I’ve been working on my Introduction to Preaching course at Carey Baptist College (Auckland) in this coming semester.  It will be my 33rd consecutive year of teaching preaching at the seminary/college level.  It is hard to believe — and to keep me evolving I like to add something fresh each time…

This year it is topical preaching.  I’ve touched on the topic before, but this time I want to deal with it in a more sustained manner.  To help me prepare, I’ve been (a) reading something new; and (b) trying something different. 

Reading something new

A 2021 book caught my eye. Sam Chan & Malcolm Gill’s Topical Preaching in a Complex World.  It is an easy and breezy book to read, full of practical ideas. All but one chapter heading starts with ‘How to…’!

The title of the book is a bit misleading because a number of chapters could jump the fence into another section of a preaching course (and will do so for me) — for example, ‘How to Address a Topic Culturally’ (105-121) and ‘How to Interpret Culture’ (122-148) provide useful primers on contextualisation and cultural exegesis.  A chapter on ‘How to Connect with Your Audience’ urges the reader to avoid ‘karaoke preaching’ (191), learning to be yourself — and to embrace authenticity by ‘giving people from a flowing stream’ (196) and so sharing out of what God is currently showing us.  There are also ideas on the (ab)use of manuscripts (214-218), the value of TED talks (222-228) — and even preaching through COVID (231-255)!

There are many legitimate methods to place in our preaching toolbag.  Too often there is a hardening of the categories going on with preaching.  ‘Rather than viewing the styles of preaching as competitors, it would be more helpful to consider them as siblings in the same family’ (7 — and further explained on 229-230).  It is so well said … and I would add, let’s paint those styles to which we are drawn less in their best light, rather than worst light.  

The authors introduce the reader to so many skills, although with some of them I’d locate them initially in a session on inductive preaching, rather than topical preaching (for example, ‘Quote their author before quoting our author’, 145) — but there is lots of crossover, obviously.  The skills are often captured in a series of Tables, likely to be the parts of the book to which I return the most: The T-Spectrum, trying to discern how Christ views a topic (34-35); the Resonance, Dissonance, Gospel Fulfillment ‘persuasive sequence’ (47); How to Address a Topic Theologically (99); and Adapting to a Culture (121).  In the discussion around this final Table, Chan offers these reflections:

If the textbook comes from Asia, we call it Asian Theology. If it comes from Africa, we call it African Theology. But if it comes from North America … then we simply call it Theology. Not North American Theology. Just Theology … (as if) it is the neutral, normative approach to theology, devoid of culture, context, or continent … (109).

… We can never get it exactly right, because we will forever have blind spots from our own culture. And we will never have perfect knowledge of another person’s culture. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying. Instead we need to keep consulting people of other cultures and allow them to collaborate with us and critique our preaching. We need an international community of preachers who can humbly learn from each other (120). 

Trying something different

I tried topical preaching as a young pastor.  It did not go so well.  I’ve been wary of it ever since.  The issues were around authority because it was hard to avoid simply airing my ideas on a topic and then hanging them on a few biblical hooks.  But I’ve worked my way through those issues and am now ready to explore a couple of approaches with students this semester, both with a stronger foundation in the authority of Scripture.

Using the imagery of the chairs for topics in the world

Over this same time period I’ve developed a little way of telling, understanding and indwelling the biblical story by constructing, playing with, and sitting in four chairs — the good, the bad, the new and the perfect. [NB: You can find a fuller description of the chairs in this link].  When it comes to engaging ‘the various struggles, dilemmas, and hot-button issues that everyday people wrestle with’ (20) my approach is to take the specific topic, sit in each chair one at a time (asking critical questions that build the content of the message) — and then shape the message according to a bad-good-new-perfect flow.

The chairs in Pakistan

The chairs in Colombia

Using the imagery of the tapestry for topics in the Bible

We know the Bible is a single book, but it is also a library of books.  We can imagine them all lined up on a bookshelf, one after the other — from Genesis and Exodus, all the way through to Jude and Revelation.  But there is another way of looking at the Bible.  It is also like a tapestry with different threads.  Across all these books there are numerous themes that weave their way in and out of the story of the Bible, holding the story together as one story — like a single tapestry.  

There is a kind of topical preaching that ‘pulls on a thread’ (Keller).  So, what I am trying to do is, first, to pick at a thread in 1 Peter (for example, ‘exile’, or ‘priesthood’) and then pull on that thread, watching what comes loose across the story of the Bible. 

The purpose is to give people an appreciation and an understanding of the tapestry we know as the biblical story — and what we call biblical theology (although I’m not using that phrase in the sermons!).  So I am finding what Chan & Gill write to be so accurate — ‘For expository preaching, we mainly use the methods of biblical exegesis … but for topical preaching, we use the methods of systematic theology’ (79).

Dawn is breaking as I conclude and I really do need to be somewhere else.  This year might well be the 33rd year of teaching preaching, but this day is our 40th Wedding Anniversary and so I am outta here…

nice chatting

Paul