Ep. 23 - The Ethics of Preaching
Episode Transcript
Ep. 23 - The Ethics of Preaching
[00:00:00] JC Schroeder: Hello friends. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about some aspects of preaching, that I don't think get discussed enough, the ethics of preaching. And I have five ethical issues in mind. I think keeping these things in mind will help our preaching and teaching in terms of the practice and attitude that we have.
[00:00:22] I'm JC Schroeder. And this is Bite Size Seminary.
[00:00:26]
[00:00:26] Introduction and Disclaimers
[00:00:26] JC Schroeder: Now as I begin, I want to start with a couple of disclaimers. First is that this is not some higher than thou type of episode. I don't want that to come across at all. I don't want that to be true. I don't want that to come across. I want us to think about these things together. And in what ways we practice this, we have these things in our hearts. I want us to all learn together. And so these are some of the things that [00:01:00] I have in my mind when I'm preaching or what I'm preparing to preach, I'm learning and trying to implement practically as well as in my approach, when I preach. The second disclaimer, I want to have is that I don't have specific instances of these things of other people in, in my mind. So I'm not trying to clap back or subtweet some talk about anyone. I'm thinking about problems that I have in my life and my heart. These are just issues that I think are important to our preaching. So I want us to learn together. So there is no ill intention. No attack, no higher than thou. I just want us to all learn together so that we can be better communicators of God's word. So I have five ethical issues of preaching that I thought we could go over today. These are not exhaustive. There are other ones. I had a whole long list of all the ones that these are the ones that I've kind of grouped together [00:02:00] and thought were, I don't know, prioritized in my mind. So five ethical issues of preaching.
[00:02:06] #1 - Performance or Ministry?
[00:02:06] JC Schroeder: The first one is when we preach is our emphasis on performance or ministry? Now in saying that, thinking of performance or ministry, that doesn't mean that our performance has to be bad in order to minister. We can think about how we are presenting our material, how we are presenting ourself and that's totally fine. But where is our emphasis? Are we preaching so that we can be heard? Or so that we can share the word of God with others? Is our perspective so that we can be seen? Or that we can elevate others and minister to them with the word of God? So I think a helpful diagnostic question, is are we advancing ourselves or are we advancing [00:03:00] others?
[00:03:01] But even that sort of question is difficult because we have a deceptive hearts and we can cover up our pride and our performance for our own selves in the guise of ministry. This is what makes something like preaching or teaching and being upfront so dangerous, is that it is a communication, so you're helping others. But you can easily twist this, so it's something that I gained from that we gain from, as we preach. And that's not what preaching is about. Preaching is about taking the Word of God. And explaining it to others so that they may grow in the Word and in the Lord. And if we're going for something other than that, oh boy, God help us that we don't preach like that.
[00:03:50] So we want to communicate well. We want to be evaluative of how we are communicating, but we don't want to be in that mindset of, I like to hear [00:04:00] myself speak. No one says that outright. But I think sometimes we like to hear ourselves speak. And we want to be super cautious that this is not about us. It's about the Lord. And about those that were seeking to communicate to, and those that we are seeking to minister to.
[00:04:19] #2 - Compassion for the Audience
[00:04:19] JC Schroeder: This goes along with number two, the second ethical issue. And that has to do with our attitude and having the attitude of compassion. We as communicators of God's word, we are standing in the place of the Lord, taking his Word, in giving it over to his people. And we must have the attitude that the Lord has one of compassion towards his people. I love that line, in Ephesians where it says that Christ loved the church. And if we're going to be Christ followers, in life, but especially as preachers, [00:05:00] we must love the church as well. So as we are preaching, we must have compassion towards those we are preaching to. So we want to be very careful the way that we're saying things. Are we saying things in our hurtful, harmful way. We may be saying the right things with the right theology, the right interpretation of the passage, but we say it with such vitriol and venom or just as a jerk. Or without any sensitivity to other people's perspectives or too deep pain that people maybe have experienced in reading this passage or in questions that people have. So we want to have a deep level of compassion for those that we are ministering to.
[00:05:50] Now this side of it I find a little funny. Because this compassion element needs to extend even to those that are not paying [00:06:00] attention or are even sleeping in the meeting. I think it's easy for us to get upset or offended when someone is totally not paying attention, they're on their phone or they're they're napping or something like that. But I think that highlights that our preaching is more about us then about the Lord. Because I don't know what they're going through. I don't know how they learn. Maybe that person was up all night with a sick child and they just can't stay awake. Maybe that person learns best by doing something else as they are listening. And maybe they are just take it a great nap or maybe they just are checked out. And that's something that may need to go to with the Lord. But for me to be personally offended, I think is a bit egotistical. And I think it goes back to, it's not about ministry, it's about performance. So when I preach, I want to have a deep [00:07:00] compassion for those that I'm seeking to minister to, for those that are listening to me, whether I know what they're going through or not.
