Preaching in High Definition

Why would someone spend two or three times the price of an average television in order to have a high-definition, wide-screen set? Salesmen point to the superior picture accomplished by 1,080 lines of transmission rather than the typical 525, resulting in greater detail and better resolution. Buyers simply like the vividness of the picture they get. The answer lies in a single word—quality.

Preaching is more valuable than any modern appliance and demands a commitment to quality. How can we achieve a higher degree of resolution in our preaching, not to compete with the HD television but to communicate the unsearchable riches of Christ? Following are several steps that can lead to greater quality in proclaiming the precious Word with which we are entrusted.

Develop a Three-Dimensional Hermeneutic

Unless we learn to visualize the Scripture, not just read it, we are trapped in a two-dimensional understanding of the Bible. We must discover all three dimensions of the text in order to understand and proclaim the fullness of the Word.

The Holy Spirit inspired real people to write the Bible. Because it is His work, it is inerrant. Because He used people to write, giving God-breathed words through human personalities, we gain greater understanding of the Word by understanding the people involved in the Word.

Homiliticians commonly recommend that preachers know the author, date, occasion, place and purpose of biblical texts. However, to preach in high definition, we need to know more than just the name of the author. Since authorial intent guides the hermeneutic, the preacher must know the person who wrote a particular text. What was he like? How old was he? What had happened in his life to influence him? What was the culture like where he lived and wrote? What kind of personality was he? Where was he spiritually?

For example, when you read Paul’s writings, is it the Paul who claimed not to be less than the chief apostles, the Paul who was less than the least of the saints, or the Paul who was the chief of sinners? We forget that Paul experienced spiritual formation and grew in Christ through the years. Such understanding does not minimize in any way what Paul wrote early in his ministry. However, it helps us understand the man who refused to have a rebellious John Mark participate in the second missionary journey and the elder statesman who asked Timothy to send John Mark to him as being profitable to the ministry.

Similarly we need to understand the other personalities mentioned in the Bible. Epaphrodites. Joshua. Joab. Priscilla and Aquilla. Who were these people? What were they like? What was their culture? How did they dress? What was the typical lifestyle of their community? What did they eat? What kind of personality did they seem to project?

When we can visualize these people as we read, we understand better what we are reading and can more readily translate that understanding into descriptive terms so our congregation can know them, too. To do so requires, as Wayne McDill put it, developing our powers of observation to see the detail of a text.¹