Reflections — David Cook

“We have been attending the St Helens City Summer School at Ashburnham, a gathering of City of London business people and their families, just down the road from Canterbury where the Lambeth conference is being held, a meeting for Anglican Bishops.

As the bishops debate and politic and try to navigate their bibleless way through the same sex marriage debate, down the road at Summer School there is gospel preaching and praying about the need to reach out into the lost city of London with the good news of Jesus. Lambeth has not been mentioned, attendees have bigger gospel shaped concerns. …”

– At the Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook shares his reflections, six weeks into a ten week trip to the UK.

While there, he’s been doing a spot of preaching at St. Helen’s. Last weekend he spoke on Psalm 100.

* To be fair, not all the bishops at Lambeth ignored the teaching of the Bible, even if far too many did.

Revelations!

David Cook shares several observations from the UK while he and Maxine are on a trip there –

“A vast untapped resource seems to be being tapped very effectively here.

Figtree Anglican run an annual Grandparents’ Day and the Armidale Anglican Diocese began a Next Phase conference this year, but mobilising retirees for productive Kingdom service has gone to another level here.

Conferences on ‘Faith in the second half’, deal with issues like transition to retirement, from caring to being cared for and from life to death as well how to serve well in the church and to succeeding generations in our older years, seems to be meeting a real need (faithinlaterlife.org). …”

– Read his observations at The Expository Preaching Trust.

Related:

Next Phase Conference in Armidale.

More on Application — David Cook

“We have all heard the sermon which rambles for 30 minutes and ends whimpishly, ‘let him who has ears, hear what the Spirit is saying’.

Application is the ‘so what’ factor of the sermon, it is showing the audience the implications for daily living, showing how information may be transformative. …”

– David Cook writes with encouragement for preachers at The Expository Preaching Trust.

Preacher, do you pray?

“Have you ever stood at the pulpit, about to declare, ‘This is what God says,’ about to preach the living word of God, to souls in desperate need of his voice, and realised you’re about to pray for the preaching and hearing of the sermon for the first time?

Have your prayers for the preaching of the word grown perfunctory and superficial? …

We know.  We believe.  But we need help in our unbelief.  We need belief that drives us to wrestle in prayer, sleeves rolled up, never pushing it aside because we are busy – for ourselves, for our hearers, for our preparation, for our preaching.”

– Encouragement, and three helpful prayers, from Janet Riley at The Expository Preaching Trust.

Scripture Alone — David Cook

Even if you haven’t, David Cook has seen the preaching and the damage done –

“Coming from a Presbyterian background I had personally experienced the destructive effect of modernism or liberalism; preaching was hesitant, indefinite, and unclear. There certainly was no sense of authority. All one could say, after hearing a sermon, was that the minister believed in some sort of divine being!”

He writes at The Expository Preaching Trust:

Attending Bible College in the 1960s involved a two-year course, each year having three terms.

This meant that six areas of Systematic Theology were covered, the first being the foundational Doctrine of Revelation—what we believe about the Bible.

Entering Moore College in 1973 meant attending the transformational lectures of DB Knox as he led us through TC Hammond’s, ‘In Understanding Be Men’, the first chapter of which is entitled, ‘Final Authority in Matters of Faith’.

All other doctrines flow from a right understanding of what we believe the Bible is, its source, its nature and its purpose.

Coming from a Presbyterian background I had personally experienced the destructive effect of modernism or liberalism; preaching was hesitant, indefinite, and unclear. There certainly was no sense of authority. All one could say, after hearing a sermon, was that the minister believed in some sort of divine being!

The available Presbyterian Theological Schools, with a non-commitment to the inspiration of Scripture, its supremacy, authority and sufficiency, had produced a generation of preachers with nothing to say, apart from vague, theistic, positive psychology.

When Paul urges Timothy in 2 Timothy 3 to understand the times, avoid the alternatives and preach the word, all these imperatives are based on a firm conviction about Scripture’s divine source (2 Timothy 3:16).

Abandon the foundation of what God tells us about Scripture and the pulpit, and all true pastoral ministry will be lost!

Fifty years on and we need this reminder because fewer of us have experienced those empty, powerless days.

Scripture’s inspiration means that its authority is supreme, over church and culture.

Scripture’s inspiration means that it is sufficient, we need not, and should not look for any other special word from God, that extra word is at best a hunch.

Scripture is God’s word, not yours or mine, therefore we have no right to add to it or subtract from it.

Scripture is the instrument God uses to bring the lost to life and to bring the believer to maturity (Isaiah 55:11; Acts 12:24; 19:20; 20:32; 1Cor 1:18;1:21; 15:2; Eph 1:13;  2Timothy 3:15-16).

As disciples of the Lord Jesus, we share his conviction as to the authority and centrality of Scripture (Mark 12:10; John 10:35).

Thus all Christian leaders must be awake to what our recent history has taught us, and actively resist any influence to water down the central and supreme authority of Holy Scripture.

As our old friend John Chapman used to say, ‘The authority is in the text, brother. Preach the text’.

‘It is at the very root of the Evangelical position that the supremacy of Holy Scripture be held in its fullest sense… no words can too strongly express the importance of securing, beyond doubt, the unsuperseded authority of the Sacred Scriptures in all religious discussions whether of doctrine or practice’. (TC Hammond, ‘In Understanding be Men’, p.39).

– First published at The Expository Preaching Trust.

Colleague Critiquing

“In 2019, Dr. William S Dobbie, Professor of Public Policy of the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA, USA, visited Australia to speak to the Independent School’s Association.

