What I’m Working on Right Now
How preaching, teaching, prayer and writing keep leading me to new questions.
One of the things I enjoy about ministry is that I am rarely working on only one idea at a time.
A sermon leads to a question. A question sends me back to Scripture. Something I discover there connects with something I have been teaching somewhere else. Occasionally I realise that what began as a sermon may actually have much further to go.
That seems to be happening quite a lot at the moment.
Preaching Still Shapes a Lot of My Thinking
Preaching remains one of the main places where ideas begin for me. There is something about knowing that you have to stand in front of people and explain a biblical passage that forces you to think carefully.
What does the text actually say? What is happening around it? What assumptions have I brought to it? And perhaps most importantly, what difference should this make?
I am not particularly interested in sermons that simply provide people with more information about the Bible. I want Scripture to shape the way we understand God, ourselves and the world around us.
That does not mean every sermon needs to end with five practical steps. Sometimes the most important thing that can happen is that we see God differently, or that something we have assumed for years is challenged by the text.
That is happening for me at the moment in a couple of areas.
I Keep Coming Back to Jesus
One idea I have been exploring comes from Paul’s description of Jesus in Colossians:
“The Son is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15 NIV)
We sometimes speak about God as though Jesus is one part of the picture. The New Testament makes a much stronger claim. If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.
That connects with Jesus’ own words to Philip:
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9 NIV)
I find that enormously significant. It affects the way we read Scripture. It affects the way we think about God’s character. And it affects what it means for Christians to become more like Christ.
I have been working through a sermon series around that idea, and the question keeps getting larger rather than smaller: What does Jesus actually show us about God?
What does the compassion of Jesus tell us about God? What does his holiness show us? What does the way he uses power reveal? What does the cross tell us? What does the way Jesus relates to the Father tell us about the Father himself?
The more I work with the question, the more I realise how much there is still to explore.
Prayer Has Also Become a Much Bigger Project
For quite some time I have been thinking, preaching and writing about prayer.
The more I have worked on it, the more convinced I have become that our understanding of prayer can become too narrow. Prayer easily becomes another word for asking God for things.
Of course we can ask. Jesus teaches us to ask.
But prayer is much larger than request. It is relationship. It is invitation. It is response. It includes worship, surrender, listening, lament, confession, thanksgiving and participation in what God is doing.
Some of those ideas have already become books and teaching material, but I don’t feel as though I have finished with them. In some ways publishing a book simply exposes more questions.
Prayer will therefore appear fairly regularly on this site. Not simply because I have written books about it, but because I continue to find myself thinking about what it means to live in genuine relationship with God.
Writing Gives Ideas Somewhere to Keep Growing
One of the frustrations of preaching is that Sunday comes whether the sermon feels finished or not.
You preach it. People go home. And next Sunday is already approaching.
Sometimes, though, I am not finished with the idea.
That is one reason I am enjoying writing more. A blog gives me the opportunity to take one part of a sermon and explore it more carefully. A book allows an idea to develop much further again. The different forms actually help each other.
Preaching keeps the writing connected with real people. Writing makes me examine what I am saying more carefully. Teaching forces me to explain it clearly. And conversations with people often show me the questions I have not thought to ask.
I increasingly see those things not as separate parts of my work, but as different stages in the same process.
Following the Questions
I don’t have a perfectly planned list of everything I will write here. I am quite comfortable with that.
Much of it will follow the work I am already doing.
If I am preaching through a passage and something captures my attention, I may explore it here. If I am developing a book and discover an idea worth sharing, it may appear here. If I find myself rethinking something I have assumed for years, there is a fair chance I will write about that too.
In other words, this site will probably reflect the way I actually work.
I read, think, preach, teach and write.
And then I usually discover another question.
There are worse ways to spend a life.