‘Whataboutery’ – Minister’s Letter March 24

Dear all at IPC

Over the last few months I have had more opportunity to listen to preaching than I have in a very long time. It’s been a real joy to have Reuben and Andrew minister God’s word to me week by week.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that, in my listening, I’ve become a master at applying the word to others. I recently read about “whataboutery” as a misdirection technique. That is when I hear something which could apply to me but in my head I think “but what about so and so: they really need to hear this”. I have subtly managed to redirect the application to someone else and somewhat nullify the truth.

I suspect I’m not alone in this because it is so very easy. To agree with what’s being said in principle, but raise the objection ‘but what about this person or that situation…what would so and so think if they heard that’ or ‘Mr or Mrs could have done with hearing that’, ‘if only so and so had been here’.

There’s an example at the end of the gospels of ‘whataboutery’, in the last chapter of John. The risen Jesus has appeared to Peter and charged him three times to feed his sheep. Jesus explains that will involve a long and tiring life of ministry and a future painful death. He finally reminds Peter, “follow me”. Peter then sees his old friend John and asks the Lord, “What about him?”, to which Jesus replies, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (John 21:17-22) It’s as if Jesus says to Peter, ‘I will work out my purposes and plans for John’s life, what concern is it of yours? You mind your own business and do what I’ve told you, follow me’.

I expect it was slightly awkward for Peter, but Jesus makes his point clear. There are different people in God’s kingdom, with different gifts and different temperaments that have different ministries. Peter’s overwhelming priority in life was to be following Jesus.

In listening to preaching it is easy to see the application to others more clearly than the one to ourselves. Jesus’ masterful illustration shows us this regarding the man who has a plank of wood in his own eye but is very keen to point out the speck of wood in his brothers (Matt 7:3,4).

There are also times when, listening to faithful preaching, we will not like what we are hearing. The application of God’s word might cut across what we believe or like to think. It may well confront a pattern of behaviour or thought. It will certainly critique the culture in which we maybe have become comfortable. God’s word shows me where I’m wrong and at that point there is a confrontation between my will and God’s will. Good preaching is always confrontational! The temptation to raise points of objection about what others might think or offence they might take is dangerous, because it stops me dealing with my sin. The subtlety of my sin means that I can hide in complexity, claiming it’s not as straightforward as the preacher is making it. The truth can equally be lost by endless caveats and qualifications.

‘Whataboutery’ can mean I deflect anything I don’t want to hear. As we come to God’s word, the right posture is to come wanting to hear.

Little Samuel, finally recognising that God was speaking to him, said, “Master, speak your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3) Psalm 95 beautifully expresses the joy of God’s people gathering to worship and yet finishes with the warning, “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah”. It is a reminder to them and to us of the seriousness of hearing God speak and not taking notice.

One of Jesus most oft repeated commands and warning is he who has ears to hear let him hear. He tells us in John’s gospel that, ‘Whoever is of God hears the words of God”. (John 8:47) The danger of whataboutery, is that if is allowed to become a habit we can inoculate ourselves to God’s word. We see the need of others but fail to see our own need.

It’s why the prayer of Ulrich Zwingli the Swiss Reformer is so helpful:

‘Living God, help us so to hear your holy Word that we may truly understand; that, understanding, we may believe, and, believing, we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honour and glory in all that we do; through Christ our Lord. Amen.’

Your Minister and Friend

The Saturday night prayer of the preacher

William Chalmers Burns prayed this on a Saturday in September 1839. He was in the midst of that remarkable work of God in Dundee whilst Robert Murray McCheyne was in Israel.

“Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! O scatter the clouds and mists of unbelief which exhale afresh from the stagnant marshes in my natural heart, the habitation of dragons, and pour afresh upon my ransomed soul a full flood of thy divine light and love and joy, in the effulgence of which all sin dies, and all the graces of the Spirit bloom and breathe their fragrance!

Nor do I pray for myself alone, but all my dear friends, and for my father, mother, brothers and sisters, and for all the people here; and for all ministers of every name whom Jesus hath called to preach his gospel, and for all who shall tomorrow hear or read glad tidings of great joy which shall yet be to all people!

Lord, hasten the latter-day glory! Come quickly, and reign without bounds and without end! And now wash me in thy blood, whose price I cannot tell, but need to cleanse me, so great a transgressor am I.

