Sermon Eurekas

January 26, 2010 David Murray 0 comments

When I was pastoring my last congregation in the Isle of Lewis, I did most of my sermon preparation on Saturday. I know that leaving it to the last minute is not “best practice,” but congregational and part-time seminary responsibilities dictated my timetable. Besides, as my wife will confirm, pressure makes me more productive.

On Saturday I would rise at 5am, breakfast, read my Bible and pray, then work intensively (and furiously) until about 2pm. At that point, by God’s grace, I usually had two sermons 80% complete, together with a fuzzy brain, sore eyes, and repetitive strain injuries.

After a quick snack, rain or sun (usually rain), I would walk to one of the nearby beaches and spend about an hour there: padding across the sand, sitting on imposing clifftops, watching the ever-changing sea, and gazing across the Atlantic to the USA & Canada. I very rarely met anyone; just me, the ocean, the sky, the silence, and God.

Why “waste” an hour on a deserted beach when I still had two sermons to complete with zero-hour approaching? Actually, it was often the most productive hour in my whole week! Knotty exegetical problems were untied. Complex sermon structures were simplified. Gaping holes in my logic were highlighted. The “big picture” emerged from multiple smaller pictures. The fog cleared and helpful illustrations materialized. And, I hate to admit this, all without really trying!

I didn’t really understand how the beach was more productive than my desk until I read Gina Trapani’s article “Burned Out: Take a Creative Sabbatical” in the Harvard Business Review. Trapani argues convincingly that our best creative work is done in times of reflection and idleness.

Studies have shown that the wandering mind is more likely to have a “Eureka!” moment of clarity and creativity. Taking breaks and zoning out from everyday tasks gives our brains time to do a kind of long-term, big-picture thinking that immediate engagement with bosses and clients and email and meetings does not.

Or, as the Wall Street Journal commented on the same findings:

“The flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning.”

So, next time you “hit the wall” and start panicking as the clock ticks towards Sunday, get out, zone out, focus out, and let your mind wander aimlessly, though fruitfully, and wait for those blessed “Eurekas!”

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

January 25, 2010 David Murray 0 comments

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” is another term for biblical exegesis. Like an interrogator, the expositor approaches a text of Scripture from multiple angles with varied questions to “extract” as much truth as possible from the words until the text or the expositor is exhausted.

For more on exegesis see my new book from Evangelical Press: How Sermons Work.

What will I preach on?

January 23, 2010 David Murray 2 comments

What will I preach on?” This is the question which challenges, vexes, and even haunts many preachers every day of their lives. Some preachers answer the question by preaching on social issues, or on politics, or on psychology. For the gospel-centered preacher this is not an option. For him the more limited question is, “What portion of Scripture will I preach on?” Here’s an excerpt from the ebook How Sermons Work to help you answer this question.

1. Read the Bible
The preacher should be reading his Bible to edify his own soul. In the ordinary course of this reading he will come across suitable sermons texts which grip him, move him, and interest him.

2. Read good books
As time for reading is limited, make sure you are reading the books which will produce the most sermons. By that I do not mean books of sermons. I mean books which will refer to Scripture, explain Scripture, and highlight Scripture in a way which may form the basis of a sermon.

3. Listen to your people
In the course of pastoral visitation subjects will arise which will stimulate the mind and suggest texts for sermons.

4. Read the news
I do not intend to suggest here that newspaper headlines become our texts. However, the news will highlight trends in thought, in religion, in lifestyle and in morals which the pastor’s mind will need to be alert to in order to address in the pulpit.

5. Observe Providence
Momentous events like war, earthquakes, disease, tragedies impact upon our people and will often provide a topical introduction to a sermon on God’s providence and our response to it.

6. Listen to God
It may seem strange to put this after these other sources, as the sources just mentioned are all ways in which we listen to God. However, what we are referring to here specifically is the necessity of the preacher to remain sensitive to the voice of God in his own soul. God, who searches all spirits will at times directly impress a text upon the spirit of the preacher. The preacher may not know the reason for this, but should respond to it, trusting that God has seen a need, invisible perhaps to everyone else, and knows the text to address it.=

7. Pray
Charles Spurgeon takes us further than simply listening to God. He urges that we cry to God for the text: “When your text comes in answer to prayer, it will be all the dearer to you; it will come with a divine savour and unction altogether unknown to the formal orator. ”

UPDATE: For more help on selecting a text, see my new book from Evangelical Press: How Sermons Work.

True leadership: opposing our friends

January 21, 2010 David Murray 0 comments

It’s so much easier to oppose our enemies than our friends. In fact, standing up to our friends when they are wrong is perhaps the hardest task and truest test of leadership.

But Ed Welch leads the way with this well-balanced article on depression! Of all the CCEF/nouthetic writers, Ed has by far the best handle on depression. His Blame it on the brain? is also well worth reading.

Thanks, Ed, for for true and courageous leadership!

And thanks so much to Justin Taylor for posting the link to this article. It will help many, many people.

