 How to Preach Part 1 (3 views)
From:  David (DavidABrown)    8/8/2002 9:49 am  
To:  ALL    
 
  421.1  
 
Issue #62 8/7/2002   
Source: www.Pastors.com 
Source: www.preaching.com

Preaching is about transformation, not information. 

Purpose-Driven Preaching: An Interview with Rick Warren
by Michael Duduit
 

Few pastors have become more influential in shaping church life today than Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Southern California's Orange County. Under his leadership, the church grew from the Warren family alone to regular worship attendance of more than 15,000 each weekend. Warren has taken the insights he learned at Saddleback and shared them in the book The Purpose-Driven Church, which has become one of the most popular Christian books of recent years. 

Warren is now a member of the Board of Contributing Editors of Preaching magazine, and recently I visited Rick's office to talk about the role preaching has played in the life and growth of Saddleback.

Preaching: Rick, we were just looking at some examples of The Purpose Driven Church - twenty-one languages, a million copies, it is just an incredible story. Where does preaching fit into that whole Purpose Driven matrix?

 
Warren: The bigger the church gets the more important the pulpit becomes because it is the rudder of the ship. Where else do you get an hour of undivided attention with all these people on a weekly basis? Yet, I find most pastors do not understand the power of preaching. But even more important than that is they don't understand the purpose of preaching. 

I probably have the largest library of books on preaching in America. I've read over 500 books on preaching. Maybe some seminary might come close to that, but I am sure that no pastor comes close to 500 books on preaching. And as I've read them, the vast majority doesn't really understand that preaching is about transformation, not information. 

So to understand the purpose of preaching, first you have to go back and look at a few things. What is the purpose of God for man, and what is the purpose of God for the Bible? Because once you understand those two things, your purpose for preaching becomes very clear. 

What is the purpose of God for man? Well, the Bible tells us in Romans 8:29, "For those he foreknew he did predestine to become conformed to the image of his Son." God's purpose from the very beginning of time has been to make us like Jesus. In Genesis there was the fall  Jesus came to restore what was there before. So the goal of all preaching has to be to produce Christ-likeness in an individual. Is that person becoming more and more like Jesus? 

Now, what is the purpose of the Bible? Well, it says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work." 

But people misread that verse most of the time. The purpose of the Bible is not for doctrine, not for reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Those are all "for this" in the Greek. 'For this ... for this ... for this ... in order that.' The purpose is in order that. So doctrine in itself is not the purpose of the Bible. Reproof in itself is not the purpose - correction or training is not the purpose. The bottom line is to change lives: "That the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work." So every message must be preaching for life change. 

I hear people talk about 'life application' as a genre or type of preaching. Yet, I say if you're not preaching life application, then you're not really preaching. It may be a lecture; it may be a study; it may even be a commentary, but it is not preaching. 

To me preaching is for life change. I am not the master of this. Don't make John the Baptist your model. Don't make John MacArthur your model. Don't make Rick Warren, or Spurgeon, or Calvin or anybody your model. Make Jesus your model. 

In my two-day seminar on preaching, I just keep coming back to, 'Now let's see how Jesus did it. Now, look how Jesus did it.' You take the greatest sermon in the world - which is the Sermon on the Mount - and He starts off, 'Let me tell you eight ways to be happy.' Happy are you if you do this ... You are happy if you do this. Then He talks about anger: don't get angry. He talks about divorce: don't divorce. He talks about worry - let me give you four reasons why not to worry: it's unreasonable; it's unnatural. He talks about all of these practical things and then He says, 'Now, if you put this into practice you are a wise man. If you don't, you are a fool and you're building a house on a rock."

The Bible says the Pharisees were amazed because Jesus preached as one having authority. His sermon is 100% application. My model is not anything, but following Jesus. 

My goal when I preach is not to inform; it is to transform. Unless you understand that, your messages tend to be based on the traditional style of teaching. 

Preaching: How do you think through this whole issue of application as you are dealing with the text or the biblical theme? Walk me through that process as you think through how this applies to the lives of people.

Warren: The big thing is building a bridge between then and now. You have interpretation on one side, you have personalization on the other side, and in the middle you have the implication. The key is always finding the implication of the text. 

The interpretation - commentators tend to live in that world. 

Personalization - communicators tend to live in this world. 

It's a fine line and you can fall off on either side. It is easy to be biblical without being contemporary or relevant. It is easy to be relevant without being biblical. The test is right there in the middle, walking that fine line. 

We don't have to make the bible relevant - it is - but we have to show its relevance. 

What is irrelevant, in my opinion, is our style of communicating it. We are tending to still use the style from 50 years back that doesn't match who we are trying to reach today. 
When I start with an application, I first start with personal application. Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a book on Personal Bible Study Methods - on how to apply the Bible. It sold a couple hundred thousand copies. In fact, Billy Graham picked it up and gave it to every evangelist in Amsterdam. 

In the book I talk about a dozen different ways to apply scripture so you start with your own life and you make applications there. A lot of it is just simple stuff like: is there a sin to confess, a promise to claim, an attitude to change, a command to obey, an example to follow, a prayer to pray, an error to avoid, the truth to believe. Is there something to praise God for? So, I start looking at it like that. 

I also go back to the paradigm of 2 Timothy 3:16. Doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness is basically these four things: 

1. What do I need to believe as a result of this text?
2. What do I NOT need to believe as a result of this text?
3. What do I need to do as a result of this text? 
4. What do I need to NOT do as a result of this text? 

That is doctrine for reproof, for correction and instruction of righteousness. So, I use that format. Start with personal application, and then you go for the implication - what people need in their lives. 

The biggest thing that I would say about application is that every pastor eventually gets to application. I'm just saying he needs to start with it, not end with it. A lot of guys need to start where they end their sermon. They will do about 80 to 90% explanation and interpretation in background study, and then at the end there is a little 10-minute application. 

Now, that is OK if you have a highly motivated group of people who just love Bible knowledge. But the Bible says there are a couple of problems with Bible knowledge. In the first place it says that knowledge puffs up but love builds up, and the Bible says that increased knowledge without application leads to pride. 

