I've just completed a review of my preaching over the last 11 years - the length of time I've been in this church (so far!) And I've discovered that I've preached through all but about ten of the books of the Bible. That usually means for me a series of about 8 weeks, though I may choose to look at just a few chapters of a book during a series. Isaiah may take three series; 1 Peter (which I'm about to start) will take just one. With families in the typical congregation moving around every five or six years, I want to make sure that they have a good broad biblical base in the time they are here.

Another option is to preach through a section of a book rather than going through the whole book at once, and then move on to another portion of Scripture. I have done this recently with Hebrews 11, John 13-17 and Luke 1-2 (each series lasting anywhere from 8-12 weeks).

I admittedly have taken longer in any book I've done. In the last couple years I have preached through the book of Philippians and through John 13-17, and both series were 20 sermons. The last book we studied was Habakkuk, and that series lasted five weeks. I also take a break from any series usually on the last Sunday of a month to keep things fresh. I'm starting Ephesians tomorrow.

Well Steve, you look good on the photo and the advice you give seems sound to me. Some of us are to dumb to take five years on a book like Romans or Hebrews, so we do what comes naturally-a little golf on the side helps a lot. I think you forgot to mention that we need to keep body and mind in balance. What would I look like if bench presses were the only excercie I did? Great advice, I'd like to hear more from you. Pete

Last year I preached through the book of Philippians in a year, but I did so by preaching through a chapter and then gave the folks a break with a mini-series of 2-3 weeks and then back to Philippians. I preached a total of 35 messages.

I would like to know what you Steve, or others think regarding this method. Currently I am attempting to preach the story-line of the bible from Genesis to Revelation. In a similar fashion, I am preaching on this theme for 4-5 weeks and then taking a one or two week break. I figure it is going to take most of the year to complete, but hopefully it will make them better readers of the bible.

I think it depends upon how pivotal the book is. Not all portions of scripture are of the same weight. For example if I were to preach through Habakkuk I would do it in one sermon (which I have done). But to preach through Galatians (which I did last year) it took me about 12 weeks. However I preached the first chapter in one sermon and most of 4 in one sermon. I didn't treat every text with the same scrutiny. But Galatians is a really important book for understanding the gospel.

I do agree however that spending 3 years in one book would be horrible. My first year in the pastorate I spent a year in Ephesians. I would NEVER do that again.

At one church I was at for 12 years I asked the congregation if they wanted a series on anything specific. One person commented, "You have covered about everything." I think in those 12 years I preached from the Old and New Testaments pretty evenly. That's another thing, "Why don't preachers use the OT?" I seldom hear good messages from the OT. Granted narrative is a bit harder, but there is a gold mine.

I have been preaching for over 4 decades and I have reached the age of 60. I have discovered that preaching is a "seasona"l thing. I have experienced that sometimes one can preach longer series than at other times. But I believe that expository series preaching is both helpful and healthy for the congregation and the pulpiteer. If you are ministering the Word on a consistent basis then freshness is important. be creative and energetic during the series. I view it as an assignment where I learn as my parishioners. When I preach series I always involve a volume of scriptures rather than exposing only one verse. I may teach verse by verse during our special bible study time but I usually put verses together in an outline form under a haeding and expound on them under a common topic.

While a single verse may really contain my message for the day, I try to illuminate the pertinent issues contained in either the chapter itself or that preceeding it. I also try to vary my Books so as to give a more general exposure to the congregation concerning the 'entire' Word of God. And do I dare mention that many to whom we are preaching are of the 'sound bite' generation... the, "Give me something new to hold my attention" group.

To Steve Mathewson (and all his commentators):

I read your essay and the comments. I am not a pastor, but only a mere congregation member. But I know the Bible extremely well however (having read through it so many times and having studied and written a couple books about it) but almost NOTHING of what I know came from hearing pastors preach about the Bible, because they cover so little of the Bible and 90% of the Bible NEVER gets preached on. Personally, if you cannot preach through the entire Bible in five years, this is a problem, and your congregations NEVER learn the joy of reading large portions of the Bible on their own, and instead, just treat the Bible as a REFERENCE book, to be kept on their shelves and taken out only to find comfort and to find one or more of God's other blessings, but never to find God HIMSELF. The vast majority of Christians know almost NOTHING about the Bible and it is YOUR FAULT, for never preaching very large portions of the Bible.

