Review Questions 4: Preachers special

Shamelessly reposted from Unashamed Workmen, some questions for Christian preachers to ask as they look back, and look forward. If you don't agree with the list, because you approach preaching in a different way, then the challenge is to come up with a better question!!

1) Did I grow in my own walk with God through my preaching and preparation? Was I personally impacted by what I preached? Am I therefore a more godly man entering 2009 than 2008 because of the texts I exposited? In what specific ways? If I have not grown: what sins have hindered my progress and require confession?

2) Did I provide my congregation with a balanced diet and at least some measure of ‘the whole counsel of God?’ Did I cover something from both Testaments? Were believers comforted and unbelievers challenged? Were the weak and strong, the immature and mature, given their share of milk and solid food? Was justification taught and sanctification?

3) Did I take the glory or give God the glory? Did I seek the limelight in any way this year? If so, in what specific ways did a desire to glorify ‘Self’ rear its ugly head during this year’s sermons? How can I best repent of this?

4) Did I preach the text, only the text, and nothing but the text? How often did I preach in general Scriptural terms yet not in terms of the specific Scripture I was expositing? Even if I preached numerous topical sermons, were these exposing the meanings of particular texts. Did I impose my agenda, rather than expose the meaning of God’s Word?

5) Did I constantly preach Christ and him crucified? Did I persistently preach the gospel, or lapse into talking in terms of religous self-effort and moralism? No matter what my passage, did I highlight its redemptive components? Even if the passage was wholly negative, did I trace the redemption of its sin and the bearing of its judgement to the Redeemer and Propitiator, Jesus Christ?

6) Humanly speaking, what one aspect of my sermons in general was the weakest component? Are my introductions invariably weak, my applications typically fuzzy or my conclusions often an anticlimax? How will I work on improving this area in 2009 for the glory of God and the good of His people?

7) Did I pray enough and depend on God for the results?

Looking forward to 2009…
Will I grow in my own walk with God through my preaching?
Will I provide my congregation with a balanced diet?’
Will I take the glory or give God the glory?
Will I preach the text, only the text, and nothing but the text?
Will I constantly preach Christ and him crucified?
Will I prayerfully depend on God during every stage of my preaching?

Review Questions 3 - RPM's

Another resource from Arrow is the idea of watching personal RPM's in 4 key areas, the idea being to make sure you don't get into the 'red zone', or at least if you do, it's possible to take stock and get out of it again. Being in the red zone in 1 of the 4 areas is tricky, being there in 2, 3, or 4 is dangerous.

For each area there's a simple list of symptoms, what the 'red zone' might look like, to which you can add a few of your own: everyone has their own symptoms for what happens when they get overtired, or shut off emotionally.

Physically

- stress targets a particular part of your body (migraines, back etc.)

- you become ill at the start of your holiday

- you take little exercise

- irregular sleep

Emotionally

- you don't have time to pay attention to feelings.

- more vulnerable to escapist sin (this is a way of subduing emotional needs by distracting yourself - pornography, alcohol, addictive behaviour etc.)

- you become dispassionate about the plight of suffering people

Relationally

- relationships become superficial

- you don't have time for friendships

- You spend more time with other people than with your partner

- you are always apologising to your children for not being there.

- you say to yourself it will get better in a few months, but it never does.

Spiritually

- prayer is reduced to cries for help

- worship is reduced to thanksgiving

- you begin to rationalise misbehaviour and sin

I use this roughly every 6-8 weeks, and its a good check on energy levels. There have been times when 3-4 of these were in the red zone, and guess what? I ended up with depression.

The list is deliberately simple, and doesn't spell out what you need to do to recover spiritual, mental, relational or emotional energy and health. After all, all the best warning signs are simple ones.

For more in this series, follow the 'review questions' label below.

Review Questions 2

a set of questions for the start of a New Year (thanks to James Lawrence for inspiration)

• What am I grateful for from last year?
• What are the 3 or 4 key things that I've learnt from the year that I don't want to forget?
• What will help my love for Jesus grow stronger this year?
• What am I fearful or anxious about How ill I face these things this year?
• Which spiritual discipline am I gong to major on as a means of God's grace being more at work in my life?
• Which fruit of the Spirit is God longing to produce in my life? What steps will I take to work with the Spirit?
• Whaich leadership principle/aspect of leadership am I going to grow in?
• Who do I long to see come to faith in Christ? What am I going to do to make that more likely?
• What are the next steps in the growth of those I most care for (god-children, family members, friends) that I could facilitate/encourage?
• When am I going to have my regular quiet/prayer days through thisyear? (put them in the diary!)
• Where do I sense God's call on my life developing/changing, and how will this be reflected in my priorities for the year?

They're designed for folk in Christian leadership, but could apply to most disciples. I remembered last week that I'd not got round to arranging any quiet days for 2009, so first up I need to book a day in to tackle this stuf.......

follow the review questions bookmark for others in this series.

Review Questions 1

Part of my plan for the new year is to get back into the habit of a couple of hours on a Monday morning reviewing how things are going, and planning the week ahead instead of just ploughing into it.

Here's a list of questions which I picked up from the superb Arrow Leadership programme a few years go. This is one of several sets of questions which I use, the idea is to come back to these every 6 weeks or so, though often it's less frequent. I have them on a sheet of A4, and use a large notebook to jot down my answers/thoughts. The same notebook comes with me on retreats and quiet days, so that all the jottings go in the same place.

God
1. How is your relationship with God?
2. What have you read in the Bible in the last week?
3. What has God said to you in the reading?
4. Where do you find yourself resisting Him these days?

Prayer
5. What specific things are you praying for in regard to others?
6. What specific things are you praying for in regard to yourself?

Habits and lifestyle
7. What are the specific tasks facing you right now which you consider incomplete?
8. What habits intimidate you?
9. What general reading are you doing?
10. What have you done to play?

Relationships
11. How are you doing with your friends, spouse, children?
12. If I were to ask a close friend or spouse about your state of mind, state of spirit, state of energy level, what would the answer be?

Conflict
13. Are you sensing any spiritual attacks from the enemy right now?
14. If Satan were to try and invalidate you as a person or as a servant of the Lord, how might he do it?
15. What is the state of your sexual perspective? Tempted? Dealing with fantasies? Entertainment?
16. Where are you financially right now? Are things under control? under anxiety? in great debt?
17. Are there any unresolved conflicts in you circle of relationships right now?

Renewal
18. When was the last time you spent time with a good friend of your own gender?
19. What kind of time have you spent with anyone who is a non-Christian this past month?
20. Are you sleeping well?

Review
21. What challenges do you think you're going to face in the coming week? Month?
22. What would you say are you greatest fears at this present time?
23. Do you like yourself at the moment?
24. What are the greatest confusions about your relationship with God?

Subheadings are mine, to break the list up a bit - the original is just a list of 24 questions, and it works quite well like that, as life can't easily be broken up into boxes. At different times, different questions are more 'alive' than others, either to provoke action, prayer, or ring warning bells. I've been using this for roughly 7 years now, and it's still very helpful.