Glory be thee, O Lamb of God, and to thee, O Father, and to thee, O Holy Ghost, eternal and undivided! Amen”

God’s Polished Arrow – W.C.Burns – Michael McMullen, p38 Christian Focus Publications

How long is too long?

It’s obvious that in the New Testament there were long sermons. Paul preached so long in Acts 20 that Eutychus fell asleep and tumbled out of a window! Our Lord taught all day and into the evening so that people were hungry by the end of it. There are no hard and fast rules on length but I suspect some of us may need to be told we are not the Apostle Paul and we are certainly not Jesus. One of the things the year in lockdown has shown us is that we are preaching too long. Being online means that time seems to be multiplied, especially when you are watching someone preach.

For those of us who are Ministers, we need to watch our length. We are used to people listening to us and although preaching is not a monologue there is a freedom that we are given to speak uninterrupted. One of the dangers is we confuse when we’re out of the pulpit with when we’re in it. We get asked questions and our answers are too long. My wife often tells me I’m brilliant at answering questions people aren’t asking. I just launch off and think I’m answering, when in reality I’m just talking. In Session and Deacons meetings, the danger is that we’re asked a question and give a long rambly answer partly because we’re just used to speaking. I recently noticed as I was taking an evangelistic bible study, I was talking too much and so I wasn’t clear. I then tried to give an illustration but that didn’t help. There was a glazed look on the faces of the men as I droned on. I needed to just stop and leave enough time and space for questions.

I’m not particularly sure how you solve this problem, but here are some thoughts for both in the pulpit and out of it.

We often think we can get away with being longer, when the reality is very different.
Get an egg timer. We used it in our young peoples’ group and set it for 5 minutes for the speaker. It wonderfully focussed the mind.
Listen to someone trusted who says ‘you’re too long’.
Less is more. It takes more preparation to speak for 5 minutes than it does for 25.
Get to the point. Clarify what are you trying to get across and distil it. If you’re not clear, neither is anyone else.
Be succinct. Once you’ve said it, don’t repeat it again and again.
Allow people to ask for clarity. I think surprising people by being brief allows them to come back and ask questions…
…and in order to do that you need to be very thought through in your own mind.
Cut, Cut, Cut. There are lots of things you could say but don’t need to say. Be ruthless with your material.
Be comfortable with a brief meeting or a silence and give people time to process what’s been said. Don’t feel the need to fill the space.

None of these points are necessarily biblical points, but I suspect your congregation might appreciate them.

Anne of Green Gables goes to Church

My wife and eldest daughter have been reading Anne of Green Gables and my ears pricked up at the devastating description of Anne’s first visit to church. It’s brilliantly written but slightly too near the knuckle ……………

“I went into the church with a load of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through it if I hadn’t been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed and imagined all sorts of splendid things.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything of the sort. You should have listened to Mr. Bell.”

“But he wasn’t talking to me,” protested Anne. “He was talking to God and he didn’t seem to be very much interested in it, either. I think he thought God was too far off to make it worthwhile……….

She goes on to speak about the sermon……..

“I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister I’d pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long, too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn’t think he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn’t enough imagination. I didn’t listen to him very much. I just let my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.”

Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had said, especially about the minister’s sermons and Mr Bell’s prayers, were what she herself had thought deep down in her heart for years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible and acccusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.”

Anne of Green Gables – p,96,97

Romans is about God

I’m preaching through Romans and trying to preach it in more detail than I have previously. I think it would be a great thing if we could kill off the phrase in sermons we’re ‘going to look at this passage from 10,000 feet’.

In preparation for the series I found this paragraph from Leon Morris’ commentary completely changed my approach to the letter this time around –

“One point that is often overlooked and should be stressed is that Romans is fundamentally a book about God. It is obvious to all that Romans is concerned with the gospel, with salvation and so on. But many students seem not to have noticed Paul’s preoccupation with God. The thought of God dominates the epistle….Paul writes on a number of topics but each is related to God” (p25, Pillar NT Commentary on Romans)

It was an eye widening and heart stretching moment as I traced this through letter- in total there he speaks about God 153 times. Here’s a sampling…..