Leadership crisis

January 20, 2010 David Murray 0 comments

69% of Americans say that we have a leadership crisis in the country today.* 67% say that unless we get better leaders, America will decline as a nation. In some ways, this is not news. For some years, Americans’ confidence in their leaders has been declining. The National Leadership Index picked up slightly in 2009, partly due to many hopes being invested in a new President. But, with the Massachusetts result, even that uptick appears temporary.

One glimmer of hope is that people still have confidence in leadership – a resounding 87% of Americans professed confidence that with the right leaders, the nation’s problems can be solved – just not in the present crop of leaders.

Certain areas are exempt from this downward trend. For example, Americans’ confidence in military leadership continues to grow. Others, such as Wall Street, have sunk to new lows. Only 10% of Americans believe business leaders generally work for the greater good of society, with a large majority saying that corporate bosses work mainly for their own benefit or for a small segment of society with special interests.

Sadly, confidence in religious leadership is below average, even falling below the Executive branch of government. That’s both a rebuke and a challenge to the church. And the challenge is made helpfully specific by the survey’s identification of the six leadership qualities that have the greatest impact on Americans’ leadership confidence, some (all?) of which are relevant for Christian leaders.

Trust in what leaders say
Competence
Working for the greater good
Shares your values
Being in touch with people’s needs and concerns
Results

There are other specifically Christian qualities we could add to this list. For example, Mike Pohlman helpfully highlights Don Carson’s comments on the indispensability of self-denial.

Christian leadership is profoundly self-denying for the sake of others, like Christ’s ultimate example of self-denial for the sake of others. So the church must not elevate people to places of leadership who have many of the gifts necessary to high office, but who lack this one. To lead or teach, for example, you must have the gift of leadership or teaching (Rom. 12:6-8). But you must also be profoundly committed to principled self-denial for the sake of brothers and sisters in Christ, or you are disqualified.

Mike concludes:

Now this would take courage — and great faith — for a search committee or elder board to pronounce a gifted leader or teacher “disqualified” for high office if the candidate lacked obvious “principled self-denial for the sake of brothers and sisters in Christ.” But for the sake of the church, this is the verdict that must be pronounced when this virtue is absent.

How do you measure “principled self-denial” in a leader or teacher who you are considering for high office in the church? What are you doing to cultivate this virtue in your own life?

This counter-intuitive virtue is unquestionably the core of Christian leadership. If cultivated, we would unquestionably see increased confidence in Christian leadership. In fact we would see the meaning of: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

* National Leadership Index from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Victory through rest and recreation

January 20, 2010 David Murray 0 comments

Fall 2006, and “Mission Accomplished” was turning into “Mission Impossible” as the USA was slowly yet surely losing the Iraq War.

General George Casey was persisting in the bloody “drawdown to handover” strategy, despite the engulfing disaster. Pete Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was desperate. Looking for a new strategy, he invited retired Army General Jack Keane (and former vice chief of staff) to a crisis meeting. Bob Woodward reports the encounter in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (p144).

“How do you think we are doing?” Pace enquired. Keane was blisteringly frank and direct: “I would give you a failing grade.”

Visibly pained, Pace asked, “What do you think I should be doing?”

Keane’s advice was startling – tell General Casey to reduce his workload and take time off every day!

“George Casey is at this 24/7. He has nothing to nurture his life. He is completely immersed and isolated by one thing and only one thing. That’s this war. It has completely captured everything he does. His capacity at times to see clearly is always going to be limited and defined by his day-in, day-out experience and the fatigue he suffers.”

Keane said that he thought the obsessive work ethic of the senior military men was self-defeating. “Our generals fight wars today almost at a frenetic pace that is counter-productive,” he said. Compare that to World War II General Douglas Macarthur, who watched a movie every night, Keane said, or Army Chief of Staff George Marshall,

“He went home every night at a reasonable hour and rode a horse, for crying out loud. He sometimes took a nap for an hour and a half during the day. And these guys were doing big, important things. You know what our guys are like? They’re at their desks at 6.30 in the morning, and they stay up till midnight.”

It was a manhood issue, Keane thought. Because the soldiers were out there 24/7, the generals thought they better do the same. But the core issue was fresh, clear thinking about the tasks of war.

How many pastors could benefit from this advice!? It is so easy for us to be doing, doing doing; producing, producing, producing; more more more; longer, longer, longer. Yet are we losing battle after battle? And maybe even the war? Is our obsessive work-ethic self-defeating? Is our blinkered desire to prove ourselves real working-men to other working-men destroying our ability to think about the tasks of war in a fresh, clear way?

Many of us have learned from painful experience how vital it is to nurture our lives with daily, weekly, and annual rest and recreation. We can certainly find better things to do than watch a movie every night, and safer things to do than go horse-riding in our cities! However, if we are to avoid self-defeating staleness and sameness, we must plan our rest and recreation as religiously as our reading and writing, our preaching and evangelism. And maybe, just maybe, some rest and recreation could turn your present “Mission Impossible” into “Mission Accomplished!”