I have asked many, many people (saved Christians) to place in the correct Biblical chronological order the following (deliberately listed here out-of-order): Joseph, David, Moses, Enoch, Christ, Paul, Noah, Jacob, Peter, Solomon, & Abraham and very few of them get the list entirely correct. Other than the plan of salvation, your congregations NEVER see the big picture of the flow of God's plan throughout the entire Bible. I have also asked scores of Christians to merely name the Ten Commandments to me and almost nobody can name all ten of them.

Now imagine that the pastor of the original Philippian church just received Paul's letter and joyously declared to his small congegation,

"I just received Paul's letter from his Roman prison. Now I was going to just read Paul's letter to you as it is written, with minimal commentary because I know that you are all anxious to immediately hear today every word our Christian brother Paul has written to us. But rather than simply reading Paul's letter to you in its entirety, instead I will preach on this letter over the next 20 Sabbaths and eventually over the next four months we will finally get through it all, even though I could read you the entire letter in less than 30 minutes."

Imagine his congregation's reaction. You can be sure that every "uneducated" ancient N.T. pastor read Paul's entire letters immediately, and probably read them over and over (in its entirety) multiple times over the next several Sabbaths. The same with the Gospels. If the preacher was fortunate to have had a copy of one of the Gospels too, then you can be sure that he probably read large portions of the Scriptures that he had to the people. And isn't that what Josiah did (II Chronicles 34:30) ("reading ALL the words of the book of the covenant")and what Nehemiah did (Neh. 9:3), (spending "a quarter of the day reading the Scriptures"), and others? The Biblical example is to read LARGE portions of scriptures at one time, and there is NO Biblical example, verse, instruction or story in the Bible to support the idea that modern "educated" pastors should spend 8 weeks on Christ's Sermon On The Mount (Matt. 5,6,7) when Christ himself preached the entire three chapter Sermon On The Mount in JUST ONE SITTING!

Some day, my dear Christian brothers, when you are all in the Kingdom of Heaven and each of you meets Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, Josiah, and Nehemiah, as well as meet all the first NT Church pastors, you will discover (to your embarrassment) that in ancient times, when no one in the congregation had any Bibles and the only Scriptures that existed were in the hands of the uneducated preachers without any seminary training, that very large portions of the Scriptures were read every Sabbath and the emphasis was NOT on exposition, but was on informative reading of as much Scripture as possible. But now that our preachers are "seminary trained", most Christians in their congregations today probably know less about the Bible than the same kinds of congregations did generations ago! And why? Probably multiple reasons, but you can be sure that one of those reasons is because their own preachers never impart the joy of reading and understanding large portions of Scriptures, out of fear of the accusation that "he just reads his sermons straight of the Bible".

My suggestion: out of a thirty minute sermon: spend five minutes of introduction, 20 minutes of pure reading of the Scripture, then 5 minutes of summary. If you do this for five years, I guarantee your congregations will not only be exposed to far more of the entire bible of your next five years of preaching, but many of them will also learn to love to read large portions of the Bible on their own in their own homes, and THAT is where they will REALLY learn the Bible, and all of you KNOW that to be true!

Detailed exposition can be wonderful at times, and of course, some parts of the Bible require more explanation than others, but I'm just saying that in the long run, your detailed expositional approach is actually counterproductive. In EVERY church, the people who know God's Word the best are those in the congregation who read large portions of the Bible on their own in their own homes. Each of you preachers knows this to be true. And if you preachers are NOT inspiring those in your congregation to read large portions of the Scriptures at home, then you are NOT doing your jobs completely. And you can NOT inspire them to read large portions of the Scriptures in their own homes by using detailed expositions of very small portions of the Scriptures over many weeks.

David King, MD

While I think there is much to comment on regarding David's venting (such as the sweeping generalizations, the tiresome seminary education bashing), one point puzzles me. David states the following:

"The Biblical example is to read LARGE portions of scriptures at one time, and there is NO Biblical example, verse, instruction or story in the Bible to support the idea that modern "educated" pastors should spend 8 weeks on Christ's Sermon On The Mount (Matt. 5,6,7) when Christ himself preached the entire three chapter Sermon On The Mount in JUST ONE SITTING!"

