Every good pastor wants to give his congregation what it needs to know God and grow spiritually. What is the best preaching style to accomplish these goals?
There are many ways to preach: for example, the preacher can forget about the Scriptures, speaking with motivational phrases and psychology; he can take isolated verses and creatively link them together to form a message; Or you can preach expository, moving systematically through the books of the Bible.
as i have This last style of preaching—known as consecutive exposition—respects the nature of Scripture. Despite this, many doubt the efficacy of this style and question its relevance to the church.
However, consecutive exposure brings numerous benefits to the congregation. Let’s see some of them.
1) Prepare the congregation for the sermon
Consecutive exposition allows the church to better prepare for the preaching, since it can read and meditate on the Bible passage beforehand, thus allowing a greater understanding of the sermon. Some brothers will even identify interpretative difficulties in the passage and will be interested in knowing how the pastor understands the text.
Consecutive exposure gives the congregation a deeper understanding of the Bible
When the listener meditates on the passage in advance, he plows his heart so that the seed of the Word falls on fertile ground where it can be received with meekness and bear greater fruit in his life (Ps 1:2-3).
2) Helps to understand the context of the text
The back-to-back exposition gives the congregation a deeper understanding of the Bible. In a I mentioned that God chose to preserve his Word in the format of books that have logical progression and extended plots. The consecutive exposition allows the listener to know the previous passages and understand the logical and plot progression of the book.
Non-consecutive preaching does not show the congregation the progress of the book’s arguments. It tends to communicate to the congregation that the Scriptures contain unrelated sayings and morals. Instead of reading the Bible to understand the unified message of the Scriptures, many use it as a reference book, looking for isolated verses that speak to the topics that interest them. In this way, they cannot see the beautiful unity of the books, nor understand the biblical story that from beginning to end focuses on the person and work of Jesus Christ (Lk 24:47).
3) Highlight the priority of Scripture
The back-to-back exposition communicates to the congregation that the Scriptures are what really matters. This was the great beginning of the Protestant Reformation, . After centuries of subjugation to the opinion of the pope and his college of cardinals, many believers rose up against human imposition and affirmed that only the Bible had the right to bind our consciences.
The health of the Church of Christ depends on the Word of God, not on the word of a man
Sadly, many churches revolve around the charisma and eloquence of the preacher. Every Sunday the masses flock to hear the “great man of God” whose supposed knowledge and spirituality enable him to declare a message from God. By not investing time in explaining the biblical texts mentioned in the sermon, the congregation gets the message that what matters is only what the pastor says. What’s the score? The pastor’s opinion is raised almost to the level of divine revelation. But the health of the Church of Christ depends on the Word of God, not on the word of a man.
While it is possible for any church to overly revere its pastor—including churches with pastors who preach expository—this tendency is intensified when preaching thematically or motivationally.
In contrast, the consecutive exposition focuses the church’s attention and admiration on the Word, as the pastor simply explains and applies what it says. Both the preacher and the congregation have a responsibility to know what God commands and to submit to what He has revealed. The church must believe and obey the Bible only. This style of preaching explicitly and implicitly communicates that the Word is the priority (Ps 119:160).
4) Fosters Thirst to Study the Bible
Consecutive exposition develops in the congregation a thirst for attentive study of the Word. When the preacher focuses on the task of sharing the wonders that are in the text, the congregation will see the power of the Word and its relevance to their lives. It will foster in the listener a desire to study the Bible on their own, since the consecutive exposition methodology is relatively simple: focus on a text, peel it apart to find its message, and apply it to the listener’s life. The listener will know that he too can follow this methodology in his own Bible study.
Listening to a good Bible interpretation every week allows the congregation to learn how to study the Bible text on their own
In contrast, other preaching styles are more complex for the listener. Motivational preaching depends on the creativity of the preacher. Topical preaching requires knowing many different passages, using a concordance to find multiple passages that speak to the same topic, creatively connecting the passages, and organizing them into a coherent whole. The listener may feel that he could never study the Bible and extract the truths that his pastor extracts. As a result, he feels discouraged.
But when each week the congregation hears a humble preacher expound a passage clearly and apply it powerfully to the life of the congregation, the listener thinks: I can do that! (Acts 17:10-11).
5) Teaches the correct reading of the Bible
Consecutive exposition trains the congregation in the correct and complete reading of the Scriptures. He examines each text, without leaving a single one out, in its literary and historical context, discovers its teaching and applies it to the lives of the listeners. The following week the preacher does the same thing again with the next passage. Week after week, the sermon is an example of correct biblical hermeneutics (it is much more than that, but it is not less than that).
The cumulative effect of hearing a good Bible interpretation every week allows the congregation to learn how to study the Bible text on their own. And this brings wonderful fruit into your life!
Other preaching styles tend to create poor ways and methods of interpreting God’s Word in the congregation. They tend to take texts out of their context and distort their message. When the preacher allegorizes to find fanciful interpretations without biblical foundation, the congregation learns to interpret the Bible that way. They arrive at their beliefs and make their decisions arbitrarily without a biblical foundation. The pastor will no longer have ways to refute them, since he modeled this way of reading the Bible. That is why it is essential that the preacher exemplify a good handling of Scripture (2 Tim 2:15).
conclusion
Some pastors think that the Word of God is not relevant to the life of their congregation as God gave it to us. They feel they must “help” the Word of God by making it more important and useful than it already is.
But in reality it is not necessary to help the Word. She is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb 4:12). When the pastor unfolds his truth, passage after passage, week after week, the benefits to the congregation are countless. “The exposition of Your words imparts light; He gives understanding to the simple” (Ps 119:130).