Some of the most cantankerous Christians that I know are veritable storehouses of Bible knowledge, but they have not applied it. They can give you facts and quotes, and they can argue doctrine. But they're angry - they are very ugly people. The Bible says that knowledge without application increases judgment. To him that knows to do good and does it not, it is sin. So, really, to give people knowledge and not get the application is a very dangerous thing. 

Here is an interesting thing - if you look at the Bible and start taking the books of the New Testament, you might be surprise to find out how much of the Bible is application. It will really change the way you preach. For instance, I once preached through the book of Romans for two-and-a-half years, verse by verse. 

And, by the way, I do both verse-with-verse exposition - which I call topical exposition - and I do verse-by-verse exposition, which is book-by-book. Two kinds of teaching for two different targets and two different purposes, and they are both needed for a healthy church. To say you only need one, I think is ridiculous. One is far more effective for evangelism and one is far more effective for edification. 

So, I once taught through the book of Romans verse-by-verse. Most pastors would agree that Romans is the most doctrinal book in the New Testament, yet how much of Romans is really application? This is what I found:

Chapter One: doctrine 
Chapter Two:  doctrine 
Chapter Three:  doctrine 
Chapter Four: doctrine 
Chapter Five: doctrine 
Chapter Six: application 
Chapter Seven:  application 
Chapter Eight: application 
Chapter Nine: doctrine 
Chapter Ten: doctrine 
Chapter Eleven: doctrine 
Chapter Twelve: application 
Chapter Thirteen: application 
Chapter Fourteen: application 
Chapter Fifteen: application 
Chapter Sixteen: application. 
So you have a book of 16 chapters and fifty-percent is application - the most doctrinal book of the Bible and half its chapters off 'life application.' 

Then you go to Ephesians - half of the book is doctrine, half is application. Colossians - the first half of the book is doctrine, the second half is application - fifty-percent. You get to a book like James - 100 percent application! Proverbs - 100 % application. The Sermon on the Mount - 100 % application. 

So my cry is: pastors just do more of it. You already know that you've got to get people to apply the Bible in their lives; you've just got to offer more application. If that means cutting back on some of the background information, then do it. I think sometimes in our preaching we are far more interested in a lot of the details than our people are. 

A guy who spends three weeks on one verse is missing the point of the verse. Truthfully. It's like looking at Mona Lisa with a microscope. Every single word - God didn't mean for it to be read that way. A pastor doing that is missing the point. Pastors who say, 'I don't do topical preaching' but then take an entire two weeks for two verses, what are they doing? They're doing topical preaching. They're just using it as a jumping-off point. 

Preaching: How much of the sermon should be application versus explanation of the text.

Warren: I personally believe 50 percent. I know Bruce Wilkinson once did a study of great preachers. He went back and studied Spurgeon and Moody, Calvin and Finney, both Calvinists and Arminians. Then he studied contemporaries like Charles Stanley and Chuck Swindoll. He discovered that those guys were anywhere from 50 to 60 percent - some at 70 percent application.

What we normally do in a structure of a message is that we do interpretation and then application of a point, then the next interpretation and the next application, the next interpretation and the next application. I am suggesting that if you want to reach pagans, you actually just reverse that procedure. You still get both - it's just the way you do it. 

So, let's say with the Sermon on the Mount, instead of getting up and going through a long background and explanation on worry, I stand up and say, 'Isn't it a fact of life that we all deal with worry? Well, today we're going to look at six reasons why Jesus said that we shouldn't worry.' 

Then you make your application the points of your message. 

People don't remember much. If you're motivated, you remember about seven bits of information; if you're not motivated, you remember about two. So if they're only going to remember something, what do I want them to remember? I want them to remember the application - the lessons - not a cute outline of text. An alliterated outline is not going to change their lives. So I say, make your applications your points because the points are all that they're going to remember. 

It is more important to be clear than it is to be cute. So I'll say, 'Here are the three things that you've learned.' Here is the contemporary application - and then underneath it you go back and cover the background. Here is the point - and then you go back and cover the background. It's the exact same thing - it's just the order - and what that does is it increases retention, and it increases interest. 

Now understand that I am pastor of a church in California, where maybe 77 % of the congregation were 'saved' and baptized at Saddleback. Without question, Saddleback is the most evangelistic church in America. We've baptized 7,800 new believers in the last seven years. No church has ever done that - 1,100 baptisms a year. This year at Easter we set up a 5,000-seat tent, and I preached seven services. We had 33,000 for Easter - which is about a typical number - and we had 2,082 adult professions of faith recorded on cards. That is a crusade! To have 2,000 people saved - well, how does that happen? It happens when your focus is preaching for transformation, for changed lives.

Preaching: Tell us about the sermon that you preached on Easter.

Warren: I did a message on: I want to know the power of the resurrection. What is the power of the resurrection, Paul wants to know? It is the power to change your life. 

When I prepare a sermon, I do a little thing called CRAFT, which is a methodology I've developed:

C stands for collect and categorize 
R is research and reflect 
A is apply and arrange 
F is fashion and flavor 
T is to trim and tie it all together. 
As I go through these things, first I sit down and I start praying. I say, 'Who is going to be there?' I start to think of one person. When a church gets as large as Saddleback, numbers really are irrelevant. There is no statistical difference between 15,000 on a weekend and 16,000 on a weekend - it's just a big crowd! 

So what motivates me is not the number; what motivates me is the individual life that is changed. I start thinking about people I know who will are going to be there. People that I have invited - like my back doctor who was an atheist Jew, yet he came for Easter. I start thinking: 'Now what is going to help this guy know about Christ?' and I go through that little formula and think about the points, which were actually quite simple. 

Point one of the Easter sermon was open your mind to God's power. I noted that, if your life is going to be changed, it starts with a change in your mind - which, by the way, is the purpose of preaching. Open your mind to the power of God. 

The second point was open your heart to the grace of God. 

The third point was open your life to the love of God. 