1:1 – The Gospel of God
1:4 – The Son of God
1:16 – The Power of God
1:17 – The Righteousness of God
1:18 – The Wrath of God
1:23 – The Glory of God
2:1 – The Judgement of God
3:1,2 – The Oracles of God
3:18 – The Fear of God
4:20 – The Promise of God
4:17 – The Presence of God
5:1 – Peace with God
5:5 – The Love of God
5:10 – The Enemies of God
5:15 – The Grace of God
6:11 – Being Alive to God
6:22 – Being Slaves of God
6:23 – The Free Gift of God
7:22 – The Law of God
8:14 – Being Sons of God
8:16 – Children of God
12:2 – The Will of God
8:34 – The Right Hand of God
9:5 – Christ who is God over all blessed for ever
9:16 – The Mercy of God
10:2 – Zeal for God
10:17 – The Word of God
11:8 – God giving a spirit of stupor
11:22 – The Kindness of God
11:22 – The Severity of God
11:29 – The Gifts and Calling of God
11:33 – The Riches of God
11:33 – The Wisdom of God
11:33 – The Knowledge of God
12:1 – The Mercies of God
14:17 – The Kingdom of God
15:5 – The God of Endurance
15:5 – The God of Encouragement
15:13 – The God of Hope
15:13 – The God of Peace
16:26 – The Eternal God
16:27 – The only wise God be Glory forevermore through Jesus Christ

You can follow this further in Leon Morris’ 1970 article – The Theme of Romans

What do people pick up from your ministry? or It ain’t what you preach it’s the way that you preach it

For those of us who preach and teach, one of the most helpful things I have learned is that people pick up what we’re excited about. And it’s not necessarily what we think we’re preaching and teaching. If someone sits under your ministry for a sustained period of weeks and months they will be able to tell you what you get excited about. In turn they will in all likelihood get excited about it too. Your priorities will become the church’s priorities over time. I don’t think this applies just in spiritual work, it’s the same in any teaching context.

For the preacher, this has both a positive and a negative outcome. Positively, it is reassuring for those of us who aren’t the gifted and great. We might never make it on to the conference circuit or write scholarly articles. Yet because we love Christ and his gospel, that will come across. All of us preachers should love that Lloyd Jones quote –

‘I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him.’

If we are excited about God, if we are excited about the Lord Jesus, that will shine through our preaching.

The other side of the coin is a warning. If we get excited by the periphery of the Christian faith, the good but not essential, the danger is that our people will have that same excitement over the periphery. It can even be important things like Church government, the sacraments, the melodic line, the interpretation of scripture. If our primary excitement isn’t for the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel, that will transfer to the people God has entrusted to our care. We’ve all seen churches just subtly begin to major on things that are not at the heart of the Christian faith. It’s dangerously subtle.

I think there’s a need for periodic self analysis, to be able to see where we’re slightly going off kilter and re-align ourselves with the priorities of the bible.

I’m not arguing just preach ‘the simple gospel’. We must teach the whole counsel of God, seeking to instruct people in all the things Jesus taught us. The Reformed Faith is for all of life and we must seek to bring the truth of God’s word to bear on every area. But we need to remember it’s what gets us excited that they will remember.

5 Provocative Points on Preaching – Geoff Thomas

Last week before the Catalyst conference we gathered our “under care” men together to talk about preaching. 2 of them preached in the morning and we gave feedback and then in the afternoon Geoff Thomas gave 5 Provocative Points on Preaching

1. Treasure the Pulpit

He talked about the value of a physical pulpit, the constraint of it, implying authority, 90% of people who are in pulpits on a Sunday haven’t been called.

2. Don’t Absolutize Exegesis

Preaching is far more than exegesis

3. If your text is too long it becomes a bible study

4. Spot the striking phrase

One of the dangers in taking large sections in scripture is that we miss the striking phrases and stunning verses of scripture. They mustn’t just be lost in the flow of going through the passage.

All Scripture is equally inspired but not all is equally important

5. Do a Lloyd Jones in the morning and a Spurgeon in the evening

Expository sermons in the morning with an evangelistic edge and then in the evening take the great texts of Scripture which have been used over the past 400 years in bringing many to faith.

Some Random Thoughts on Preaching (2)

I wrote some initial random thoughts here. Again, let me say, these are just some perspectives on where we’re at. I don’t want to be an armchair critic and I love the men I get to hear preaching in my own congregation and am grateful for other preachers that I hear. Please don’t think I’m holding myself up as some kind of model; I’m not a preaching connoisseur……….