[00:07:08] Now, one other aspect of this, of having compassion. And this goes along with saying things in a harmful way. Is having compassion for people in not sub talking in your sermon. What do I mean by that? What I think of sub talking is you have a particular thing in your mind that someone in your congregation does or in your audience does and you want to attack them for it, but you do it indirectly. No, no, no, no, no. That's not good. That's not good at all. Our job as preachers is not to attack. It's not to belitle. We must have compassion on the church. That doesn't mean that we don't call out sin. That doesn't mean that we don't stand for truth. But our heart attitude and the way [00:08:00] that we communicate is with compassion. And sometimes calling out sin or standing for truth is not just in the pulpit, but is in conversation. And is in a relationship with someone. So if there's an issue, maybe it's better dealt with privately and probably is better dealt with privately rather than upfront in the pulpit.
[00:08:25] #3 - Balance of a Sermon
[00:08:25] JC Schroeder: Now third ethical issue of preaching, the wrong balance. This one, I really struggle with. So there are two ways that we can have the wrong balance. Our sermon has no content. We're only applying something. We only have application. Here's how we are to live, but there's no meat on the bones. It doesn't tell us why we should live like that. The second way is that the sermon has too much content. Or there's no application. So you're basically giving a lecture, a discussion about the Bible, but it doesn't ever lead [00:09:00] us to how we actually live. And I really struggle with that. I'm more of a nerdy person. So I like that academic sort of mindset. So I lean too much probably in that too much content of not giving enough application.
[00:09:15] And so I think part of having the right balance of how much content to how much application, goes with knowing your audience, number one, and number two, knowing yourself. How much do you need to teach? And how much do you need to impress upon the believers? There needs to be both. If you have no application. Well, then you just have a light, nice lecture. And if you have only application, then why should I even live that way? It's just your opinion. It's not backed up by Scripture. So we want to have a really good balance between those two.
[00:09:52] And in order to attain that balance, I think it goes to our preparation. If we're light on the content, you probably haven't studied enough. [00:10:00] And if it's light on the application, well, then we probably haven't thought about the implications enough of that passage. So we want to hit that sweet spot of explaining Scripture of getting what Scripture is saying, but also how it influences and affects our lives. Both of those are vital to our preaching.
[00:10:21] #4 - Plagiarism and Preaching
[00:10:21] JC Schroeder: The fourth ethical issue. Deals with the issue of plagiarism. Plagiarism is something that maybe we're more familiar with as we are in school, writing a paper or something like that. But this is something that affects the preaching world as well. Plagiarism is when you take someone else's words, ideas, concepts, and you don't give them credit for it. Now this can happen explicitly and this can happen implicitly. Explicitly is when you're being malicious about it. You're up late, you need an illustration. You need something, [00:11:00] some meat to your sermon. Or if you're writing a paper, you need a quote or whatever. And you take that material and you consciously take someone else's material and pawn it off as your own. That's stealing. That's plagiarism. Very explicit. But this can implicitly come up. When in the process of our studying, we are taking other people's words and ideas, and we're weaving that into our sermon. And we're not trying to be malicious about it, but we fail to give credit for this is not my idea, or these are not my words. But both are a form of plagiarism.
[00:11:41] In the academic world, if you take someone else's words or thoughts or ideas and you don't give them credit, whether it's explicit or it's implicit, that's plagiarism. And that's a big no-no. The same has to be true for preaching. The church and those that minister within the [00:12:00] church have to be held to the same standard, if not a higher standard, when we're dealing with intellectual property, with other people's ideas and words than the world is held to. So if we're taking other people's material and we're pawning it off as our own, you need to repent of that. That's stealing. No way. Don't do that. And if we are unconsciously or maybe we're just being a little bit lazy not being specific and saying, I got this material for, from someone else, then we need to work hard and be clear where we are quoting someone where we are influenced by someone else's work.
[00:12:42] Now, obviously. That doesn't mean that we do. All the work ourselves that we don't utilize resources, commentaries. Dictionaries. Illustration books, whatever. It just means that if you use someone else's work. You cite them. It is [00:13:00] far better, this is what I tell my students all the time, it is far better to overcite than to under cite. Meaning it's better to say I got this from somewhere, too often than to do it too little and have an act of plagiarism. I think the same has got to be true for preaching. Now, if you're finding that in order for you to preach the way that you have been. And you've got to say every other line is from someone else. Well, maybe that suggests that you have a preparation problem, a little bit, that you need to do your own work in there.
