I recently answered an inquiry from a former student and decided that perhaps the topic would be of interest here as well. I won’t include the questions, but here’s my reply.
The “preaching schedule/calendar” is a constant challenge! The big names of the past who spent years in a book—e.g., Llyod-Jones or Barnhouse on Romans were not in church plants. Those churches were old, established churches with members who had been believers for many years. Barnhouse actually used Romans as a “foil”—he didn’t preach Romans as just Romans. He used it as a framework to preach systematic theology. So though he spent a lot of time in Romans, his people were getting a pretty wide range of truth, though probably not getting much narrative or storyline.
The flip side, of course, is the “typical” (yes, I’m a bit cynical here!) pulpit diet in the typical fund/evang church in which all that is heard is topical preaching that follows the preacher’s whim. In many cases that’s a constant diet of evangelism or of a fairly narrow stream of topics (pray more, give more, witness more, don’t do bad things).
How to balance that out is the issue. I’m convinced that systematic exposition is the mainstay, book-by-book. I’ve known some who start in Genesis and many years later finally arrive in Rev., but I’m not convinced that’s wise either. Not only does it takes decades to do reasonably well, it’s not usually a well-balanced diet, mostly since the first 3/4 of it will be OT/old covenant. While God’s people need to hear and know their OT, I suspect that a church who heard only OT for many years would be “malformed.”
I don’t think there is any one formula that will work because there are too many variations in both congregations and preachers. The abilities, backgrounds, and needs of both parties plan into the mix. Perhaps the best thing to ask is, in light of one specific situation, how do we best accomplish the goal of Eph 4:12-16.
- to prepare God’s people for works of service,
- to build up the body of Christ,
- to reach unity in the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God,
- to become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ,
- to be no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming,
- to speak the truth in love,
- to grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ, and
- to enable every supporting ligament to grow and build itself up in love, as each part does its work.
I suspect that the first order of business would be an assessment of where in that big picture a specific group fit. Then asking how we get from here to there. The goal is relatively general, but it is what God says is the purpose of a church ministry, and specifically the responsibility of those individuals in leadership (though the ultimate goal is that all the members join in mutual efforts along these lines).
It is not only the pulpit ministry that accomplishes these goals, but that is perhaps the central focus around which the other pieces (which I’ve not discussed here) cluster.
In light of the pulpit ministry, we have to ask how we structure a long-term preaching schedule to move toward our goal. This can’t be done in what is too often a frantic, “Sat.-night-late” decision! A pastor ought to know fairly specifically where his preaching is going over the next year, and at least in general terms what he intends to cover in terms of the Bible books, over the next 5 years. And he should know *why* he’s doing that. It can’t be, “I’d really like to preach through Romans.”
[Excursus: every young pastor seems to want to preach through Romans! My father told me that when I finished seminary, but he also told me that most pastors my age weren't ready to preach through Romans. His assessment was that it would take at least 10 years before we were ready. He was probably right. I waited 8.]
[Second excursus: Some books are much more difficult to preach than others---even some that seem "simple." 1 John is a classic example. Many young pastors want to preach through 1 John---because many of them translated 1 John in first year Greek! But that is one of the most difficult books to preach, at least preach effectively. The message is more abstract and it also contains some very difficult theology. Wait until you've grown a bit (both in your pulpit skills, your grasp of theology, and your walk with God) before tackling it. Start preaching from the "easier" books---those with very practical relevance that lies "on the surface"---e.g., James, Philippians, etc. Another tough one to do well is Psalms.]
Back to the original subject, one might consider starting where God started—with Genesis (unless, of course, you are a new pastor and your predecessor just finished Genesis within the past few years!). Just remember that it’s narrative and you shouldn’t spend 2 years in chs 1-12! First time through you might shoot for a year, maybe less if you can preach it more than once a week. (If your 2d slot is typically less well attended, just include a *brief* review at the beginning of the next chunk so that you keep everyone close to being on the same page.)
But then I’d not move directly to Exodus. I’d probably shift to NT. Alternating back and forth between the testaments can be effective to keep things balanced, just don’t leave them isolated from each other. Esp. in the NT you need to constantly show the connections back to the Bible’s earlier story line, even if that means you need to take a 10 min. “side-trip” in a sermon to fill in some gaps—that’s esp. important when dealing with young believers, whether in a church plant or an older church. From the other end, when you’re in the OT, periodically you ought to show how particular OT themes are developed in later revelation, particularly in the NT. Don’t “read the NT back into the OT” hermeneutically to figure out what the OT means, but there is fulfillment involved, whether prophetically or typologically. It won’t be every week that you preach the equivalent of Isa 53! But there will be periodic sections that need a side-trip forward. Or perhaps it can be done by section, e.g., when you finish Genesis you might take a sermon to show how Genesis flows forward to the NT.
I don’t think that I’d probably work straight through the OT after finishing Genesis. At that point I’d want to think about how to best sketch the Bible storyline and be selective as to what books I did and in what sequence. You might even need some survey messages interspersed that show how the pieces fit together in which you “sample” a number of books in a single message. Other books, which can be done chapter by chapter, sometimes ought to be sampled as well. Exod-Deut might well be done that way the first time through so that you can give your people the big picture of the old covenant perspective in a few months—and tie it into the later NT fulfillment of many sections. (If you do it that way, then you owe it to the church to come back through some of those sections in more detail later.) And yes, you can preach Leviticus in a church plant. See one of my blog posts from about two years ago on that subject: http://ntresources.com/blog/?p=143
Well, this is a longer answer than you might have expected, and there is a lot more that could be said, but the details in every situation are too varied to pontificate! If you get the “flavor” of what I’ve said here, you can flesh it out in your situation better than I could.
A related discussion in which I was involved recently touches some preaching issues as well, particularly as it relates to the use of the biblical languages in preaching. It was a reprint of a short article that I originally wrote for one of our Seminary publications (
Paraklesis, summer 2009 (you can download that issue from the link given) )
on the Sharper Iron blog. It generated some lengthy and spirited discussion. You may find it of interest if you hadn’t seen it before. (Some comments, esp. early on, may not be as useful as some of the later discussion, which I joined as of comment #34. As is typical of active blogs like Sharper Iron, there’s a wide diversity of opinion expressed—from some who thought my remarks to be “condesending [sic] drivel” to those with helpful interaction.)
) When everything is emphatic, then nothing is, even if you dress it up with fancy names like hyperbaton, aposiopesis, trajection, etc.