People are more ready to listen than we are to speak – I want to argue we need more preaching, more opportunities to hear the Word. Partly it was reading Calvin’s Company of Pastors by Manesch that convinced me we need to saturate people with Word ministry but also my experience with lunchtime services. There are hungry Christians out there who want more of God’s Word. We are all slightly terrified of running something that only has small numbers; we need to get over ourselves on this. I think it might be worth an early evening preaching service one night of the week partly for those who work shifts or the like. The idea that we can survive on one sermon per week is a modern phenomenon that frankly isn’t true. Multiple opportunities for Word ministry provide greater opportunities for training, encourage believers and give opportunities for outsiders to hear the gospel. The other ridiculous argument is that people are so busy in church they have no time for outsiders. This doesn’t make sense when the service is only 30 minutes.

Sermon Outlines occasionally help but often hinder – To state the obvious, preaching is oral communication. It is different from writing a chapter in a book or an essay; it is not the same thing as giving a lecture. At it’s simplest there is a verbal spoken word by a man who is listened to and understood by the congregation which should take place in preaching. I’m not wholly against printing an outline of your sermon; they can be helpful, particularly when the structure of the passage is important (when people try to explain chiasms verbally it’s normally very painful). So what I am trying to say is people should be able to remember the points we have made without an outline. Sometimes I fear that outlines betray a view of preaching that is more a transfer of information than an encounter with Christ through his Word. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think there have to be points, I need them because I’m not good enough as a communicator to do without them but, if we have them, work hard at them, make them memorable. To have outlines with long sentences of teaching points reveals that we’ve not put the thought in to make the sermon stick in peoples minds. I also wonder whether congregations seeing the outline in front of them, think, ‘I know where he’s going’ and subconsciously switch off. Perhaps giving an outline at the end of church might be a good prompt for devotions during the week.

Over Preparation and Under Preparation – Sometimes our preachers have done masses of work on the text, seen the biblical theology connections, given us insights from the original languages, clearly shown us the melodic line of the book, carefully crafted illustrations, introduction and conclusion and yet the sermon lacks an earthy connectedness. It’s correct but lacks life. The sermon just feels like an exercise of the mind. You can tell when this has happened as the heads of people listening drop or eyes glaze over as they stare blankly into space.

It’s hard to work out why this is the case sometimes, and there may be a variety of reasons, but I wonder if it’s because there is possibly too much time in the study and not enough time with people. I don’t just mean one to one Bible studies but sitting with older folk, hospital visiting, normal human interaction etc, working out what difference the sermon should make to different peoples lives. The big thing that I find I need in preparation is time; time to marinate and meditate on the text and how to shape the message that is right for the congregation. It means finishing our book work earlier in the week so the message becomes embedded in us.

Q&A – It’s the trendy thing at the moment to have Question and Answer after a sermon and I can see the merit in it, we’re told the model being Acts 17 where there is obvious dialogue, although preaching is always dialogical by its very nature. However, I think the q&a straight after preaching is pretty foreign to what we see mainly in Acts and the best models of preaching in Church History. If preaching is a confrontation with God through the Word of God by the man of God it would seem to me that the correct response to that is not Q&A but repentance. The authentic response in Acts is being cut to the heart. I fear the edge is taken off sermons often by Q&A. True preaching is adversarial – there is a collision between God and man every time someone preaches. We know this don’t we? Those times when God has spoken clearly to us through the preaching of his Word we’ve not wanted a Q&A, we’ve just known that we’ve done business with God. There has to be a place in congregations for discussion and Q&A but I’m not convinced straight after the sermon is the right place, preachers mustn’t think they are 6ft above contradiction. It’s just knowing the right context to do it in.

