Please go welcome Sam, our newest contributor at Grace Ground!

You have probably seen Sam comment on several posts over the past month or so, and after hearing some about what he is doing in San Diego, I wanted to hear more, and I know that many of you do to.

Sam is going to write a series of posts called Getting to Know our Neighbors. I am so excited about this series, and have already begun to put some of what he writes into practice. All of us want to love and serve our neighbors, but for many of us, we don’t exactly know where to begin. Sam is going to show us what he does and how he does it. He writes in his first post that he and his wife have gotten to know nearly all of the people in the three hundred homes closest to them. That is amazing!

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Dan Allen writes that there is little Biblical basis for expository preaching.

…expository preaching cannot be found to be a consistent example, let alone given as a mandate, in the Bible.

He goes on to say

In this, I think, is an assumption that makes expository preaching much more dangerous than topical preaching. When someone preaches an expository sermon the impression they give is that they are telling the audience what the Bible says, not what they think. This would be great, if it were true.

His ultimate point is that expository preaching can be just as full of hidden and personal agendas as can the topical sermon. I fully agree. I would go further and state that most expository sermons do not actually teach the passage of Scripture being dealt with. I believe the “expository preaching” method I was taught in seminary does more to mask the meaning of the text than to unfold and explain it.

I would like to make two caveats.

First, I think there might be more of a biblical basis for expository preaching and teaching than most imagine. Though I am working on a book about this, see my post on The Teaching Method of Jesus as in introduction to the idea.

Second, despite the fact that many pastors have hidden agendas when they preach expository messages, when I preach and teach an expository message, I have no hidden agenda. I am simply teaching and preaching the pure and unadulterated Word.

(Yes, I am making fun of myself. Please do not take that last paragraph seriously.)

The bottom line is that I agree with Dan. There is not one “mandated” way of teaching the Scriptures, and when we preach and teach, none of us just “Preach the Word.” Nevertheless, logically and practically, I do think that the best way to approach Scripture is book-by-book, verse-by-verse, both in our reading and in our teaching. This helps us understand the context and the thought flow of the text, and forces us to study and teach passages that we might prefer to ignore.

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At breakfast this morning, my wife asked our youngest daughter, Kahlea, what her favorite Bible story was. Her answer? The ten flags (aka The Ten Plagues).

So cute.