We write the verses out, and put them in an outline. I do that for several reasons:

First, non-believers don't bring their Bibles to church. 
Second, even if they did, they might not know how to find the right passages. 
Third, it saves time. I once clocked a pastor, and he took almost 9 minutes saying, 'Now turn to this, and turn to this.' I don't have that kind of time. I want all of the time I have for preaching. 
I preach on an average of 50 to 55-minutes. Most people would think, 'Well, he's preaching sermonettes for Christianettes' - you know, that kind of stuff. But you preach 50 to 55 minutes, if you understand this model I'm describing. 

I use about 14 to 16 different verses, and I use different translations. That's another reason I use an outline - because I use different translations. Sometimes the New American Standard says it better. Sometimes The New Living Translation says it better. Sometimes the NIV says it better. So I use that. 

It also allows me to help their retention because I can have the people read scripture aloud together. We probably read more scripture aloud than the average church does because I have it on an outline. I say, 'Now, let's all read this together.' 

I'll say, 'Circle that word,' 'underline that,' 'star that.' Then they can take it home with them and put it up on the refrigerator, pass it on to friends, or teach a Bible study on it. I'm a firm believer in actually writing out the outline with scriptures written out. If you're in it for life change, it just makes it a whole lot easier for people to use. 

I actually started the message on Easter like this: I stood up and said, 'You know, if you're not a particularly religious person, if you don't feel particularly close to God, if you feel pretty disconnected, if you rarely attend church, congratulations! This is your holiday!' 

Rather than making people feel bad, I'll say, 'I'm glad you're here. If you're going to go to church at all, I'm glad you came here. And guess what - you don't know what you're in for!' And then I'll say, 'What is Easter all about? It's an invitation to a changed life. Would you like a changed life? What does it take?' 

Just right at the start you roll it out - we're here for establishing a relationship with Jesus Christ. We had over a thousand people 'saved' each of the last four Easters. So it's a great harvest for us every year. Our people bring their friends. 

Preaching: Are there some particular insights you've gained over the years that help you preach for life change?

Warren: There are nine things that really form how I figure a life can change:

1. All behavior is based on belief. If I ask why do you do what you do, it's because you believe something behind it. If somebody gets a divorce, it's because he or she has a belief behind related to the divorce - 'I think I'll be happier divorced than I will be staying married,' or whatever. If you have sex outside of marriage it's because you have a belief behind supporting that.

2. Behind every sin is a lie of unbelieving. This has profound implications for preaching. When you sin, at that moment, you think you're doing what is best for you. You think you're doing the right thing, but you've been deceived. When your kids do something dumb, at that moment, they think what they're doing is smart, but it's dumb. The Bible tells us that Satan deceives us.

3. Change always starts in the mind. This principle is taught all the way through the New Testament. Romans 12:2, 'Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.' The Bible teaches very clearly that the way we think affects the way we feel, and the way we feel affects the way we act. Since change starts in the mind - and sin starts with a lie - and behavior starts with belief, then -

4. To help people change; you have to change their beliefs first. You don't work on their behavior; you work on their beliefs because it always starts in their mind. That is why Jesus says, 'You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.'

5. Trying to change people's behavior without changing their beliefs is a waste of time. The illustration I use is that it's like a boat on autopilot. If I have a boat, and it's in a lake, and it's on auto-pilot, and it's headed north - then when I want it to head south - do a 180 degree turn - I want to do a "repentance" on that boat. I have two options: I can physically grab the steering wheel of the boat and physically force it to turn around, and it will turn around. But the whole time it's turned around, I'll be under tension because I'm forcing it to go against its autopilot. Pretty soon, I'll get tired and I'll let go of the wheel. Meaning, I go back to smoking; I go off of the diet; I stop doing whatever, I go back to my habitual ways of stress relief. Now, the better way is to change the autopilot. The way you change the autopilot is by changing the way you think. And, that brings up repentance.

6. The biblical word for changing your mind is repentance, metanoia. Now, when most people think of the word 'repentance' they think of someone wearing a sandwich sign, you know, turn or burn, or they think repentance means stopping all their bad actions. That is not what repentance is - there is not a lexicon in the world that will tell you that repentance means stop your bad action. Repentance, metanoia, simply means changing your mind. And we pastors are in the mind-changing business. Preaching is about mind-changing. Society's word for repentance, by the way, is 'paradigm shift.' Repentance is the ultimate paradigm shift, where I go from darkness to light, from guilt to forgiveness, from no hope to hope, from no purpose to purpose, from living for myself to living for Christ. It's the ultimate paradigm shift. And repentance is changing your mind at the deepest level of beliefs and values.

7. You don't change people's minds, God's word does. So our job is to bring people into contact with God's Word. I can't force people to change their minds. I like I Cor. 2:13; in the New Living version - it says, 'We speak words given to us by the Spirit using the Spirit's word to explain spiritual truth.' There is both a Word and a Spirit element in preaching, and often we leave out the Spirit element. A lot of preaching today has the Word element, but it doesn't have the Spirit element. We talk about spiritual warfare. I don't think spiritual warfare is like demons. I think the Bible says spiritual warfare is tearing down mental strongholds. Our weapons have power - pulling down every argument, every pretension - check out 2 Cor. 10. By the way, that's why you're exhausted after preaching. If you're trying to pull down strongholds, you're in a mental and spiritual battle that's going to leave you exhausted. After I do five services every weekend, I'm a puddle - there's nothing left!

8. Changing the way I act is the fruit of repentance. Technically, repentance is not a behavioral change; it results in behavioral change. Repentance is what happens in your mind. So it doesn't mean forsaking your sin. That's why John the Baptist says produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Why would you need to produce fruit? Because the fruit is the action. The fruit is the behavior. Paul says in Act 26:20, 'I preach that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.' OK, so deeds are not repentance. But is that going to change your mind?

9. I believe the deepest kind of preaching - bar none - is preaching for repentance. So, 'life application' preaching, instead of being 'shallow' - as some critics charge - is, in my opinion, the deepest kind of preaching. Shallow preaching, to me, is doctrinal application or interpretation with no application - biblical background with no application. For 21 years now, the secret of Saddleback is that every week we get up and we try to take the Word and apply it so that it changes the way the congregation thinks about life, about God, about the devil, about the future, about the past, about themselves, about their mission in life. 

