Preaching peeve #1: Seed-pickers

I’m feeling a bit snarky this morning. Maybe it’s the fact that I didn’t get any coffee. My supplies that I brought with me from the U.S. are all gone and I’m back to using local stuff. I’m a sad example of caffeine addiction. Well, I hear that certain beloved family members are sending off care packages for Christmas. Maybe I’ll luck out.

The topic of this post is preaching peeves. And I would like to focus this peevish post on seed-pickers. A seed-picker is a preacher who grabs verses from all over the Bible and slaps them together in a puking pastiche of public preaching. A seed-picking sermon is marked by wide jumps in topic and involves so much thumbing through the Bible that even the most ardent Berean finally loses heart and has to just take the preacher’s word for it when he says Ezekiel 44 says such and such and Revelation 12 says so and so.

The term seed-picker comes from the book of Acts (Turn with me in your Bibles…).

Note: The Greek fonts are displaying correctly in Firefox but not IE6.

In Acts 17:18 we find this phrase:

Τί ἂν θέλοι ὁ σπερμολόγος οὗτος λέγειν

A literal rendering of this phrase might be something like:

What would this seed-picker like to say?

If you studied hard in your Greek I class you might actually recognize the components of the word σπερμολόγος. The first part is σπερμο, or spermo meaning seed, and the second part is λόγος, meaning… well this is actually a slippery little word. You would think it means “word” or “message” or something like that but here it is actually a derivation of a word meaning “to pick.” I thought about calling seed-pickers “spermologists” but for some reason that just didn’t sound quite right.

Louw & Nida give this definition:

(a figurative extension of meaning of a term based on the practice of birds in picking up seeds) one who acquires bits and pieces of relatively extraneous information and proceeds to pass them on with pretense and show – ignorant show-off, charlatan.

If you recall the context of Acts 17, Paul is in Athens, contending with the intellectuals over religious and philosophical issues. And just prior to his “Men of Athens” speech, Luke quotes people in the crowd disparagingly saying “What does this seed-picker have to say?” Luke is a fantastic writer with a huge vocabulary. That’s what makes him such a challenge to translate. I’ve seen this translated in various ways:

• NIV/ASV: babbler
• GNT: ignorant show-off
• CEV: know-all (UK), know-it-all (US)
• NET: foolish babbler

If the Louw & Nida definition is to be trusted here, it seems like “babbler” is probably an under-translation of the word. What we’re looking for is a term to describe someone who picks up “sound bites” and “catch-phrases” if you will and passes them on to others for the purpose of seeming intelligent. Anyone have a suggestion for translating this in English or examples from other language translations? An example of this expression being used outside of the Scriptures would also be nice. Any Greek boffins care to track this down?

Back to the subject at hand. Seed-pickers! They drive me crazy! How can you grab verses from all over the Bible and call that a sermon? The Bible is not just a book. It’s a book of books. It is a collection of different genres written by different authors in different languages for different occasions. Different! Yes, you reply, but they all ultimately have the same Author (notice the big A). I agree. But in my heart of hearts I refuse to believe that He designed the Bible to be used as a grab bag of aphorisms that we can choose from at our leisure. Certainly a Spirit-filled preacher is constrained by his knowledge of the whole Bible and his sermons will tend to follow generally orthodox grooves. But a congregation has to transfer a lot of authority from the Scriptures to the preacher himself. Since they can seldom predict where a seed-picker is heading they just have to hope that at least he knows where he hopes to end up.

Because of my abhorrence to seed-picking I prefer to see preachers preaching from a single text. Whatever the meaningful unit of discourse is, I think we should look at the whole thing and draw applications from that. This has several effects. First, it helps the congregation to use the Scriptures in a way that is similar to the way it was used by the original readers. Second, it allows the congregation to see for themselves every verse in its context and prove for themselves whether or not what the preacher is saying matches up with the word of God.

Here are some alternatives to seed-picking:

• Read the entire book publicly: most of the Bible was meant to be heard rather than read. Instead of preaching on a Sunday, why don’t you just read an entire book? Titus, 1 John, several chapters of Genesis, the possibilities are endless and inspiring. And this is one of the reasons I keep using my blog as a bully pulpit for idiomatic translations. They sound great when you read them out loud. More formal translations tend to lose your listeners with all the Biblish and backwards syntax.
• Imagine that the letter was written to your congregation: If it’s an epistle, read it like a real letter and try to imagine that Paul is saying these things to your congregation. As a preacher your challenge is to make eternal truths applicable in your local situation.
• Give a brief introduction to every Scripture: Your listeners should know who is speaking and to whom. You should be able to tell them why this was written and shed light on the cultural context to make the passage live for modern people.
• Seed-pick, but just a little: There’s nothing wrong with using supporting verses provided that your main text is a substantial passage of text.

Well, I’ve got this off my chest and feel much better. I think I’d better go hunting for a cup of coffee.