Many pastors and church leaders are alarmed at numerous studies that frequently come out about a growing epidemic of biblical illiteracy in modern Christianity. While many people (even church goers) are generally familiar with the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, and Jesus, few people can locate these stories in the Bible, and fewer still can accurately recall most of the details and events within the stories.

Questioning the Studies

Frankly, I’m not sure these studies are accurate, since up until the last one hundred years or so, the majority of the population of the world was unable to read or write. Since this is so, how does someone today determine the biblical knowledge of someone from the past? Could it be that these studies are actually comparing the average person in the pew today with the scholars and pastors of the past? If so, the comparison is hardly fair.

But whether the studies are accurate or not, the issue is still being framed incorrectly.

The Real Problem in Bible Study

The problem is not about how much people know or do not know about the Bible. The problem is what people do with the biblical knowledge they have, whether it is little or a lot. In other words, some people know very little about the Bible, and others know quite a lot, but in both cases, their lives look about the same. Since this is so, those who have no time for reading and learning the Bible see that the lives of the Bible scholars and pastors do not seem to be that much better, and have decided that gaining more Bible knowledge doesn’t matter.

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Much of the debate about preaching and teaching today focuses on methodology.

There are debates about expository versus topical preaching, whether women should be allowed to preach, how long the sermon should be, whether the teaching should be participatory or a monologue, how much time should be given to illustration and application, whether to use powerpoint and encourage sermon notes or not, and on and on.

While I have opinions on all of these issues, I am not sure that most of them really matter. All of these arguments over methodology point to an underlying foundational problem: fewer and fewer people live according to a biblical framework. People neither know what the Bible says, nor do they seem to care. Even among most of those who do have Bible knowledge, it seems to make little difference in their lives.

Is More the Answer?

Pastors, priests, and professors are rightly concerned about this problem, and try to correct it. Most of the proposed solutions focus on preaching more or better sermons. Some churches look back at the “Golden Age” of Christianity in the United States—the 1950’s—and notice that pastors preached on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. So it is believed that more preaching will lead to better Christians, and these pastors move their churches in that direction.

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Throughout most of the Scriptures, beginning with God in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and carrying on through Moses and the Prophets, all the way to Jesus and the apostles, the primary method for teaching was something I call “On the Way Teaching.” This teaching was similar to what we think of as “apprenticeship.”

The Jesus Model

Jesus was the best model of this. He invited twelve men to be His Apprentices, and as they followed Him around in His ministry, they watched what He did, asked questions about how and why He did it, and tried to accomplish tasks that were assigned by Jesus. While there were probably some times of formal teaching, it seems that most of the instructional times were either on the way to a place where Jesus would minister, or on the way back. He was either preparing His disciples for what they were all about to do, or was debriefing them about what had just happened.

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Over the past several posts, I have written a lot about preaching and teaching, and what the Bible has to say about both. Starting tomorrow, in the interest of tying it all together, I want to provide some practical thoughts on how preaching and teaching could look within church life today.

But before we get to that, I want to answer one criticism that you might have. The question is this:

It seems like you are so opposed to preaching sermons in church. Do you hate preaching?

The answer is simple:

No. I Do Not Hate Preaching. I Love Preaching!

I love listening to good preaching, and I love preaching to others. I listened to a great sermon this morning on Colossians 1 from Frank Viola. You can check it out here.

My only concern is that far too often, I hear pastors justify the modern practice of preaching because “the Bible tells us to preach.”

But we have seen in this series that there is not a single passage in Scripture which commands or even provides an example of the current popular pattern of gathering in a building on a certain day of the week to listen to one person stand up and talk about the Bible for thirty or forty minutes.

It is just not there.

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Have you ever been in a church where a leader quoted 2 Timothy 4:3-4, and then proceeded to show why most other churches are heretical or spiritually immature because they cannot endure sound doctrine, but instead, heap up for themselves teachers who give them what their itching ears want to hear?

Usually, something like this is said:

Here at our church, we provide sound doctrine. But look at those immature Christians over at the other church. They cannot endure sound doctrine like we can. They listen to stories, and fables, and don’t teach the Scriptures like we do. And so if you want to learn what sound doctrine is, and if you want to hear what the Scriptures really teach, you need to attend church every Sunday morning and Sunday night, and get plugged in to one of our mid-week Bible studies, and study the Scriptures every day on your own.

Have you ever heard a similar message in church? I have. I’ve preached sermons like that.

However, it is this teaching itself which is the unsound doctrine, or the unhealthy teaching that Paul is warning Timothy against.

In the previous few posts, we have seen that in 2 Timothy 4:1-4, Paul is not so concerned with what type of preaching is done, or how long a person preaches, or who does the preaching, or even what the theology is of the preaching. No, Paul’s concern in 2 Timothy 4:1-4 seems to be with “healthy teaching” versus unhealthy teaching.
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