Singleness

I preached on singleness in church the other night. I'll upload the sermon soon. Maybe nowish. But here is the video I showed at the beginning of the sermon. I realised I left off my phone number. Oops.

Enjoy.



Update: The sermon is now available here on my preaching blog.

Authenticity

Today I told a chapel of about 200 year 5-8 students about the Bieber experience. It was difficult.

I originally had an illustration about unrequited love (surprise, surprise) but realised that probably the year 5 kids wouldn't really connect with it (it's difficult to like a girl for 4 years when you would have had to start your crush when you were 6). So I decided to tell them all about watching Bieber and crying. It was a risky move. I thought I might win friends with my self-depreciating humour. I think however, I may have just made myself look dumb. Except for the girls who loved Bieber. Maybe today they really heard the gospel for the first time because cried in his movie. Maybe now there's one less lonely girl, cause she found her saviour.

Or maybe I just looked strange.

I was shooting for authentic.

Oh well.

John Stott - 1921-2011

“The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.” - John Stott


I heard today that John Stott died. It's sad news. John Stott was one of my heros. Over the last ten years I've loved reading his books and listening to his preaching. He has been probably my favourite writer, preacher and theologian since I was introduced to his work in early 2002.

It was reading Evangelical Truth before starting bible college that I realised there were other people who believed in Jesus the same way I did. What Stott described in the book described how I felt about faith. He spoke about a faith that loved Jesus and held firmly to the Bible. A faith that was real and vibrant and tied to God's personal revelation to us through his Son and his word. I read the book and felt like I had found home.

While I never met him, John Stott always struck me as a man who I would like to be like. By all accounts he was humble, gentle and caring. I heard a story once from someone who met him at a conference that at meal times he would only take small amounts. He did this because he knew there were people in the world who didn't have enough to eat, so he would not take more than he needed in solidarity with them.

He had a great heart for the poor and was so influential in the evangelical world in showing that biblical faith is faith that loves the poor and works for justice. He showed that you did not have to sacrifice orthodoxy for justice and mercy.

Most of all he loved Jesus, and that shone through in everything he he wrote and said. He loved to show us Jesus as he showed us his word.

He also loved birds.

I am very thankful for the life and ministry of John Stott. I'm sad that he's no longer here. I very happy for him that there is no where now he'd rather be.


Quote and photo from this blog.

Somalian Pilots

I was doing a talk at youth group tonight and I said something about Somalian pirates. Although I got my words wrong and said "Somalian pilots". Which made me say something like "No, pirates. They're very good at being pirates. No so good at being pilots." To which there was a lot of calls from the audience that I was a racist. Which was probably correct.

I said it because I had images in my head of crashed African airplanes. But I don't know where they came from, probably that Ethiopian Airlines crash a few years ago. But Ethiopians are not Somalians. And one Ethiopian pilot crashing is not the same as all Ethiopians or Somalians being bad pilots. In fact, I think the Ethiopian crash was hijacked so you probably can't blame the pilots at all. Perhaps it was the Somalian hijackers.

Anyway I tried to dig out of my blatantly racist flippant comment by saying "I'm not racist. Some of my best friends are Somalian." Which was a joke. But I knew a few people wouldn't get it. So I said "That's not true. I don't know any Somalians." Which just made me sound like even more of a racist.

So for the record, I have no idea how good or bad Somalians are at flying planes. They could be exceptional, probably are. I do however know that they seem to be quite proficient at pirating, which is considered to be quite an asset in some cultures (pirate culture being the most notable).

On another note for tonight's talk I amended the Bible a little. I think perhaps they should consider using it in the next edition of The Message:

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter heaven with an eye patch and hook like a pirate than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matthew 5:29-30(ish)

And on one last note, I'm blogging on my new MacBook Pro. It's shiny and nice. Thank you Jesus.

Tough Gig

Tomorrow morning at 8:30am I'm preaching in a school chapel on 1 Corinthians 5. That's the on about the guy sleeping with his step mother.