[00:13:36] We want to be honest, we want to be clear, honest handlers of God's word. And what I think has more power, in our words, and more power in our sermons is when we have been influenced by the text. When the text has changed us, and we're not just spouting someone else's words, someone else's experience about it, but that we're getting of what [00:14:00] the Lord has taught us through this passage. Rather than what someone else has told us it means or how it is affected them.
[00:14:10] #5 Using Greek and Hebrew in Preaching
[00:14:10] JC Schroeder: The fifth and final issue of ethics in preaching deals with Greek and Hebrew. Now I want to have some compassion on this one. There's a nerdy side of me that wants to speak. And then there's a compassionate side of me that wants to speak. So I'm going to let the compassionate side speak. We want to be cautious, as communicators of God's word in citing and in articulating things from the Greek and Hebrew. There's a couple reasons why this is the case. Number one is when we are utilizing Greek and Hebrew in our sermons, meaning the Greek says this or the Hebrew word is that. I think there can be, and many times there is an implicit power [00:15:00] imbalance with a simple statement like that. It suggests to your audience that I know the secret knowledge of what the Hebrew is. And you don't. So this goes back to our performance versus ministry. I think that when we say something, the Greek is this or the Hebrew is that it can indicate a performance aspect of our preaching rather than a ministerial act. That's not always true. I have a few follow-ups to that. But I worry about that at times.
[00:15:32] Another issue in saying the Greek means this or the Hebrew is that, is that it can suggest to your listener that they can't understand what Scripture is because they don't have that access to the Greek or Hebrew. And it's, it can subtly suggest that the English is inferior in some way. Now of course, what the Lord inspired was the Greek and Hebrew and the original text of the Greek and Hebrew is our [00:16:00] authority, but our English translations are fantastic. And we want people to love the Word of God, and we want people to trust the Word of God in their language. So obviously Greek and Hebrew is the final authority, but we don't want to subtly suggest that our English translations are garbage or some inferior form.
[00:16:25] The third reason why we want to be cautious and using Greek and Hebrew is that a lot of times when people who say the Greek means this and all that. They don't actually know Greek or Hebrew. So really they are talking about things that they don't really understand. Whether that's pronunciation, or the usage of a grammatical form or something of that nature. Now what might be better if you're going to do that and you don't know Greek or Hebrew. Is to going back to citing cite your source. Where are you [00:17:00] getting this information from? What I find most helpful, I think, and the way that I try to approach it is I want to talk about the Greek and Hebrew as little as possible.
[00:17:15] There are times when it is important to highlight the specific meaning of a word or something specific in the text that doesn't come across in English. There are times for that, but I think it's the way that we couch it. So what I try to do instead of saying Greek or Hebrew, I just tried to say something like the original says, or this word has this idea. I tried to remove that original sort of language. Um, I tried to remove. The words, Greek Hebrew from my vocabulary. So that the idea of what I'm trying to communicate, the actual meaning of a word or the particular construction is conveyed. I'm still communicating my knowledge from my studies, my knowledge [00:18:00] of the original text. But without that power imbalance or without highlighting myself or, or whatever. All I care about is getting the information to you. Not about highlighting my knowledge or my studies or some stupid thing like that.
[00:18:17] So, I would encourage all of us to use Greek and Hebrew in the very communicative act of preaching as little as possible. But the knowledge that we gain from studying the Greek and Hebrew must affect our preaching and teaching. But it doesn't come out explicitly in our preaching, teaching. It comes across only in the content. Here's what this means, rather than here's this word. Here's this construction. All of that. I think I'm belaboring the point. So just to summarize, I love Greek and Hebrew. It's so vital to our study of Scripture. I'm not saying otherwise I, I teach Greek and I've [00:19:00] taught Hebrew. But I don't think us highlighting those things is essential or even valuable in our preaching. So we want to be very cautious in how we do that. Doesn't mean it's a flat ban on using this Greek word, but I think we need to be very cautious about it.
[00:19:19] Conclusion
[00:19:19] JC Schroeder: So those are the five things that are on my mind at any rate, five ethical issues of preaching. I'm curious if you have other issues that you think are valuable that are important for us to think about as we preach. Let me know, email me. Hit me out on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. Would love to hear your thoughts.
[00:19:43] That's all I have for today. As always you can sign up to receive episodes, emailed directly to you at bitesizeseminary.com. You'll also find the links to my YouTube page, Facebook, and Twitter. Thank you so much for putting up with me and listening to my weird thoughts. [00:20:00] And I'll see you next time.