In 2001, I co-pastored a Church that lost roughly half its congregation within a couple months. Those who left were up-front and honest: “The Sunday sermons make us feel like we’re in school. What happened to the ‘old style’ of teaching? This is boring. Where is our ‘old Pastor’?”
What happened was that the “Old Pastor” had changed his style from “Topical Preaching” (jumping from several topics throughout Scripture) to “Expository Teaching” (explaining a book from start to finish) and the difference was noticeable. The “Old Pastor” was gone; that is, no more topical messages every week that catered to the latest needs. The expository messages were still practical - it’s just that the needs of the people did not dictate the message for the up and coming sermon (as it did before). Rather, it was the Scripture that set the agenda from week to week.
In seminary, I was strongly discouraged to teach topical messages mainly because of its impracticality for pastors (very difficult to prepare week by week) and its tendency to cater to what people want to hear as opposed to what they need to hear. We’ll return to this in a minute…
With that said, I’d like to take a moment to share my philosophy of ministry. I know this will be refreshing to those wanting to know the method behind the madness. The principles below are what I learned in Seminary from my professor, Pastor Joe Hellerman. He taught his students three “principles to live by” and two “extremes try to avoid” in the teaching ministry.
Principle #1 (Build up) — We come to church to meet with God, so the Bible must remain central to what we do in our Sunday service. We come to be built up in God’s Word. After all, God’s Word is our only trustworthy source of information about God and His ways of dealing with us. So, if church is all about God, then church had better be all about the Bible.
Principle #2 (Equip) — It is not enough for believers to come and receive Bible truth from the teacher on Sunday morning. As your Pastor-teacher, I must also equip you to feel increasingly comfortable with the Bible yourselves, so that you can read and study God’s Word on your own during the week. You are being trained to make this connection.
Principle #3 (Train) — Your Pastor-teacher must connect the eternal truths of God’s Word with the daily circumstances and needs of your lives, and I should do so in such a way that everyone—skeptical seeker or seasoned saint—has something to take home and think about or work on during the week.
As you might imagine, remaining consistently and equally faithful to all these principles on any given Sunday is an almost impossible task! But we do the best we can with the time we have and, in the process, we try to avoid two extremes, each of which would compromise one or more of the principles outlined above:
Extreme #1 — Focus too much on where WE are at.
People generally find topical preaching (addressed directly to felt needs) very attractive. But there are some pitfalls associated with preaching topical sermons every week. The first problem is that a person can attend church for several years, hearing sermon after sermon dealing with themes like Success on the Job, Having a Healthy Marriage, and Finding Fulfillment in Life, and never gain the kind of familiarity with the Bible that would encourage him to study God’s Word on his own! The Bible remains a foreign book full of tidbits of Godly wisdom which only the ‘paid professional’ (the pastor) can discover and deliver, as he prepares and preaches his messages each week. The second pitfall of a topical approach is less obvious. But it may be even more serious. Preaching that is intentionally preoccupied with our felt-needs tends to start with us and end with God. This kind of “teaching trajectory,” in turn, subtly but effectively communicates a whole worldview—one that is diametrically opposed to Scripture. It says: We are at the center of the universe, and God is here primarily to meet our needs and to fulfill our agenda. Well, this is the just kind of thinking we want to avoid here at F.A.B. Chapel, not the kind of thinking we want to subliminally reinforce by the way we craft our sermons!
Extreme #2 — Focus too much on where the BIBLE is at.
At some point in our preaching we have to get out of the first century (or the eleventh century B.C., in the case of Samuel and David!) and into the twenty-first. This means that Sunday morning will always be a worship service and never become just a classroom. Don’t misunderstand. The hope you learn something on Sunday. But we do not want our preaching to impart only information. We want you to meet your Lord in the Biblical text and come away with hope and direction for your life. So we try to be practical and relevant.
Putting It All Together
Now how do these Principles and Extremes flesh out in the way we do our Sunday sermons? Well, they make things pretty simple. In an effort to be faithful to Principle #3, I have been going through topical sermons (i.e. How to Have Eternal Life, How to have Fellowship with Jesus, etc.). But in every case, we have done our best to keep God at the center, where He belongs. Ideally, I’d like to have Chapel services where we can preach right through a book of the Bible (Principle #1). Our recent pattern has found us covering the Basic fundamental doctrines that I believe every believer should know (i.e. Doctrine of Salvation, Doctrine of Rebound, and how to study the Bible).
Our goal is that we all become familiar enough with the text to go home, read the book with understanding, and make it our own—for the rest of our lives! If we keep hanging out together in Bible studies and Sunday services just think of how much of the Bible we will know! We will be doing a subject/complement on the dinner menu at Denny’s!
The Goal: For Chapel members to have access to the Word of God and to find hope and direction for life on a daily basis (Principle #2).
So, you might not get what you WANT every week at Chapel: something that scratches your felt-needs right where they itch. But I promise to do my best to give you what you NEED: a BIG-picture exposure to God and His Word that gives you a basic biblical foundation for a lifetime of study. Because the Christian life is not a 100-yard dash—it’s a marathon. Most of all, I strongly believe that the study of God’s Word is the HIGHEST form of Worship - Everything else follows.
You’re part? (1) Be there consistently, to get the whole flow of the Bible book/Doctrine, (2) Be there attentively, to actively think and reflect on what is being said, and (3) Be there openly, to let God have His way with you on Sunday mornings! God will be honored and we’ll all be better for it!
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