Hmmm, tricky? Yes. Evangelistic? Difficult. Should I keep the mofo references to a minimum? Definitely.

Still, I'm wondering how much fun is appropriate.

miPad

I have been thinking about getting an iPad for preaching.

I feel like there should be heaps of cool things you could do with an iPad while preaching. But it seems no. I did some research. Seems like the best thing you can do while preaching is read your notes off it. It works like paper, except it's about $800 more than paper.

Oh well.

I guess I won't get an iPad. Just as well probably.

Hip Hopper

I don't want to go video crazy, but...

This is a camp I'm speaking on in May. It's cool. I've never seen a camp with a trailer before.

Judging by the trailer, I'm pretty sure I'm not epic enough to be there, but I'm glad I get to be involved.

Sex Tips

It's Soul Survivor seminar time. I'm down to do four seminars. I'm pretty sure that's the most I've ever done at Soul.

I'm doing The Bible Makes Me Giggle Parts 1 and 2, Ten Reasons Not to Become a Christian (that one is like 4 years old now) and one more. It turns out they loved my sex talks so much last year that I'm down to do another one. I called it Sex Tips from a Single Guy because I thought it'd be a funny title. But now I have to think of sex tips for 13-16 year olds that don't involve having sex. Like I'm not going to be giving anyone advice on foreplay or good positions. I'm planning on talking about how they can get in-tune with God's view of sex so they go into marriage with a healthy view of sex.

The two that I have so far are:

- Don't get pornified - i.e. don't let porn and dictate how you should behave or look or how you should expect other people to behave or look.

- Think about sex hard and often - following on from the porn one, I think young people need to be re-educated in a healthy view of sex based on the Bible, which doesn't degrade women, men or sex. To do that people are gonna have to think spend a lot of time thinking through what sex is, isn't and should be.

And that's all I got.

So blog friends, I'm hoping that you'll be willing to give me some sex tips that I can share with my friends.

Thoughts?

I'm off a boat

Last year I went on Sailing Camp and if you believe the revisionist history I'm currently revisionising, I became an expert sailor.

This year I went to speak on the same camp again. And despite my brilliant skills of sailing, I didn't manage to sail once. Which seems a little like going to Africa and not going on safari, which I also did. I did want to go sailing, but things got in the way. Like on the first day I canoed because there wasn't enough room on the boats. The second day I was doing canoeing again, but then a kid cut his finger on an oyster. I was tasked with ambulance driving, so another leader and I spent 4 hours in Wyong hospital with him. In the end he didn't even get a stitch, it was a little disappointing. We did get to eat McDonalds though, so we'll call it even.

The next day I took a girl to the medical centre to get a tetanus shot after she was also attacked by an oyster, which meant I didn't sail that day either. On the last two days of sailing, I stayed on land because they needed extra leaders there. So the lack of sailing was a little sad, I enjoy sitting out on those boats. Especially on the hot days.

Despite the lack of nautical adventures, I did have a pretty good camp. There were almost 70 kids on the camp which made it almost at capacity. I had trouble getting to meet all the kids. Still they all met me. One of the things about being speaker is that everyone feels like they know you better than you feel like you know them and it's probably true. So hopefully people felt like I had interacted with them even if I hadn't got to do it much face to face.

Best of all about the camp was that there were 12 kids who put up their hands to say they became Christians after the talks. I'm pretty sure it was a worthwhile camp.

Next year though, if I'm there, "I'm on a boat!"

Awkward

So when I said I'd elaborate tomorrow, I may have been a little over ambitious.

I will however begin the elaboration.

One of the places I preached in the last two weeks was at a work function for a bunch of different organisations that do similar ministry to my work. My boss and some colleagues were there. I was doing an extended version of my sermon from Romans 8. Anyway I start off with some dodgy preaching about how God works everything for good. So losing a job means getting a new and better one. Having a car break down, means getting a new and better one. Divorcing a spouse means getting a new and better one. And if we are more than conquerors we can beat sickness, and financial hardship and even death!