Jesus didn't seem to follow this instruction very well. The Sermon on the Mount as we have it does not have large portions of the Hebrew scripture read. Additionally, for the preacher who spends eight weeks (i.e., eight 30 minute messages, or four hours) on the Sermon has likely spent less time than Jesus did in giving the sermon. Though Jesus presumably did preach it all in one sitting, there is little doubt it took much longer than it takes for us to read the summary Matthew's gospel gives us.

1) My initial comment: Preach from a book until it's finished. How long that takes is determined by the length and nature of the book. 2)The length and nature of the individual Bible book should be determined by it's natural divisions. My old (very old) UBS 3rd edition has thousands of small pencil marks from going through the laborious process of determining paragraph marks and preaching boundries.
3) Preaching through a book does not mean that one is oblivious to other parts of the process. You can preach the same book in a slow "meaty" manner or in a more nimble "highlighted" manner.

I'm glad this topic has stirred up some discussion! It deserves the attention you are giving to it. The lively discussion is good, and it's stimulating my thinking. I'd love to thank all of you personally for taking the time to respond, but I'll only take time for a couple of follow-up comments.

GENE: You asked for a response to your method. I think your basic idea is good: take a break from a series once in a while. It provides some needed variety, and there may be some specific issues in your church family which you need to address. Personally, I tend to break away from a series for single messages rather than mini-series of 2-3 messages.

DAVID: Thanks for sharing your heart and your frustrations. It's good to get the perspective from a listener. By the way, you are NOT a mere congregation member! There's nothing 'mere' about your place in the body of Christ, and we need your input.

You raised a critical question in your comment: Why do modern Christians need exposition when the biblical example is READING the Scriptures?

The answer is that modern readers have some huge gaps to overcome in order to understand the text -- linguistic, cultural, and historical.

Preachers must do for modern readers what Philip did for the Ethopian eunuch in Acts 8:30-35. Preachers must do for modern readers what Ezra did when he studied, obeyed, and then taught God's decrees in Israel (Ezra 7:10). According to Nehemiah 8:8, the Levites joined Ezra in reading the Scriptures AND in "giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read." This is the biblical basis for doing exposition.

Yet, the result of goal of exposition should be reading with understanding! I once heard Eugene Peterson say: "The Bible is meant to be read, not studied." He was over-stating his point (like you did!!!) to emphasize that 'study' is the means and 'reading' is the end. I fear that some churches who excel at exposition place too little emphasis on reading the Scriptures.

My preaching pattern has been to alternate between the OT and NT. As for the amount of time I spend in a book, it will vary because of interruptions- whether holidays or music groups or special speakers. The first message is usually a survey. If the book is short, the entire book is read in the Morning service. Various men are assigned sections or chapters. Then I preach through the book in section.
I have taught OT and NT Survey in Bible Institutes and understand the need for seeing the whole picture. Someone said we as evangelicals can't see the tree or the forest because we're too busy examining the veins in the leaf.

Steve, I preached my first sermon in 1954, and I just finished a year in EPhesians--but that is an exception. Usually 6 months is adequate. Our REAL problem is the death of Wed. eve and Sun. eve services! We are missing at least an hour of preaching every week! Further, 30 min. is often too short, and 40 to 45 should not be a burden either to speaker or listener. My old Bible prof used to say, "Sermonettes make CHristianettes" when asked to preach less than 45 minutes.

Steve,

I have just begun pastoring a small church. You are spot on! It has been through careful work that I have culled my series to about 10-12 weeks for most books. Having been on the other side as a song leader for 30 years I have been bored by preachers going on and on with one-four verses. Not only does it hinder the people's understanding of God's word but causes people to loss perspective. Your message was a God-wink since God seemd to be speaking to me last night about doing a series of messages on the New Testament Survey with one book per week.

Keep up the good work.

Bill

The New Testament has 260 chapters. If you preach or teach a chapter a week you will take five years in getting through the New Testament.

Most churches would have the "ears" of their young people from about 13 to 18 so that would also be about a five year period.

I have found that when a verse of the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament that it is important to share the whole related passage from the Old Testament. The New Testament writers really knew the Old Testament and usually these one verse quotes are really pointers back to the whole passage in the Old Testament. This serves to really tie the two together.