If you go through the New Testament, you'll find that repentance is the central theme in the New Testament. For instance, in Matthew 3:2, John the Baptist says, 'Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.' 'Jesus began to preach repent,' Matthew 4:17. The disciples went out and preached that people should repent. Peter says, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you.' Paul says, 'Now he commands all men to repent everywhere.' John in Revelation says, 'Repent.' You just go through the New Testament and you'll find the need for repentance.

To produce lasting emotional 'life change,' you have to enlighten the mind, you have to engage the emotions, and you have to challenge the will. Those three things have to be present in 'life application' preaching. There is a knowing element, there is a feeling element, and there is a doing element. This takes a lot of just being sensitive to the people because sometimes they have to be comforted and sometimes they've got to be challenged. I can often get that wrong, you know. 

This is one of the big weaknesses in our preaching. I think one of the greatest weaknesses is people who are unwilling to humbly stand before people and challenge their will. A lot of guys are great at interpretation. They are pretty good at application, but they're not really willing to stand there and call for repentance. Now I preach on repentance on every single Sunday without using the word because the word is misused today - it's misunderstood. So I talk about 'changing your mind' and I talk about a 'paradigm shift.' 

But really, every message comes down to two words: Will you? 

Will you change from this to this in the way that you are thinking? 

Our culture is falling apart. If you're not preaching repentance in your message, you're not preaching. No matter what we cover it has got to come back to change your mind, because your mind controls your life.

Preaching: What you're describing is preaching strategically. A strategic approach requires planning. How do you plan that strategy in terms of what you are going to do in preaching?

Warren: I have a preaching team that I meet with. When you start a church, you literally do everything. I set it up, I took it down, and I stored all the stuff in my garage. From the beginning of the church, it was my goal to work myself out of a job. And so as the church grew, I began to give the ministry away to more and more people - to lay people and to staff and on and on. About ten years ago, I realized that I'd finally given up everything that I was doing except two things: the feeding and the leading. I was still doing that myself, and so I began building a staff of other leaders and other feeders. I now have a preaching team of six pastors who share the pastoral teaching and preaching. 

For instance, I will be preaching 26 of the 52 weeks at Saddleback. Now why is that?

Number one, most people have never done five weekend services, and they don't know what a toll it takes on your body, and I want to live a long time. I will preach in one month what some guys will preach in a year just because of multiple services. So, to protect my own health, I did that.

But more than that, I believe you need to hear God's word from more than just one personality. I think that is healthy. I think a lot of people, you hear a guy for about six or seven years, and he's shot his wad. You've heard what he's got to say, and you either have to start hearing the same stuff over again or move to a different church. Well, I want people to stay at Saddleback for thirty or forty years, so I've built a team of different preachers with different personalities - I do believe preaching is truth through personality, like Brooks said. 

It doesn't bother me at all if somebody likes another pastor's preaching better. 'Well, I like his style.' That's fine; I think that's good. They hear it, and they stay here, and as long as they're growing and happy and are being built on the purposes of moving them out into ministry and mission, I'm happy about it. 

So - I take the preaching team, and we do planning. I'm a collector of ideas, collecting future sermon series and ideas. There are some series that I've been collecting on for twenty years that I still haven't preached on. For instance, I did a series through Psalm 23 a couple of years ago. I had collected material for over twenty years. I just knew that one day I was going to preach on Psalm 23. So when I get a quiet time insight, when I hear a good sermon or I hear a quote, I throw it in that file. That way, when I get ready to plan a series, I'm not starting from scratch. 

I have what I call my bucket file. My bucket file is not real organized. It's just stuff tossed in there. Once you get enough to start making a series - you go, 'I want to do this series on the family, or I want to do this series on I Peter, or I want to do this series on the second coming' - you start the file. Right now I have maybe fifty series in the hopper. 

Then, as it gets toward the end of the year, I'll pick about a dozen of those that I think, This is where God wants the church to go in the next year, and we - the preaching team - will prayerfully go away on a retreat. We pray and ask, 'What direction does God want the church to go? What needs to be done?' 

I'll tell you one of the ways you know what needs to be done: name the five biggest sins in your church. If divorce is a big sin in your church, guess what you're not preaching on. If materialism is a big sin in your church, guess what you're not preaching on. So just by looking at the sins of the people in your church - and in your area - you can come up with a lot of wisdom regarding what sermons to preach. I'll get a dozen or so messages just from doing that. 

I happen to believe that the audience determines God's will for what you're supposed to preach on. In other words, do I believe in the sovereignty of God? Absolutely. Do I believe in the foreknowledge of God? Absolutely. That means God already knows who is coming next Sunday before I do, and God is already planning on bringing those people next Sunday for you. 

Why would God - the sovereign - give me a message totally irrelevant to the person He is planning on bringing? He wouldn't. So I start asking, 'God, who is coming?' If I'm dealing with teenagers, that is one kind of message. If I'm dealing with seekers, then that is another kind of message. If I am dealing with mature believers, that is another kind of message. If I am dealing with people who need to be mobilized for ministry - you get the picture.

We look at that, and we pray and then we will do a tentative outline of the various sermon series for the year. 

We try to balance it in several ways. I try to give balance the purposes of the church: fellowship, discieipleship, service, evangelism, and worship. I will always do a series, somehow, dealing with worship, a series on evangelism, a series on discipleship, a series on ministry, and a series on fellowship. I will cover those five purposes every year. 

Now I can do that with a book series, I can do it with a biographical series, I can do it with a topical, thematic approach. It doesn't matter the style, but I will balance the purposes. I will balance the difference between comfort and challenge - afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted - I will balance that. I like to balance Old Testament and New Testament. I like to balance a little biographical, a little didactic, and a little doctrinal. 

