Gathering Application

Application in preaching can be a tricky thing. A sermon which is all application with little exposition is at best a kind of Bible TED Talk with random verses called in as expert witnesses. A sermon which is all exposition with little application is little more than a lecture with an appeal to experience tacked on at the end. For most preachers seeking to be faithful to God and his people, application can be a tough balance to strike. It can also be a difficult thing to work up in preparation. How can the preacher take this ancient text into the midst of a group of modern people and hope to see it made relevant and vital to their experience in the world? How can the preacher faithfully build bridges out of solid exposition into a congregation whose lives are varied and, in many instances, opaque to one another?

In this post I want to suggest a number of (often untapped) sources for good application in preaching, suggesting that this work should resemble field notes more than forecasting, and that it is the work of more than just the person who stands in the pulpit. Reframing application and thinking about how it can be gathered from different sources can help to refresh what is often a minor note in church contexts where exposition is central. What follows is partly based on my own practice in preaching, partly on observation of preachers whom I esteem, and partly on some new initiatives which I am working on for the incoming season.

Going beyond the desk

Preaching is on the one hand profoundly academic and on the other essentially practical. Exegesis is a rigorous discipline, calling on the best of our abilities to read and research sensitively and diligently. This work is, however, only part of the preacher’s task. Bringing truth out of a text must always be accompanied by inviting the hearer into the text, not to make them the centre but to make what is written significant to their lived experience. This means that the preparation of a sermon demands desk work, but not exclusively. Our field notes must be drawn from our own experiences, but they will also require engagement with others.

The whole sweep of Scripture tells us that the truth about God, the gospel, the world, and our hearts is richly embodied. As a preacher the work of application does not begin when the rest of the sermon is written and I now want to make it a little bit relevant. Application goes beyond the desk work of exegetical and contextual work and must live in the heart of the preacher long before they enter the pulpit. This means that I may need to allow the text to breathe in advance of, and after, the dissecting work of identifying themes and working on verbal features and form.

There is also an argument to be made that a preaching head needs a pastoral heart. This is not the same as saying that all preachers must be pastors, but their posture must always reflect empathy for people and some degree of experience in what their lives hold. There can be a tremendous synergy between time spent with other Christians in pastoral conversations and the work of applying a text. The brother or sister who shares about their experience of grief, of joy, of growth in grace, of temptation, sin and restoration, of the complexities of living as a Christian in their world, provides us with an insight into where the interface might be between the content of the text and the context of daily living.

There are dangers here, too, however. We could commodify conversations so that people become fodder for preaching, we could make ill-advised references to live issues that people are facing, or we could make our sermon into a thinly spun fabric of anecdotes bolstered by some Bible. None of these outcomes are ever permissible and are expressive of a superficial understanding of how we relate to people and how we relate to preaching. Instead, a composite of these conversations over a long period will allow us to identify human needs and recurring themes that occupy the thought-space of a Sunday service. We should never hint towards a confidence, nor even indulge in anonymised stories, but exposure to the human condition can sink down into the soil of how we think, how we read, and where our instincts lie as those who apply Scripture.

Going beyond best guess

An approach to word ministry that takes application seriously will also want to avoid ‘best guess’ preaching. By this I mean the kind of application that uses a dragnet approach to delivering truth into the lives of people. This often takes the form of an incessant and unpleasant plunging of the sermon into all of the possible conditions of one’s hearers in the hope that such trawling might provide a ‘catch’. An endless list of ‘perhaps you’ makes for boring preaching and can be a symptom of a disconnected or lazy preacher. I am reminded of the section of an Elvis Presley song in which he does some spoken word that begins with ‘I wonder if you’re lonesome tonight…’ It is cheesy and hammed up, and preaching which tries to ferret out every possible condition of every possible person in a congregation is no better. It can also lay bare the aching nerve of issues that people are facing with nothing but a superficial mention and no steady or restorative application.*

In addition to the personal and pastoral exposure of a text, a good way to combat this might be to actually engage the services of the congregation we are addressing. This is obviously more difficult if one is exercising an itinerant ministry, but if our preaching is delivered in a steady or regular environment soliciting the help of actual hearers could be transformative. This might mean that part of our preparation could entail asking trusted men and women to look at the text we are due to preach, to prayerfully reflect on it, and to share with us where they see its truth most acutely speaking to their world. This should not serve to destabilise meaning (‘tell me your truth’) but to democratise the part of our preaching which is most aimed at reaching into the hearts of those we speak to.