And then I pause to say "I hope some of you are getting a little uncomfortable."

Except I paused and someone in the audience shouted "Woohoo!"

It was a little awkward, seeing as I was about to explain how everything I had just said was wrong.

Still I moved on and did what I needed to do. Hopefully the person didn't feel too jipped that I tricked them into woohooing.

Jesus Pooped

My current talk at primary schools is a Christmas talk because every primary group wants to talk about Christmas. So today I was doing the talk and I said "Jesus was just like any other baby. He did all the same things normal babies do. He slept, ate, and cried."

And then some kid in year 1 called out, "And pooped!"

It was awesome.

That kid has his incarnational theology right. Jesus pooped.

Dead God

"Here’s how it is declared in Colossians 3:5, “Greed is idolatry.” Is that clear? Greed is idolatry. And see, a lot of people right now, they’ve not dealt with a greed problem. That’s why they’re grieving. See, we worship as a collective people, the god mammon. Jesus calls money “mammon”, a false god. We worship mammon. Now mammon has died. And people are grieving, “Our god died. I lost my equity, my retirement’s down. My portfolio is not as good as it used to be. I’m getting ready to graduate and I can’t make as much money as I would have five years ago. I can’t even find a job that is what I was hoping for. Argh! I’m so grieved! My god has died!” And everyone is secretly waiting for a resurrection. “When will our god be back? When will our god be back? Are home prices on the rise? Is unemployment down? Is our god stirring yet?” Greed is idolatry. You don’t need more wealth. You need more wisdom. You don’t need your idol to come back from death. You need God to be the object of your affections."

- Mark Driscoll, speaking on the Parable of the Rich Fool

Work and Laziness Potificated

The talk I blogged about writing, is now up. You can go here to read about it or you can just listen to it here. Alternatively you can go search for Tom French in iTunes and subscribe to the podcast. Or you could do nothing at all. The options are yours people.

Waiting Faithfully

It's been a big week or so for preaching. 2 sermons and 4 kids talks in 8 days.

The first sermon I did was last Sunday. I did it back at my old church. If you want to read about the actual sermon you can read about it here and you can download the sermon here.

It was fun to be back at my old church. I do always enjoy being back. It was my first time in the morning service, and I had a little bit of trouble remembering names of some of the older memebers of the congregation, which was embarrassing. But I got there in the end. Or just mumbled my way through.

I met my old Year Advisor at church. He'd started going to church there about 6 months after I left. It was a little odd, but he's a good guy. I'm pretty sure my year got the best year advisor in the school. In fact I think I would have quite liked having him at church when I was there. Although I may have been more self concious about all my sermon illustrations about school.

One of the families from the church had me over to lunch afterwards and invited some of the youth and young adults around to join us. It was really nice. I do love that bunch. In some ways it's a bit sad catching up with that crew, especially people who were in my youth group, because their life goes on and I don't get to be a part of it anymore.

On the other hand my life goes on too, and there is much richness here. Saying "Yes" to one thing is saying "No" to another, that's what they say. If only we weren't finite. Or we were just ever expanding like the universe.

Maybe we are ever expanding like the universe but so is everything else at the same rate, so we'd never know.

I should think about that some more.

Waiting

I'm sitting in a school staff room, in between chapels. I finished talking about The Prodigal Son an hour ago. It feels strange giving that talk. I think I originally wrote it 6 years ago, but I'm still trotting it out.
 
I acidentally made the mistake of saying, in one if my illustrations talking about the last night of a camp, "I found everyone sharing beds and sharing doonas." For a bunch of year 7 and 8s this was just an invitation to giggle about the supposed mass orgie I had discovered. I tried to recover but gave up and moved on. For the record I should have said "sitting on each other's beds and sharing doonas".