Now, what I love to do is to teach theology to non-believers without ever telling them it is theology and without ever using theological terms. For instance, I once did an eight-week series on sanctification and never used the term. I did a four-week series on the incarnation and never used the term. I did a twelve-week series on the attributes of God - omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence - and never used the terms. I just called it "Getting to Know God." 

The preaching team establishes a plan, but then we remain flexible. If I know that I'm going to cover ten to twelve themes in the year, when I finish a series, I then pray, 'Which one, Lord, do you want to do next?' We will pick the next one out, and then we'll do it next, and then we'll go, 'Which one, Lord, do you want us to do next?' 

So there's planning and spontaneity at the same time. It allows for God to move us in the middle of the year. I know some guys - it doesn't matter if it's Christmas, they say, 'We're going to stay on that book!' To me that's silly - if suddenly America is at war - like after September 11th - does God have a word about it? Absolutely! We would stop, and we would talk about what does the Bible say about war. 

Preaching: How long is a typical series? 

Warren: I think the ideal series is four to six weeks. I have often stretched it to ten weeks. Obviously, the Ten Commandments are 10 weeks. I did a 10-week series on the Doctrine of Grace. But really, if you go more than four or six weeks on a series, people start wondering, 'Does he know anything else?' There is a fatigue factor. 

One lady said, 'My pastor has been in Daniel seventy weeks longer than Daniel!' So I think the best series would be a month - a series of four, twelve a year would be ideal. We almost never do that because you get into it, and you want to go another two weeks because there's still more material.

Preaching: The last time I was in a Saddleback worship service, you did a "tag team" sermon with one of your preaching team members. That's an example of what you call 'features' in preaching. Tell us more about that idea.

Warren: We now live in a society where the attention span is dramatically reduced. Yet I don't think you can really change a life in a 25-minute message. I think it takes a more significant amount of time. If you're moving a person - trying to change the way they think - you have to lead them through a process that takes more than 10 or 15 or 25 minutes. But in order to hold their attention, what we do is add in what we call features. 

We have five or six different kind of features:

The most common one is the personal testimony. A lot of churches use drama; we honestly don't use that much drama because most of it isn't that good - it looks more like a camp skit. What I found is: why would I use a dramatic fictional story when I have the real-life story of the changed life sitting there in the congregation? 

We have now had hundreds and hundreds of people give their testimonies - we actually fit them into the message. So this week when I'm preaching on 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' I'm looking at a series of testimonies to possibly use. One of them is a woman who came out of prostitution and was 'saved' here at Saddleback Church. She talks about how she learned that, 'I was not God, my life was a mess, and I had to give it all up.'

I'll fit that five to seven-minute testimony right into one of my points. Rather than use an illustration, I'll say, 'Now I want you to hear this.' That's one feature - that breaks the sermon up.

Another feature is what we call 'tag-team preaching.' We developed that simply because we're doing five services, and it's pretty tiring to carry that long of a message five times. Five times 55 minutes is a long time! 

Plus, we've found that a different voice will often help keep the congregation's attention. I'll write the message, but then I'll assign a point to one of my teaching pastors. That often adds a dimension of freshness that helps keep the people listening longer.

We've used film clips, we've used some dramas, and we've used some object lessons. One of my favorites is called 'point and play,' which is separating the points by music. At Easter and Christmas Eve, we do a 'point and play' message. For example, with my Easter sermon, I took every point and divided them into five sections, and we had a song that went with each point. So there is an emotional punch as well as an intellectual punch. We layer it: tension/release, tension/release.

I learned this when I was a consultant on the DreamWorks movie, The Prince of Egypt (to help keep it biblically-based). One day I was in the hall at DreamWorks, and I noticed something on the wall called an 'Emotional Beat Chart.' They actually monitor the emotional highs and lows of a movie. I counted, and there were nine peaks and nine valleys in this 90-minute movie - about every ten minutes there's tension/release, tension/release. Well, you can do that in a message: you can do it with humor, you can do it with an illustration, or you can do it with a feature, but it allows us to keep people's attention longer in order to give them more material.

Preaching: You mentioned earlier the distinction between topical exposition and verse-by-verse. How do you see the difference between those models?

Warren: Let me talk to you about the futility of preaching labels. We often hear modifiers used for preaching. We say there is topical and there is textual and there is life situational and there is expository. 

Frankly, I think that's a big waste of time, and I have given up on trying to label other pastors' sermons, much less my own. The reason is simply that everybody has their own definition, so they're meaningless. Like I said, I've got over 500 books on preaching in my library, and everyone has its own definition. 

I started a hobby a few years ago of collecting definitions of the term 'expository preaching.' Right now, I have over 30 definitions of the term, many of them contradictory. In fact, at one well-known seminary, I got three definitions of expository that were contradictory by three preaching professors in the same seminary! 

I read this quote by Clyde Fant in Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching; it says: 'It is impossible to define the terms textual, topical and expository. There is no modifier to explain all that God does through preaching or the way that He uses it. The only question that matters is: does the sermon involve itself in the truth of God's word? When it does, you have genuine preaching and all of the modifiers of the term become superfluous. If you use God's word to bring light and change peoples lives, then preaching has occurred regardless of the message used.'

Given that, here is my definition of expository preaching, and I think that it's about as valid as anybody else's: 'When the message is centered around explaining and applying the text of the Bible for life change.' That definition says nothing about the amount of text used and it says nothing about the location of the verses, because I think those are man-made issues. 

I read frequently we need to get back to the New Testament pattern of verse-by-verse preaching. Well, there's one problem there. There's not a single example in the New Testament of it. You can take one verse where 'Jesus starting with Moses ....' The fact is Jesus always taught in parables. 

What do Finney, Wesley, Calvin, Spurgeon, Moody, Billy Graham, Jesus, Peter, and Paul all have in common? None of them were verse-by-verse, through the book, teachers. Not one of them. Now the issue becomes: how much of the text is a text? That's really the issue. How much text is a text? 