Dr. Dobbie spoke about the factors which encourage academic progress in students in middle teenage High Schools in the US.

A prominent factor was the availability of experienced colleagues to observe and give feedback to younger, newer teachers. Colleague feedback according to Dobbie was the best use of extra funding for education and did more to accelerate academic progress in students than many other more expensive options. …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook has further opportunities for growth and encouragement.

Getting to the Heart of the Text

“Haddon Robinson’s contribution to the preaching task of the church was his emphasis on getting to the big idea of the text.

Scholars may debate the appropriateness of such reductionism, weekly preachers and their congregations recognise the value of the big idea getting to the heart of the text.

Here are some steps which you may find useful to follow…”

– More resources to help and encourage preachers – from David Cook at the Expository Preaching Trust. Includes a worked example.

Related:

In Memoriam: Haddon Robinson, 24 July 2017.

Photo: Haddon Robinson.

The Jesus people met

“There is no piece of ancient literature that has as much manuscript evidence to support its integrity, as John’s gospel. …

In John 3 and 4 we meet Nicodemus and the unnamed woman of Samaria, they could not be more contrasting. …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook shares some insights from the Gospel of John.

Illustrations: harlotry, professionalism, or audience engagement?

“Preachers are communicators.

We need to give attention to engaging the congregation; truth won’t do a person good if they are not awake to hear it. That is why introductions are so important. I try to engage people from my first words.

However, an interesting introduction will not sustain engagement for 20 minutes. …”

– David Cook, former Principal of SMBC, continues to encourage preachers in their calling.

At The Expository Preaching Trust.

Application

“Applying the truth of the ‘there and then’ of the Bible to the ‘here and now’ of life today, is a challenge for every preacher. No part of preparation is easy but I think most preachers find application and illustration especially challenging.

David Veerman, the editor of The Life Application Bible, says this is partly due to a lack of training, and to the fact that application is hard work. However we must not make the mistake of leaving it to our listener, thinking that the listener will make the connection between then and now. …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook writes to help preachers.

Investing in Preparation

“I am facing the dilemma of all retirees – Australia’s inflation rate continues at between 1 and 2%, at the same time as interest rates are virtually non-existent.

This means that $1 in the bank after a year is worth 98c and there is no gain added from the bank in interest. Bank balances therefore are shrinking. So retirees are looking for return on investment, at least buying shares in Australia’s banks returns 3-4% on investment.

What does this have to do with preaching? In preparing to preach it is important to invest your time where it will pay a rich dividend!…

In his book Why Johnny can’t preach, T. David Gordon says that every sermon must have one idea – what is your sermon about? Is the idea related to the text and are relevant applications offered?”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook strongly encourages preachers to invest their time in preparation – and has something which can help you.

The Year of the Un

“2020 has been the year of the Un. The unusual, the uncommon, the unparalleled, the unprecedented.

Hope springs eternal and we now enter a new year, 2021, which promises to be the year of the Re. The recovery, the restoration, the renewal, the revival.

According to one of my grandchildren, when asked which Bible book would be best to preach in the year of the Re, she suggested the book of Revelation – a good idea but not what I had in mind. …”

– At The Expository Preaching Trust, David Cook suggests preaching through Acts. He gives four reasons why this would help.

Related:

David spoke about preaching through Acts in this Preaching Matters video from St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.

Preparing for Death

“Life is about preparation!

I was in 4th class at Clovelly Public School and our teacher, Mr DeRago, told us that he was getting us ready for our final exams. I thought that was amazing since our finals, the Leaving Certificate exams, were still 7 years away.

Apprenticeships are about preparation; all education is preparation; curacies are preparation. We have seminars for preparing for marriage, parenting, and now I am attending retirement seminars.

What next? Death must be in the mix of what’s next, but who runs seminars on preparing to die?…”

– David Cook writes at The Expository Preaching Trust.

(Picture: St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.)

‘But Billy,’ you may ask…

“Andrew Blackwood was Chair of Practical Theology at Princeton and said of preaching, ‘These three remain, faith, hope and clarity, but the greatest of these is clarity!’

Billy Graham was one of the clearest preachers I have heard, I heard him preach for two weeks at his Sydney campaign in 1968. Dr. Graham would often stop and ask himself, ‘“But Billy,’ you may ask…” He would anticipate and answer the question on peoples’ minds.

Dialogical preaching which anticipates questions raised by the sermon is a very good friend of clarity in preaching. …”

– David Cook continues to encourage preachers at The Expository Preaching Trust.

Photo: Billy Graham and Archbishop Marcus Loane in Sydney, 1968. Photo courtesy Ramon Williams.

Sydney Church History

“In 1965 John Stott, the Rector of All Souls Langham Place in London, visited Sydney to preach on 2 Corinthians at the CMS Summer School.

‘I heard only one of those Bible studies but I was so taken by the way he stuck to the text and stayed with it. He could show you the logic of the argument in the Scriptures, prior to that I had tended to get an idea from the passage and to leap all over the Bible supporting the idea from other parts, so that the people I taught knew the ‘idea’ but not the passage from which it came or how that passage fitted into some overall argument from the Scriptures. It is to John Stott I owe what ability I have to expound the Bible.’

Those were the words of the esteemed Sydney evangelist and preacher, the late John Chapman…”

– David Cook writes to remind us of our history, and how God works. At The Expository Preaching Trust.

(David Cook has served in parish ministry, as the Principal of SMBC, and as the Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.)

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