Lane is right on here. Let me give a few thoughts, since I think this is an important subject and worthy of thinking about.
First, I think it is important to understand your view toward the purpose of preaching God's Word, because the practical questions (what do I preach? how long do I preach it?
etc) flow from that.
Here is something I put up on our website page relating to
theology of ministry:
Quote:
| THE WORD OF GOD. The starting point for an ordinary means of grace ministry is the Word of God. The Word gives power and significance to the Sacraments, direction and guidance to prayer, and comfort and exhortation to the believer. The Word is the main means God uses to provide faith to sinners, both to show them their need of Christ (justification) and also to mature and grow His saints (sanctification). It is vital therefore, that the Christian partake of this means by: reading the Word diligently, memorizing the Word and especially attending on the preaching of the Word. In my ministry, it is my first goal to cultivate a love for the Word of God in those to whom I minister. Ideally, attendance on the Word should be a way of life, something that one makes an integral part of every part of his life. The Bible speaks about this in describing the manner in which children are to be instructed: “these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:6-9). This attitude of respect and desire for the Word can be encouraged in two ways, among others: (1) through a consistent and evident belief that the Word is sufficient for the believer’s life; and (2) through a respectful and diligent exposition of the Word. To this end, the preaching of the Word is an important focus of ministry. Sermons must be the fruit of careful work, not sloppy or hasty; they must be instructive in what the Bible says so that the people will understand the Bible better; and they must be applicable to the hearer’s life. Preaching should be a practical outworking of what the Shorter Catechism describes as what the Scriptures teach: “what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man” (WSC 3).
|
I advocate (and practice) systematic consecutive expositional preaching. What does that mean? It means that I preach through books of the Bible, allowing the Biblical text to set my "agenda" -
Why did you chose to preach on the Sabbath, pastor? Well, it was the next text, in Exodus 16. It means that I can give my people the context of any passage relatively easily, without lengthy introductions. It means that my congregation can read ahead to the next week's sermon text. It also means that I don't spend time each week wondering what the "next best text" will be.
What does it
not mean? It does not mean preaching every week on a word, or a verse, or even a couple of verses. You can do that - if the text warrants it, but it is not required. Different genres are conducive to different lengths. I just finished 1 Peter, where my average sermon text length was 3-8 verses. I am now in 1 Kings, and I am taking a chapter a time (50+ verses!
) Why? I don't want to break up the flow of the narrative, and I want to preach through 1 and 2 Kings in roughly a year. (If you think that is too fast, do a quick search and see just how many preachers have preached through both books. Almost none!) Derek Thomas gave me one of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten on preaching (to paraphrase) :
"We live in a day of Biblical illiteracy. It is your job to get as much of the Bible in front of your people as possible. Most people get nearly all their Bible on Sunday morning. Use that."
I am also an advocate of the good (and hard to implement!) advice from Jay Adams: before you preach through a book, do your sermon work months in advance. The idea is you have sermons prepared for one series, and while you preach through that series, you are doing the bulk of the work for your
next series. That way, by the time you are ready to preach a sermon, you have seen and studied the scope of the entire book. That doesn't mean that you don't update, change and revise based on circumstances, God's Providence, etc. But it means that 75%+ of the work is already done.
I also am an advocate of thinking through which books to preach through, based on congregational need, preacher's experience (woe to the man who preaches through Romans or Hebrews in his first few years of ministry!) and ministry needs. If the preacher is honest, and if he plans on staying in one place for a while (or if he doesn't want to be continually "recycling" the same material like some kind of exegetical Tour de France) he will quickly realize that he gets
one shot at preaching through a book. The preacher needs to dwell seriously on that - it makes one sober about preparation (how can you avoid preparation, knowing that you will never get another chance at Ecclesiastes 12 or Genesis 12?).
So preparation is key. It takes three steps:
- Spend some time (a few days or more), ideally on a study leave week thinking through which books you would preach through. That does not mean you are a slave ton the results, but you can much more effectively makes changes and modifications to a plan you have. Plan, plan, and plan some more!!!
- Before you begin a series, plan out how many sermons it will be. Break the text up into "preachable" chunks. Try and come up with "workable titles" for every week. They can be changed; they don't need to be perfect. But it will help. The young preacher often spends valuable time (1 hour?) thinking of "catchy" or good titles that frankly are forgotten by the people within a month (or week!). No one says "Can I get a copy of your sermon 'The Campaign for King'?" NO. They say, "can I have the sermon on 1 Kings 1?"
- Work through the text, and organize the text into a discernible outline.
To see an example of how I do step #2, you can go to our website and see the
various sermon series. Those lists were done in the first week or two of each series. Sometime next week, the entire series of titles for 1 and 2 Kings will be up (they are written, but I may not have time to update the webpage).
For step #1, I have a plan for morning and evening through 2012. It is very intentional. For example, in the morning, I wanted to start my ministry in Katy with the fundamentals of the Gospel (Galatians), and then wanted to move to missions in a post-modern world (Ecclesiastes) and then to take a more pastoral approach (1 Peter) followed by how God works within Covenant theology (Kings), to be followed how a church is united (we will be in a new facility and hence having new members - Philippians), and then how a Christian is to respond to the world around them as they minister (Daniel).
You may also notice the OT/NT variation, as well as the genre variation (epistle, narrative, prophecy, etc). This is intentional. You can do this by the seat of your pants, but I find it much easier to plan out. You can always modify (I delayed Habakkuk in the evening to allow our Associate Pastor to preach a good evening series through the membership vows).
I hope this helps.