It depends on who you are talking to - If you talk to G. Campbell Morgan, he often uses an entire book of the Bible. If you talk to Alexander Maclaren, he usually preaches on a paragraph. If you talk to Calvin, Calvin's general rule is to use two to four verses almost always - two to four verses. Spurgeon usually chooses an isolated phrase - not even an entire verse, an isolated phrase. Of course, Martyn Lloyd-Jones will often preach on just one word. He has a famous sermon - 'But God.'

I don't think that God cares at all whether you preach ten verses in a row or ten verses from His Word that come from different places, as long as you adequately expose and exposit those verses once you're there. I don't think God cares whether they're in a row or not - as long as you don't use it as a jumping off point. Now the 'topical' sermon that just takes a verse and doesn't even deal with it and just goes off - of course, that's not preaching. 

Preaching: Do you vary styles between the weekend and midweek services?

Warren: I will do them in both. I used to do only verse-with-verse in our weekend services, and I would do only verse-by-verse in the mid-week service. We've since 'killed' our mid-week service, taking that teaching and putting it on video - we shows those in our small groups. I recently taught - on video - through the book of James verse-by-verse, and it's going to the 8,000 people we have in small groups. We never could get 8,000 to show up for mid-week, but they're in small groups. So, they turn it on and watch it - and then they turn it off and discuss it and apply it. 

I've done a number of books on Sunday morning. For instance, we recently went through 1 Peter. We've done Philippians, we've done a Gospel, we've done Proverbs, and I've done Ecclesiastes verse-by-verse. I don't have a hang up with it. It's just when people start saying it's the only way to preach or the apostolic method, I say show me where it is in the Bible. Show me where it is! I'm very opinionated on that!
 
Preaching: What is the biggest mistake that you have made in preaching?

Warren: Well, I have made many mistakes. We've done more things that didn't work at Saddleback than things that did work. We're just not afraid to fail. 

I think the biggest mistake that I made in the first couple of years of my preaching at Saddleback was that I didn't realize the importance of drawing the net. I think drawing the net is essential. I didn't know as much as I do now. Forsyth says that what the world needs today is the authoritative Word of God preached through a humble personality. I think that a combination of confidence and humility goes together. I've learned that the secret of spiritual power is integrity and humility. 

It's not vision. A lot of people talk about vision being a big thing to grow a church. Visionaries are a dime a dozen. There are a lot of visionaries who aren't growing churches. What God blesses first is integrity, walking with integrity. Walking blameless - that we are exactly what we appear to be. 

And He blesses humility. Now humility is not denying your strengths; it's being honest about your weaknesses. We're all a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. Paul could be very obvious about his strengths. He would say, 'Follow me as I follow Christ.' Because he was also very honest about his weaknesses: 'I am chief among sinners.'

I used to look at Paul and go, 'Man, I could never say that.' Follow Rick Warren as Rick Warren follows Christ? It seems so arrogant. But then I realized that people learn best by models. At least I am making the effort. I am not perfect, but you know what? I'd rather have people follow me than follow a rock star! I am at least making the effort, and they know what my weaknesses are because I am honest, I am authentic with the people. 

I do believe in confessional preaching. I believe that you should confess both your strengths and your weaknesses. You don't dwell on yourself but in many ways the minister is the message. The word must become flesh. The best kind of preaching is incarnational preaching. The most effective message is when I am able to get up and say, 'This is what God is doing in Rick Warren's life this week. This is what I am learning. This is what I need to believe, what I need NOT to believe, what I need to do, what NOT to do." Those four things. There is a ring of authenticity about that. 

It's interesting that I have a thorn in the flesh that makes preaching extremely painful for me. I was born with a brain disorder, and I took epilepsy medicine through high school. Although I didn't have epilepsy, they gave it to me because they didn't know how else to treat me.

And I would faint; I would be walking down the street and just fall over and faint. It's a very complex thing, but I'm under the care of Mayo Clinic. The problem is my brain doesn't assimilate adrenaline correctly. So adrenaline - when it hits my brain - will tend to blind me, will tend to create headaches, dizziness, and confusion. 

Any pastor knows that adrenaline is your best friend. If you don't have adrenaline, you're probably a boring speaker. You need adrenaline for passion. Yet, the very thing that I need to speak to 5,000 people at one time is the very thing that harms my body. So it's quite painful for me to preach, and I just think it's part of God's design that the guy who He chose to speak to Saddleback is also a guy who is really quite weak. 

In my weakness, He is strong. 

Sometimes people might say, 'Warren, do you ever get full of pride knowing you preached to 32,000 people last week?' I want to answer, 'If you only knew.' When I am up speaking, that is the last thing on my mind - 'Oh, how great this is.' My thing is, 'Oh God, just get me through this.'

The reason I do it is because I am addicted to changed lives. That is what motivates me. I love it. I hear pastors say, 'I love to preach.' I don't love to preach - it's very painful for me to preach, but I love the results of preaching. I love the changed lives. 

If a guy says, 'I love to preach,' that never impresses me. He may just be a ham. He may just like the attention. He may just like the adrenaline rush of being on stage. I don't want to know, Do you love preaching? but Do you love the people you preach to? That's the key. If I have not love, I am of sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. 

I have a short prayer I speak to God before every service at Saddleback. As I get up before the crowd, and I look out there, I say, 'God, I love these people, and they love me. I love you and you love me and you love these people and many of these people love you. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear. This is not an audience to be feared; this is a family to be loved. So love these people through me.'

That is the last thing that I think before I get up to speak before every service. It helps me keep a pastor's heart.

Preaching: When you get up to preach, what do you carry with you?

Warren: I carry, of course, my Bible, my notes, and my outline. 

Preaching: How extensive are your notes?

Warren: A 55-minute messages is four half-pages on one side. I use trigger words and transition words. It's very important that I always write out my closing prayer - word for word - because I find that when I get to the end of the message, I am starting to get fatigued. And when you do a message five times - you say the same thing with passion for five times - your mind just starts shutting down on the fourth or fifth sermon, so you need pretty extensive notes. 

Now, I could memorize the message and not use notes. To me that seems to be an enormous waste of time, because the amount of time used to memorize it I could be in personal ministry, in leadership, in other things. I don't think that people care that much. God uses all styles. We've got a guy on our staff that is a manuscript preacher, but he delivers it with vitality so he is not just reading it. I do walk around a lot, so I can look at something, and it will keep me going for two to three minutes, but I do use notes.

