congregation has a cultural setting which may be the same as yours
and the scripture has its own cultural setting.
So, you've always got to be saying, what is the trans-cultural principle here?
So, there's a distinction between, like, for example,
wash the disciples' feet.
There's a distinction between the principle and its expression.
You love one another and wash one another's feet.
Now, the principle is that we show humbling, sacrificial love to one another.
The expression of that principle in the first century
was by washing one another's feet as Jesus had done.
What is...
Now, the trans-cultural principle does not change
but the expression of the principle may well change.
So, 1 Corinthians 11, women's head covering.
The principle remains the same.
The expression of the principle may well change and be adapted.
So, what you've got to do, therefore,
is look for a cultural equivalent at the area of expression.
Understand, why is it that washing someone's feet
was such a humbling experience in the first century?
Because it was a dirty job, because they had open sandals,
because they were working on dusty roads, tinny areas, etc.
All of that sort of thing, which may be quite foreign to us.
Now then, what is the equivalent today
in our society of the expression of washing one another's feet?
So, when I got to Weoworg, there was a move on within the Church
to actually introduce a Maundy Thursday foot washing ceremony in the Church.
So, people would come together and wash one another's feet.
And, you know, the Pope does that on Maundy Thursday as well.
He goes out and he takes 10 children from Rome,
streets of Rome, and he washes their feet.
Now, is that what Jesus, that's what Jesus says in John 13,
you should wash one another's. I've done it, you do it.
Now, you see, so you've got to be careful at that point.
What is the cultural equivalent, cultural expression
of that first century expression of a principle?
But the principle doesn't change, so how can I express it now?
And therefore, it may well be that there is no one thing that expresses it,
but a range of activities which will express that.
But I think that's why it's important for us to understand the cultural context
so that we can help our congregations translate that into culturally applicable ways today.
My concern is that we dare not give people information
that it's part of an individual society, that this is what the Bible says,
but you need to sort of have some scholarship in that period,
and therefore you can't understand it unless I explain it.
Yeah.
Yeah, this whole homosexual debate has shown that
in the liberal side of the Uniting Church where they say,
what Doreen McMahon says is that God gives us hints.
You know, they're fairly clear hints, aren't they?
And it's culturally conditioned so that on radio on Sunday nights in Sydney
there's a guy, Bill Cruz, and someone rang him up
and I forget, the conversation went something like this.
He said, well, what God says in the Bible is culturally conditioned about homosexuality
and we've got to translate it.
And some guy rang up and said, what you're saying is that the Bible is rubbish.
It was a very direct question.
And Bill Cruz said, well, you tell me what the Bible says about women.
He was going to prove that the Bible is rubbish.
And the bloke said, the Bible says that husbands should love their wives
and wives should submit and honour their husbands.
Well, see, I told you, it's all culturally conditioned.
That's what Bill Cruz said.
So you see, therefore you can argue that even what Paul says,
that as such will not inherit the kingdom of heaven,
well, that's just his view.
And at some point I think we've got to be searching for the ground of authority in people.
I can remember having a conversation with an elder in one of my parishes
and this person was saying to me that it was new to them that Jesus was divine.
That's not Presbyterian.
And I said, but the Bible, this is how the conversation went,
but the Bible says, no, don't give me the Bible.
You can make the Bible say, I've heard ministers all through the years say,
the Bible says this, but it doesn't mean a thing.
And I said, but the Westminster Confession, the theological basis of our church,
you've got the declaratory statement, that doesn't mean a thing.
And so I said, but look, the blue hymn book says, the blue hymn book?
The old blue hymn book.
Now, very God of very God, right?
O come all ye faithful.
We've never seen that before,
but it was the blue Presbyterian hymn book that was the ground of his authority.
So you've got to be looking, you've got to be searching.
At some point, there is some ground of authority.
Bill Cruise at some point has a ground of authority that I've got to be appealing to.
And it just might be reason, it might be some human goodwill,
it might be compassion for a fellow man, whatever.
But I've got to be searching for the ground of authority and can use that.
And I'm sure in an old Presbyterian congregation, therefore, I'm going for the blue book.
And the Baptist Church is probably the same, the hymnal, the old Baptist hymnal.
You can't get any better than that.
Thank you.
Thank you, yeah.
You've got a good guide.
Yeah, okay.
Could you comment on the helpfulness of, like as a young preacher,
the helpfulness of listening to other preachers?
Yeah.
Like some, like, freakishly good preachers, aren't they helpful?
No.
As a model?
No.
For example, like Philip Jensen, he's a great preacher.
If I'm listening to him, I can't do what he knows.
No.
Could you suggest some preachers that are actually helpful and good models?
Well, you can't do what anyone does because you're you.
And so I reckon you've just got to keep that in mind that Philip Jensen,
I don't know, I just don't think that there are certain people who are gifted
and so you just go around and listen to them and say,
what has God given to them that makes this work?
So I listen to three or four sermons a week from students
and I find that they are generally really good.
And so I think to myself, well, what is it that makes them good?
Nothing really that I can translate to my own practice.
But I certainly think you should sit with your pastor,
who's your main preacher, and talk to him about preaching
and just see why he does what he does.
But I think you're wise to listen to preachers,
but don't be overwhelmed, you'll never be Philip Jensen,
but he'll never be Stuart Witt.
So that's the great thing, isn't it?
And I think just be yourself, but listen to them.
And see, why do I preach the way I preach?
And I think of the influences in my own life,
but I think the primary influence in my own life was when I got out to Wee War
and it's a bit like when I got my licence,
I didn't learn to drive till I was out on the road by myself.
And I think you can put everything together you get at college,
but it's not until you're out there that you really learn how to do it,
but you do it.
And I'm just grateful there was a guy in Varel
very close to Wee War by the name of Donald Campbell,
who was just a wonderful expositor of the Bible.
Every opportunity I took to listen to him, I listened to him.
He was a great illustrator, a great teacher.
He had, as a young boy, he played with a detonator
and had all that part of his hand blown off.
So he'd often preach like that.
He'd look at this hand and there was a finger, an index finger and a thumb,
but he'd preach with passion.
And I used to go to funerals and listen to him
and he'd wear a Calvin hat, you know, one of those old three-point hats.
And he'd preach there and I think, man, that was wonderful.
And had just such a high view of the word of God,
passionate for the Lord Jesus, he was an older man.
So that's great.
There's lots of models around here for you to go and listen to.
And I think you're wise.
But I reckon preachers, they'd love to sit with you
and talk to you about preaching as well.
And just talk to them about, why do you do it this way?
Why do you say it this way?
And they might be able to help you.
But I think just interact with the models
that God gives you in your local church.
That's the best thing. Yeah.
Okay, that's it. It's 12.30 now.
Yeah.
All right.