In about 10 minutes I talking about Jesus and superheros to the primary school, so I should go focus on that.

Watermelons and Pride

Last night at youth group I was speaking on Evangelism as a value for our youth group. I talked about our need to share the good news of Jesus. This gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about our love of sharing dumb videos and to show two of the most watched videos on YouTube this week.

Seeing as I love YouTube, this was perfect.

First I showed this one, because I think it's brilliant:



Then I showed this one because it seemed to have been the biggest thing on YouTube in the previous 24 hours. I'm not normally a fan of people getting hurt videos. Actually I am, but I try not to be. But I showed this not to laugh but to make a point about the uselessness of the things we share. Still, I may have laughed a bit:



Anyway, the talk itself seemed to go ok. I gave the kids an opportunity to become Christians and what was great is that two of them indicated that they wanted to become Christians! So in hindsight, the talk went brilliantly.

But despite the kingdom success I didn't feel all that good about the talk. I came home thinking I spoke too long, that it wasn't interesting enough and it was a bit of a mess. One of the leaders told me they found my gospel presentation "interesting". They clarified that it wasn't wrong or heretical, just interesting. I didn't quite know what this meant, so I worried then about my presentation of the gospel too.

So I came home feeling a little depressed. Which is highly dumb. I'm sure it was partly due to the fact that I was coming off the back of another big week of Bible talk preparing and giving, so I wasn't feeling real happy.

Still, it was dumb. Here I am, two kids have believed the Gospel for the first time and prayed to become a Christian, and I'm worrying about whether my talk was good enough. How full of pride I am that my primary response after my talk is not "How amazing God is that people gave their life to Jesus!" but "Oh dear, I don't think my talk was good/funny/interesting/short enough."

Less of me. More of Him.

Work and Laziness

I'm writing a talk at the moment on work and laziness in the book of Proverbs. It's for a school. I was asked to do it. I didn't realise I could have picked another topic. This is a shame because work and laziness are not very exciting ideas. I'm not passionate about people working hard. I especially don't want to be the guy who turns up to school and says "Work hard and you'll achieve stuff", I hated those speeches at school. And the "Don't waste your education" speeches, I hated them too. I don't want to be that guy. I want to stand there and say "Don't open your HSC. Don't stress. Go out late at night. Only do the homework you want to do. You are not your education." Though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get invited back.

I might try and find the middle way. I might tell them all to become plumbers, cause plumbers are awesome.

I'm living in Inception

Have you ever had a dream where you turn up to do something, like give a speech, but your totally unprepared? I have.

Today that happened to me in real life. I was at a school, I did a talk in their chapel, went to the staff room, and then one of the chaplains stood up and said "Right, it's almost time to go to chapel."

I spent a little while trying to work out what chapel this was they were talking about. I had no memory of going to another chapel today. I had a feeling it was a primary school chapel seeing as I had just done the high school. So I asked and the Chaplain said "Yes, this is primary school, and you're speaking. You didn't know?"

I had no idea it was about to happen. I thought the chapel was on Thursday and so I'd done no preparation for it at all. I don't know who had stuffed up, it could have been the chaplain's lack of communication, but I think it's more likely I just clean forgot. I do so much teaching when I visit this school, it's hard to remember everything.

Anyway I literally had 10 minutes to figure out what I was going to do, while having to hold a conversation with the chaplain about the schools upcoming holiday club. Happily, unlike the dreams where the moment where your realise you have to do a talk and you have nothing prepared streaches on for hours, till you wake up or find yourself on a train with your year 5 teacher, in real life it's not nearly so terrible. I adjusted my talk from the morning as the chapel was on the same topic and rejoiced that I just reduced my preparation load significantly. I don't think it was my best talk ever, but it did the job, and I'm happy to see that those dreams aren't so bad in real life.