Preaching: In your preparation process, do you develop any kind of manuscript yourself?

Warren: No, I don't do a manuscript, partly because I don't want it to sound like a manuscript. It's an oral presentation. Having been both a writer of many books and a preacher, those are two different skills - two totally different skills. The guy who thinks he can take his sermon and just put it into a book, forget it. It is not going to be that good of a book. Because the things that make good oral communication - like repetition, redundancy, coming back to the point - just sound goofy in a book. So I don't want to sound like a book. 

What I will do is to sit at the computer and talk it out as I type. I am very concerned about how it will sound. This is a big key to a lot of guys who have good content, but they don't know how to turn a phrase. They don't know the power of timing. You know, all over America, baseball pitchers stand the same distance from home plate, throw the same ball to the same plate. The difference between pros and amateurs is delivery. No doubt about it. 

The difference between a good sermon and an outstanding sermon is delivery. I know this because I preach the same material to five services every week and get different results depending on the delivery. The first message of the weekend is never the best time. You're not as comfortable with the material. You're going to become more and more comfortable. As you say it repeatedly, you're going to become passionate about it and so you learn timing, you learn delays, you learn delivery. 

Preaching: If you had just one or two words to encourage or recommend to other pastors, what would they be?

Warren: One of them is never stop learning. All leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading. Growing churches require growing pastors. The moment you stop growing, your church stops growing. I don't worry about the growth of the church. I never have. 

In fact, it probably will surprise most people that in 21 years at Saddleback, we've only set two growth goals - and they were both the first year of the church! What I focus on is keeping myself growing and motivated, and if I am on fire, other people will catch it. So you keep growing.

And I would encourage young pastors to listen to other pastors. Find a style that is similar to what you think you are and learn from it. It's OK to have models. I remember, in my early days, listening to other pastors. You'll develop your own style eventually. You can't help but be you.

-Pastors.com-

This interview originally appeared in Preaching magazine. Rick's Personal Bible Study Methods book and Preaching for Life Change seminar can be purchased from Pastors.com.
     
Article by Michael Duduit 
Preaching Magazine
Michael Duduit is editor of Preaching Magazine, the nation's premier professional journal for those who proclaim the Word. The bi-monthly publication includes practical feature articles, challenging sermons, and helpful homiletical resources. Preaching can be ordered by calling (toll free) 1-800-288-9673, or on-line at www.preaching.com. You can reach Michael through preaching@compuserve.com. 
Copyright (c) 2002 Pastors.com



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
 
From:  David (DavidABrown)    8/28/2002 11:42 am  
To:  ALL    
 
    
 
Source www.pastors.com/
Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox 
Issue #64  8/21/2002   

Using sermon research teams
by Brad Johnson

Preparing sermons is one of the most delightful and painful experiences that a pastor faces each and every week.  Often the pain surpasses the delight. 

Do you suppose God intended for the task of preparation to be such a burden?  Or can sermon preparation be a weekly blessing? 

For five years, I had the privilege of meeting with other pastors and we would work on our messages as a team.  Each week, I drove four hours (round trip) to participate in this group and I would do it all over again.  I discovered a new joy and a higher level of effectiveness in the ministry of preaching.  The following plan can bring you new energy, new creativity and new excitement as you consider the years of sermon preparation that are still in front of you. 

Each week, about ten of us would meet on Thursday afternoon for two hours.  Each team member would come with his sermon at least outlined, including any illustrations or humor that he intended to use.  One by one, we each would share our material and would utilize what we believed was best for our congregations that week.  We always left those meetings with more "good stuff" than we could possibly use.  So, instead of stretching to find enough for a sermon, our challenge was deciding what we should include from all the great options at our disposal. 

Some may be asking, "How can you prepare a sermon as a team?"  Thats a fair and predictable question.  Several considerations must be honestly assessed in order to get the fullest blessing from this process. 

Consider first the theological implication of such a process.  
The picture many pastors hold as they prepare their message each week is one of sitting in a room with a shaft of light illuminating them while surrounded with an open Bible and a dozen commentaries.  Sweat drips from this pastors brow as he waits for "inspiration" to hit.  But this begs a couple of questions: Can God help me prepare the message through the help of other people?  And, do I have to do this alone?  If one believes that "iron sharpens iron" (Proverbs 27:17), then we must believe that God could use others to sharpen our sermon preparation process. 

Next, consider the personal implication of this.  
Do you believe you are smart enough, creative enough, and insightful enough to prepare your sermons week after week, year after year with the same level of freshness and energy each time?  Honestly, having prepared sermons for over twenty years, I know the personal limitations of this awesome task.  Certainly, we each rely on God the Holy Spirit and the power of Gods Word, but cant our Lord use the input of others to strengthen our personal deficits? 

One should also consider the cultural implication of team preparation.  
Our culture is inundated with sharp, creative communicators.  The messages of a secular culture are dished up with catchy sound-bytes and flashy hype.  Now, I am not advocating that we must become secular in our "packaging" of the preaching task, but I am advocating that pastors present the sermon in the clearest, most effective way possible in order to gain a hearing in todays culture.  Often, God used the ideas of my teammates to help sharpen ideas that I was going to preach. 

A final consideration of team-preparation is the practical implication.  
Have you noticed that Sunday comes around with amazing regularity?  With a myriad of demands on our time, sermon preparation often suffers in the scheduling squeeze play.  Instead of a blessing, the "chore" of cranking out another sermon is too heavy. 

A seminary preaching professor told our class that sermon preparation can feel like pushing a boulder up a mountain.  All week long the pastor pushes and pushes and pushes.  Then, with the sermon done, there is a brief respite on Sunday morning when the boulder is at the top of the mountain, but by noon Sunday, it has rolled back to the valley only to be pushed back up the mountain the next week.  It just makes sense that pushing a boulder up the mountain would be easier if one had help. 

