Proclaimer Blog
To fly to serve part 1
This week I’m at one of our wives’ conferences and I’m taking a short seminar on giving a bible talk. To be honest, this is not something we talk enough about. Sure, our key priority is to get the passage right. But whilst bad exegesis cannot be corrected by good delivery, good exegesis can be seriously undermined by poor speaking. On the PT Cornhill training course, we devote time to this – including questions of introduction, structure, application and so on.
In my short seminar I don’t really have time to develop these ideas in great detail so over the years I’ve developed an extended metaphor to help teach some basic delivery and construction skills. The metaphor is that the Bible speaker is a long haul pilot. British Airways have played right into my hands with their new advert – so this approach is now called “To fly to serve”.
I’m going to spend a few days showing you my seminar – not because you, Mr Preacher, probably need it. But you may – I trust – find it helpful as you train men and women in your church to give good Bible talks and occasionally to preach.
There are four steps.
Step 1 is to know your destination. In many ways, this is the exegesis part. The pilot’s task is to know where the plane is scheduled for and to take the passengers there safely. A preacher or Bible teacher is not a stunt pilot – there to show off his tricks. Nor is he a combat pilot – out to shoot down whatever enemies hove into sight. He has a flight plan and must stick to it. And he has to take his passengers to the appropriate destination safely and smoothly.
And the pilot is employed by the airline. Put it like this: the pilot doesn’t load up the plane and then say “right, where shall we go?” No. The text in the talk determines the destination, and so step 1 of giving a Bible talk is to understand the text to understand the destination. This is what we normally call our exegesis work – understanding the text and, fundamentally, understanding what the text is about.
Only once this is known can the pilot plan his flight and load his plane.