On Friday, I wrote a post concerning how we apply Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 to multilingual settings. In essence, I argued that Paul’s concern in the passage was primarily pushing the Corinthians away from individualistic views of worship toward understanding the corporate nature of the church gathering. In particular, his primary concern was doing what worked for the building up of others. The case in point meant not simply doing what only one person could understand – for intelligibility is crucial to building others up – but to set aside what might build up the individual alone in favour of what builds the body corporately. I then drew some applications for those of us in multilingual settings concerning preaching, praying and singing. You can read the full post here.

Of course, what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians 14 also has things to say to those who are in unilingual settings. There are, of course, a load of implications concerning the vexed issue of so-called supernatural spiritual gifts, whether they should be practised in the public gathering at all and, if at all permissible, how they should (or, rather, should not) be utilised. But I think Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 14 have something to say to us about our preaching in particular, even if you are preaching in a unilingual, monocultural, avowedly cessationist church.

Two things I think stand out. First, Paul’s main concern is the building up of the body. So however else we may cut what what he says in 1 Corinthians 14, the key point is that the gathering – and all that goes on in it – is designed for the upbuilding of the body as a whole not for glorified acts of individual expression. Second, linked directly to Paul’s main concern about building up the body corporately, is his concern for intelligibility. Unless the people you are trying to build up understand what you are saying/doing then you haven’t actually built them up at all. So, Paul insists, we build up the body by serving their good in ways that they can actually understand.

In terms of our preaching, then, several points can be made. Perhaps the most obvious one is that unless people understand our preaching, we haven’t actually built them up. There was an old adage that did the rounds when I was a teacher that summed this up: if they aren’t learning, you aren’t teaching. You can stand up the front a deliver a masterful piece of verbal reasoning or powerful oratory, but if people don’t understand what you are talking about, or more specifically what the Bible is talking about, you haven’t actually built them up. This isn’t just a matter of what language you use – whether English, Estonian or Esperanto – but whether the people who speak the same language as you actually understand what you are telling them. They may hear the words and know what they mean, but unless they understand the main ideas of the passage and what they specifically mean for them, you’ve not actually built them up. The most direct, and fair, criticism anyone can make of any sermon is simply this: I still don’t understand it. Such a sermon is a failure on every measure.

That failure of understanding can come about for a number of reasons. Perhaps the language we’ve used is too hifalutin so that ordinary people just don’t understand what we’re saying. It can happen when we fail to apply in any meaningful sense to the situation of the people in front of us so that they don’t understand how to apply what this passage means to their own situation. It can happen – and too few of us give enough thought to this – because we are too boring to listen to at any length.

This latter issue is a tough one. The problem with being boring isn’t that we are boring in and of itself. The problem is that being boring impedes anybody’s ability to listen so that, right though what you are saying may be, you make it too hard to concentrate long enough to grasp it. People finish the sermon with no more understanding than they had before because you were not interesting enough to hold their attention so that they might understand. We need to give more thought to how interesting we are in the pulpit, not because we want to entertain and pander to people, but that if people turn off – which they inevitably will if we are deeply uninteresting – they won’t be built up by the Word because they won’t have grasped its meaning because you refused to do anything to help hold their attention. Minimally, we need devices in our sermons that will help us hold people’s attention.

If corporate upbuilding as opposed to personal benefit is also in view in 1 Corinthians, our preaching must be focused on what will serve the congregation in front of us. The aim is to build them up through the Word. There are several things this means for our preaching.

First, this will affect the applications and illustrations we use. Preachers are wont to use illustrations from their own lives to help illuminate the scriptures for people. But if the illustrations we understand from our own lives bear little relationship to the lived experience of the people in front of us, those are not helpful illustrations. In our multicultural church, I have largely given up using any but the most hyper-local illustrations i.e. that relate specifically to Oldham or those that have universal application e.g. everybody has to eat. Anything else and I run the risk of walking into areas people have no interest in or knowledge of. There’s no point talking about cricket to Iranians who don’t play it in their country. There’s no point talking about some cultural knowledge most Brits would have about another part of the country when most our people would never have been. TV and Film is a nightmare because you discover most people haven’t watched them and you spend more time explaining the programme to get to your illustration than the five second illustration ever warranted. If our goal is the upbuilding of the congregation, we need to focus on what will build up others even if it means not using illustrations from our sphere of interest that mean nothing to everyone else.

Second, this should affect what we leave in the office. There are, on a small number of occasions, times we might need to include a tiny bit of Greek of Hebrew. Perhaps to show a play on words in the text or something that doesn’t easily translate i.e. the word for this sounds like the word for that and this is the pun. Almost never do we need to announce the Greek word and explain what the Greek ‘really means’. We should be able to explain meaning from context and our position has problems if we can’t. Even where meaning is a little opaque, we can usually explain matters perfectly well in English without reference to the original languages at all. I am convinced, more often than not, the inclusion of these things doesn’t build up the congregation and is an exercise in doing exactly what Paul says we should not do. The Corinthians were showing off with their showy gifts for their own self-aggrandisement. I think the modern Reformed version of this is Greek and Hebrew in the pulpit. We are not usually serving our people through it but showing off our knowledge and understanding. As useful as it might be in your preparation, leave it in the office.

Third, if we are aiming to build up the whole congregation, we need to be properly expository and ensure we keep the main thing as the main thing. Far too often, preachers get overly excited and interested in some side-thought. Half the time, it is questionable whether those tangents are even in the text. However, even where they are in the text, if we are about building up the body corporately, we need to make sure they hear and understand the key thing this text is talking about. The reason preachers often get interested in the little details is because they think the main point of the passage is obvious – they’ve heard it before – and so they go hunting around for other titbits they haven’t seen before or that they think others are less likely to have noticed.

The problem with doing that is it is really another exercise in serving ourselves rather than building up the body corporately. We know the big picture so we hunt round for something that interests us a bit more. If we’ve heard the parable preached loads or the passage read dozens of times before, we quickly begin to think it is obvious. Only, what is obvious to us is not always obvious to everyone else. Even if the main idea and key teaching points are obvious, it may be that the church need to hear them again, applied in fresh ways to particular situations they are facing today. When we go after the little side point nugget that interests us and make much of it, even if we have found something genuinely in the text that is truly interesting (but let’s not pretend most of the time it is neither), we are really just serving ourselves and what we find interesting rather than building up the whole body corporately and serving up the Word as it really is for them.

Fourth, we need to be wary of tangents more generally. Nobody in the congregation will hear and remember every word you say in your sermon. It just isn’t how we listen to anything at all. We inevitably tune in and out a little. But if we spend our time going after tangents, we run the risk of people essentially hearing and remembering what was at best a side point and, frankly more likely, a total irrelevance. This is why it is usually worth preachers repeating themselves and returning to their key points. Not just being repetitive, but ensuring the main ideas are circled back upon and incorporated into latter parts of the sermon so that people can hear and understand the important emphases of what we are saying. Although the tangents might be interesting to us, although we may feel like it is worth getting them out of heads because we’ve made a little connection in our mind, we have to ask whether it really does build anyone else up or whether we are just announcing this thing to serve ourselves.

There are lots of other ways Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 14 might work out in our preaching. I think many of things apply equally to us leading church services too. In all things during our gathered corporate worship we need to be asking whether this really does build up the congregation at large or if I am mainly just doing this to satisfy myself. Our hearts being what they are, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about it and even welcome others coming and telling us they aren’t sure how helpful some of these things are.