Part #1 – here.

Simon Manchester’s second error – ‘Craft beats meaning’:

Another (similar) idea around today is that craft beats meaning. No-one would put it this foolishly, but there is more attention paid (in this error) to the presentation than to the meaning. What is the long-term benefit of a passage used devotionally (without proper biblical theology) if its packaging is better than its truth? What is the point of abusing a text to sell a clever idea? Some sermons are so formulaic in their presentation, only a discerning person realizes that its all ‘form over facts’ – and that’s the sad problem! Sermon craft is a great servant in preaching; it helps the communicator and the listeners. But its a bad master when it pretends that there is an only way to do things (clever story to begin, three points and a bombshell to finish). The Bible is  bigger than our craftiness.

I think its often easier to follow a set form in preaching than to let the rich diversity of the text inform how you craft different sermon forms. But we’re lazy – well I’m lazy – and so often the ‘clever story, three points and a bombshell to finish’ just gets perpetuated because of that. One of the things I’ve done to try and combat this in my own preaching is to listen to a lot of preaching from a lot of different preachers and then have a sort of eclectic approach to form that doesn’t stifle the text but rather, as Manchester says, is a servant to the text. So I regularly try to listen to Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Don Carson, Phillip Jensen, John Woodhouse, John Chapman, Simon Manchester, Dick Lucas, Vaughan Roberts, Richard Coekin, Justin Mote, John Stott, plus some of our own preachers here in South Africa. Its one way to avoid getting stuck in formulaic preaching that stifles the text.