Comedy and Preaching

I feel like Lesley's comment was such a good and challenging comment, that it needs a post of it's own. Down below she wrote:

I wonder why comedy in preaching seems so important for many preachers? Let me be clear - this is a general statement to anyone who preaches, not Tom in particular. The sermons I remember best are those where I'm challenged to change. Not quite on the scale of fire and brimstone, but challenged nonetheless. Yes, a well-placed laugh can be effective, but jokes can also make for lazy, self-conscious preaching. I hunger for intelligent, thought provoking sermons. Raise the bar, I say. How do you want to be remembered? As a funny preacher? Or something more than that? Here's a challenge: Can you can deliver a sermon without cracking a joke? ... Let the flaming begin.

I must say this is something that I've thought about a lot. Obviously if you've heard me preach, or read my blog, you'll know that comedy is an important part of my preaching. I think there are quite a few reasons for having jokes in a sermon but I certainly don't think they're vital. You can preach an excellent sermon without one joke, Piper and Stott are both key examples of this. And you can preach a useless sermon which is plenty funny. I won't give you an example of that.

Pilavachi*, in a seminar, once said that there are three types of people giving extended monologues in secular society these days, politicians, lecturers and stand-up comics. Of those, stand-up comics seem to be the once who people are most likely to listen to.

While obviously that's a generalisation I think there is a lot of truth to the statement. The best stand-up comics are making a serious comment on society in a way that is more likely to be heard. Politicians should be the ones doing it, but we're all so jaded with their self-serving, narrowly focused rhetoric we've stopped listening long ago. It takes someone with truly great oratory skills, like Obama, to make people sit up and actually want to listen.

Comics, on the other hand, can demolish pretences and prejudice just by highlighting the absurdity of people's stupid behaviour and ideas. Good comics will make you laugh and make you pay attention to the world at the same time. Driscoll once said that the best lesson he ever got on preaching was going to see Chris Rock do stand up.

Now as far as preaching goes, I feel like comedy serves many different purposes.

Positively, and in it's most basic form, comedy relaxes and focuses a congregation. A few jokes early on can help people feel pleased to be listening to the sermon. A joke or two during some of the more theological bits of a sermon will keep people focused when they might be tempted to drift off.

Another useful tool of comedy in preaching is that you can use it to highlight sin without people getting defensive. In my experience, highlighting your own sin with a self-deprecating story frees people up to laugh at you, identify with you, and realise that they too are sinful the the same way. Often we laugh because it rings true.

Also in the context of self-deprecation, is when you use humorous stories about yourself to "un-sanctify" the preacher. Preachers can seem like spiritual giants when they preach. Sometimes this is because they use the sermon to highlight their spiritual strength or to give the impression of spiritual maturity. Or because, through no fault of their own, the preacher preaches well about spiritual matters and gives the impression they are accomplished in everything they're encouraging their congregation to do.

A self-deprecating story can go a long way in putting the preacher on the level of the listener, and hopefully, by contrast, show Christ to be the hero of the sermon.

Thirdly, humour will help hard truths go down easier. As Mary Poppins said "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Biblical preaching necessarily touches on some of the most painful parts of human existence. To tell people that they are sinners, deserving of God's judgement, is not an easy thing to do, and to be told you are an object of God's wrath, is not a nice thing to hear. A little humour, without diminishing the gravity of the truth can make things a little easier to hear, and give people a bit more good-will so they are more likely to listen.

Mostly I just use humour because it helps make listening to sermons a more enjoyable experience. While I sincerely believe that the greatest enjoyment in preaching is not in laughing but in seeing the beauty of Jesus, and the most valuable moments of preaching are not when people smile, but when their heart is broken by God convicting them, I do not think the process loses value or meaning if people are amused along the way.

However this is not to say that humour isn't used for unhelpful reasons either.