This consultative approach is particularly important if, like me, one’s preaching is undertaken in a context which is complementarian in conviction. Men and women objectively need exactly the same truths, but their subjective application is often very different. At a period in history where Christians are vocal about fixed gender distinctions the homogeneity of our application might suggest that men and women are basically the same in every respect. Of course, the vast majority of application will be general, but hearing the voices of men and women in this respect is absolutely indispensable. The workplace ethics that Scripture brings to bear on our lives, the relational imperatives that are a consequence of the gospel etc., will be the same in content but may need translation in context. It is an incredible deficit if the voice of our members is absent from our preaching, or if the issues that women face as believers are only ever the product of the male imagination. As stated above, this feedback would not be explicitly referenced in the sermon but could be a formative element of constructive application.**

Going beyond this moment

Sermons and their application can either be Frosties or porridge. Frosties (or insert your own preferred sugary cereal here) deliver a significant hit when they are consumed, both in terms of flavour and the attendant glucose kick. An hour later, however, their nutritional benefit are equivalent to zero, giving rise to Hobbit-like habits of a second breakfast. Porridge on the other hand is unglamorous and distinctly lacking in wow factor all by itself. Eat a good bowl of it, however, and you will be set up for the morning.

It is interesting to think about which category our sermons fall into. This is not about exegetical depth or superficiality but about the timeframe over which what we share has an impact. A well ordered, compellingly presented, exegetically rich sermon can deliver some real punch in merely human terms. It can also be powerfully attended by the Holy Spirit so that we are deeply conscious of God’s presence in our midst. A key question, however, is how long the notes sounded are sustained in the lives of those who listen. There is an element of this which is beyond our control but that does not excuse us from seeking to see some sustained release from God’s truth in the lives of our fellow Christians.

Since I began ministry in Portadown Baptist Church I have (with the help of a member named Andrew Watkins) produced a document entitled Sunday into Monday. This is emailed to those who opt to receive it each Sunday evening inviting them to carry the truth of what the sermon has said into their lives in the incoming week. It is impossible to gauge the impact of this kind of measure but it at least invites people to think about how the word of God might nourish them beyond the church service (an example of Sunday into Monday can be accessed here).

Sustaining the release of applied truth into our lives can also be helped by revisiting a sermon or a series together. In his recent book Jesus Lover of my Soul Julian Hardyman shares how his preaching on Song of Solomon worked itself out in the context of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge. It is clear from his reflections that he invited Christians to come together at regular periods through his series to share their responses to what God was saying to them through his word. This is such a helpful idea, giving expression to the fact that preaching is a congregational activity, allowing a wide range of voices to be heard, and emphasising that this word is to be taken seriously and with longevity. This could be achieved via a formal process of providing guidelines about what to listen for while a sermon is being delivered, or more informally where people simply reflect on what they have heard.

Conclusion

In essence, all of the above is arguing for gathered application, of preachers to take the earthing of their messages seriously and to work at it diligently and collectively. It is possible through our preaching to amass an orchestra of clanging cymbals rather than a body of people who are relishing and responding to the truth of what God is saying to them. Being persistent, consultative, and intentional in our application will deliver us from superficiality as preachers and hypocrisy as hearers and allow for nuance and for re-nerved messages that speak into our lives as believers.

*Rebecca Reynolds shared on social media about a hearer’s experience of this kind of trawling application and the harm it can do. I can no longer find the original post but Rebecca’s sentiments have stimulated my own thinking.

**I’m thankful to Laura McKeown for sharing her concern that preachers and pastors take seriously the unique issues that women face in their Christian lives and give voice to them in public ministry.