Now, lest I am misunderstood, team sermon preparation may not be for every pastor.  There are certain requirements that one should meet before considering this approach.  

First, each person on a sermon preparation team must be committed to contribute.  The plan breaks down if a person chronically comes to the team meeting without having done advance study and preparation. 

Second, it helps to have team members who hold mutual respect for one another.  If you have a team member whose study habits or theology is suspect, it will diminish the chemistry of your teams mix. 

Third, there must be an openness to the Spirits leading.  Almost every week, I would think I was going in one direction with the message, but the Lord would use the team process to redefine my message and in some cases to redirect it.  Each time I was obedient to the Spirits prompting, the sermon was used in the church in powerful ways. 

Fourth, a team member must also be willing to share his best material.  Often egos get in the way of pastors helping pastors.  If you have a great illustration, you can choose to use it in your pulpit and feel good about all the affirmation it garners, or you can choose to share that illustration with your team and receive the satisfaction of knowing that God used your research to be a blessing to many churches, regardless of who gets the credit. 

A fifth requirement is to preach in series.  It might be possible to preach random sermons week to week and get some benefit from a team approach, but preaching in a series will maximize the possible benefits.  For instance, if someone brings an illustration for week number one of a new series, but it doesnt quite fit the direction of your message for that first week, you can save that in a file and because "series preaching" has a common theme from week to week, you could pull that illustration out for a perfect fit in one of the following weeks. 

Let me put some detail on how this process could unfold in your area.  
You could begin by identifying like-minded pastors who would be open to participating in this process.  Dont limit yourself to just your city or area.  I drove four hours round trip because of the blessing of this process.  Others on the team drove an hour or more.  Only a couple were local men. 

Next, schedule a retreat for one full day where you each would bring your ideas for sermon series for the next year.  The team on which I served would do this in the fall for the following year.  It is imperative to come "prayed up" for Gods leadership in this meeting.  Though we each brought ideas that we believed God was leading us to do in our own unique ministry settings, it was amazing to see how often these series ideas overlapped.  Only occasionally would a team member opt out of a series because it didnt fit his context.  Almost always the series for the year fit the needs of my congregation. 

Then, week after week, on Thursday, we would meet for two hours about the sermon for that Sunday.  After our meeting, I would edit my sermon with the good additions from the team and type my sermon on Thursday evening.  When I stood up to preach, I would do so with the confidence that I had worked as hard as I could, had utilized the hard work of my team mates and then offered that before the Lord, depending on Him to take the message and touch hearts and lives. 

After five years of being in a sermon preparation group, I have discovered amazing benefits from such an experience.  Immediately I recognized the benefit of having the collective wisdom of many pastors, instead of my insights and thoughts only.  This added richness, variety and texture to my preaching.  Almost all of us get stuck in a rut where our messages get predictably the same in style and content.  By utilizing the collective wisdom of your group, you are able to teach truth as expressed by other pastors.  It is enjoyable for you to hear how others would present an idea and it will be joy for your congregation. 

An obvious benefit of team preparation is free research.  I had always held envious thoughts in my heart whenever I heard about high profile pastors who could afford to hire staff researchers.  I would grudgingly say to myself, "Sure, my messages could be consistently strong too, if I had a research team!"  Guess what?  You can have a research team and you dont have to hire someone to do it. 

We had about ten people on our team who each week would come with file folders bulging with clipped articles from the newspaper, lists of supporting scripture references for the message, anecdotes and jokes, and outline ideas.  It was easy to see that no one person could possibly have read all those books, all those papers or magazines, known all those stories or had all those ideas alone.  Week after week, I left those group meetings with a stack of information that could have produced a dozen sermons, but I could pick and choose the best ideas for one strong sermon and the research was free. 

A third benefit of team preparation is that you can play to your strengths.  Are you great at finding appropriate humor week after week for your messages?  Are you great at outlining a text?  Are you great at making personal, powerful, practical applications?  Chances are, with the right team mix, youll have someone in the room that is strong in areas where you might need help.  And youll contribute to the team from your strengths. 

Mark Jones, on our team, is a gifted writer.  He could turn a phrase that was catchy and impactful.  I would often lean upon Mark for a clever way to write my introductions.  Bob Russell is the best I know at writing outlines.  He takes complex passages of scripture and breaks them down in compelling ways.  Bobs outlines brought strength to the outlines I had written. 

Dave Stone was our humor guy.  With an encyclopedic memory, Dave would bring a smile to the faces of our team each week and his humor brought joy to our congregations as we preached. 

I could go around the table of our team and talk about the unique contributions the team members made.  What are you good at?  What part of sermon preparation do you love?  Are you a scholar, do you like Biblical research?  That, or other parts of preparation, could be the role you play on the team. 

A fourth benefit of such a process is found in the required advanced planning.  Because we would have a rough idea of sermon series for the year, and would have the next series very well defined weeks in advance, all those who helped plan the worship service could tie their planning to the message. 

The church I pastored for over ten years in Kentucky utilized drama and video clips with regularity.  Because I had planned my preaching schedule in advance, our actors and technicians had ample time to find appropriate dramas or clips to fit the message for the morning.  Such alignment in our service would not have been possible without advanced planning. 

Consider how appreciative your worship leader would be if you could give him or her your preaching plan months in advance.  Imagine the power of your worship hour when all the elements blend together supporting the same theme.  This benefit cannot be over-estimated. 

A final benefit of team preparation is the mutual support.  That youll experience with your team.  Many weekly meetings found us praying for a team member facing a tough issue in his church.  Often, someone making an important leadership decision would seek counsel from the group.  Over the years, because of doing the ministry of preaching "together," our hearts became tightly knit.  Though I am now many miles from my preaching group, those guys are still cherished friends. 

Because of this team approach, the task of preparing sermons was a weekly blessing, not a burden.

Copyright  2002 Pastors.com



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
 
From:  123four   8/30/2002 1:13 pm  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (3 of 3)  
 
  421.3 in reply to 421.2  
 
Amen to the Holy Spirit. We study...he reveals...we give out what He has revealed.  
  
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