Negatively I use jokes to help with my insecurity about a message. I might feel like a sermon or talk isn't very good, so I'll add jokes to cover up the perceived lack of content or weight. Obviously this is a bad use of humour. It elevates my insecurity over my trust in God's word to be powerful, relevant and life-giving beyond the skills of the preacher. Plus it shows my laziness. It is an inadequate response to a deficient message. The answer is not to make more jokes, but to work harder to find God's voice for his people in the message he has given me to preach.

Also I use humour because it makes me feel good about myself. However high myself esteem is, it can always get higher. To have 100 people laughing at one of your jokes feel pretty good. And so the temptation is to make more jokes, so that more people laugh, more people think you're funny and you feel better about yourself. Comedy feeds my pride.

That's not to say that a sermon devoid of jokes cannot feed a preacher's pride too. The preacher will always be wrestling with pride and insecurity when they preach. They will always go to the pulpit with mixed motives. I think the task of any preacher is not to remove anything in a sermon which might make the preacher look good, or feel good about themselves, but to constantly seek the Holy Spirit to change their heart so that they recognise their own sin, and that it is only God's graciousness that they are gifted with any skills to preach at all. I think it's also a matter of praying that God might give you new desires, not to glorify yourself but to glorify him through your words.


Obviously, comedy is only a tool in preaching. It has its strengths and its weaknesses. The strengths are seen in funny preaching that is enjoyable, dynamic, insightful and God glorifying. The dangers of making jokes are that people will be more interested in having a laugh than in hearing God's word, and the preacher will be more interested in looking good, then showing how good God looks. When it comes down to it, I feel like the preacher should use the tools available to them as best they can. If you're good at being funny, then use it, for God's glory, to help preach his word. If you're not funny, don't be, because it makes everyone awkward and doesn't serve God, you or your congregation at all.

I try and use comedy only to help me preach. I try hard not to trivialise God, God's word or God's work. I try hard to help the congregation pay attention as much as possible so that they might be listening to God's truth. I know I've got it wrong in the past, and I will again. But I am sure that for me, at this time, the ability to make jokes is a gift God has given me to use, and I need to put it to service for him.

As far as Lesley's challenge to preach without making any jokes, I did it once. You can read about it and listen to it here. I might do it again. I probably will at some stage. If I do I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, that's my opinion on comedy in preaching. I know there's a good bunch of you out there who are both preachers and regular preaching listeners, what are your thoughts?

*Speaking of Pilavachi, this is one of his funniest sermons, it also serves as a great example of preaching that is both funny and important. It takes a little while to get started, but it's a good one none the less.

Proached

Week two of preaching is done. Preaching in a new church is interesting. It's nice to have more than one go, and to see people more than once. I felt like the congregation was with me more this time. But it may have just been that I made funnier jokes, and I judge how much people are with me by how much they laugh. I'm totally shallow like that.

I made a joke about teenage girls loving hair straighteners and Taylor Lautner. Someone pointed out to me after the service that it was a rather sexist joke. I thought it was a rather broad, unfair generalisation of teenage girls rather than a blanket dig at their entire gender. It's interesting. While I did feel that maybe I should have been nicer to teenage girls and not painted them in such a shallow light, it didn't cross my mind that women in general might be upset. Funny that. I'll think that one through a little more.

Even though I was preaching on John the Baptist's beheading tonight and Herod's marriage to his niece features prominantly in the story, I was pretty light on the incest jokes. It was hard, but incest jokes while preaching are like digging for comedy gold in a mine field, there's a chance you could strike it rich, but you'll more likely kill yourself and injure many around you.

I'd rather people came out remembering Jesus, rather than remembering the preacher who made jokes about terrible things that happened to them in the past.

To tell you the truth, I didn't even want to make decaptitation jokes in case John the Baptist is sitting in heaven, watching and he's a little touchy on the subject.

If only you could preach and not have to worry about the people who were listening to you.

No one writes about this stuff in preaching books. I don't know why.


That said, I did enjoy preaching, and it felt like it went alright. I'm missing my church though. I haven't been there in weeks. I want to go back. One week left, then I'm back.