Death by feedback – Feedback on sermons is a good thing, particularly when you’re starting off. However, as you go on as a preacher, you ordinarily should be able to tell how things have gone. We have the phenomena in the UK of quite large preaching teams who give each other feedback weekly. What this can lead to I would argue is tentative, bland preaching that is particularly lacking in sharp application. The preacher has in his mind those who give feedback when he’s preaching and the sword is blunted, there’s no edge to the preaching. I spoke at a conference once and on the first day was told I’d offended the women and on the second day the men by the third session I was so paranoid of offending anyone I played it safe and the result was the preaching equivalent of blancmange. As to how preachers give feedback to one another, I’m not convinced that our Preaching conferences are right either. I can’t see the point of giving a 10 minute talk on a passage you’ve not really prepared to other preachers who have done even less preparation than you have. The London preachers conference which I went to for a couple of years was helpful in this regard. It took a recording of a recent sermon that the whole group listened to and then others gave meaningful feedback on it. That made sense in that people were listening to a sermon preached in the context of your congregation and were able to give helpful feedback on your preaching, not on a 10 minute talk you prepared in the car on the way to the conference. Feedback is valid; I’m grateful that my elders speak to me about my sermons, I’m thankful for good friends who will give me feedback after having heard me preach but not to the extent of blunting the preacher. There seems to me to be little tentative preaching in the New Testament.

Some Random Thoughts on Preaching (1)

These are going to be some random thoughts on preaching. Please don’t think I’m holding myself out to be an expert or a model; these are things I struggle with and am trying to think through. A friend of mine, who does church planter assessment, told me that when they ask aspiring church planters to grade themselves from 1-5 on various aspects of their lives, when it comes to preaching no one ever gives themselves less than a 4. On the other hand, I’ve got no interest in a fake, reformed spirituality about my preaching: ‘Aren’t I terrible?’. We need to be able to step back and look at our preaching in the hope that we can improve. These are broad brush strokes and may even be contradictory but here goes…….

1. If you’re heart isn’t burning, neither will your listeners’ be – Do you believe what you are about to preach is the very living Word of God? Are you excited about what you are going to teach? The truth is, if you’re not excited, neither are your hearers going to be. It’s going to look different in different personalities but I sometimes find myself listening to preaching thinking, ‘Does the man preaching think this really matters?’ We can’t all be John Piper, in fact, there are few things worse than people who try to be (well, maybe those who try to be Tim Keller) but there must be a conviction that this matters and it matters to me and I want to tell you why it matters. Without that conviction I’m not sure we should be preaching at all.

2. Conference Preaching isn’t the same as week by week preaching – It may be different in America, where the same 8 people speak at each other’s conferences, but ordinarily in the UK if someone is asked to speak at a conference, they work very hard at it. Let’s face it, the sermon has probably been preached a number of times, in different contexts. Introductions and illustrations have been honed, we’ve read every commentary we can get our hands on, parts of the sermon that didn’t work 3rd time around have been reworked. Everyone pretends this isn’t the case but who are we kidding? The sermons at conferences are a bit longer and certainly more polished. I would even argue there is a type of conference speaker who has a kind of commanding presence up front. This cannot be our model for preaching regularly to the same people. The slickness of conference preaching should be in a completely different genre than the week by week exposition for a church. Preaching at its simplest level is getting people to keep going as Christians for another week. On the over used meal illustration, conference sermons are often 5 course, over the top dinners when week by week preaching is your Tuesday night lasagne. You probably won’t remember it in two days time but it gets you through to the next meal. We need to stop trying to be the next big name. I want to argue that the best preachers are those who are doing it every week. There’s a reality in the work of ministry that those who are away from the coal face easily forget. Every preacher has models and we need to make it men who are doing the hard yards week by week of preaching to their congregation.

3. We don’t have to teach everything in the passage – Most preachers I know take larger sections, a paragraph ordinarily, but sometimes, in Old Testament narrative, it can be chapters, even 2-3 chapters. Preaching on single verses is a neglected skill and does happen evangelistically but probably isn’t used enough. When taking the larger chunks my view is that preaching is not a comprehension exercise where we make sure that we’ve not missed any points in the passage. The aim mustn’t be just to transfer information from my notes into your notes. In our preaching we need to distil what we see as the main teaching point of the passage which by its necessity means that there will be things in the passage we don’t talk about and that is OK. Not every New Testament connection, cross reference, theological insight you’ve gleaned needs to be shared. Give us your one big point, what’s the issue that is burning in your heart from the passage? Most of our sermons have too much information and probably not enough application. Very few preachers I know can regularly preach effectively taking a whole chapter or two chapters. The work of distilling and shedding that which is unnecessary in sermons is time consuming and we need to be more brutal in getting rid of good thoughts and helpful material which is not essential to the sermon.