I once had a church leader tell me, ”We absolutely do not want to get rid of (or change) our focus on expository teaching.” Okay, that’s cool, but I can’t resist commenting when someone tells me there is something they will not change in order to reach people with the gospel (1 Corinthians 9: 19-22).
There are cases when expository preaching may be mismatched on the level of a church leader’s communication preferences and the preferences of their target audiences. I can understand when someone will not adjust a core belief about essential doctrine (like the Trinity or salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone). But expository preaching is not an essential theological belief that should never be compromised.
Actually expository preaching is a communication preference. Hey, I know the PR on expository preaching, that it is somehow more biblical. But if it is, why are there no expository sermons in the Bible? There are many equally valid forms of preaching that can be employed in outreach effectively.
As a missionary I learned that not all people are able to understand expository preaching. Some people are oral communicators and their method of communication is story telling, and Chronological Bible Storying (CBS).
Oral communication experts who work in the field of CBS say oral communicators don’t have the ability to follow literate communication methods. Oral communication is not just when you use mere speech, there are specific traits and approaches needed for it to be effective.
By drawing a line in the sand on expository preaching, you may be limiting the impact of your ministry. Most people these days get their information through oral communication media (radio, TV, telephone, etc). Researchers say people with lower incomes and education levels are even more likely to be functionally illiterate. Add that to the fact that the ease of using oral communication tools has led to the situation that even very educated people are becoming practical post-literates with oral communication preferences.
Expository preaching is a style of preaching that has been developed by highly literate people. This approach to preaching has wrongly been canonized by some as the only acceptable way of preaching. Look closer at the people making the emphasis, and you will see they have literate communication biases.
I understand the issue about Biblical literacy. But keep in mind there is more to being a student of the Bible than listening to the extended commentary of a pastor from the pulpit. Personally, I am not a fan of the style of preaching that makes the sermon feel like a lecture in graduate school. Too many word studies and historical analysis not only puts people to sleep, it leads to less time for talking about applying the word to everyday life.
Don’t fear that not that always preaching with an expositional style will lead to illiteracy. Choose to teach all the word of God, but choose a style that connects with people in a memorable way. It may be an expositional approach is the right thing; then again, it may not be the best.
Watch out for the missiological blind spot of communication preference bias
On the mission field the most illiterate of people have been the people reached through chronological preaching. Missionaries are astounded at their Biblical literacy. Why? Think about it, a completely illiterate person has no way to store information. They have to store everything they know in their mind. As such, an oral communicator can run circles around a literate person when it comes to Bible literacy. While the literate person is still looking for chapter and verse, the oral communicator just remembers the words of God.
14 Responses
June 7th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I’ll chime in with my .02.
I think that expository preaching is a skill that every preacher should master. The skill sets required in preparing an expository sermon help keep the preacher focused on “what is the author’s point” not “what is my feel good devotional point.”
When I teach preaching classes, I focus on expository method to push the students to think through the real issues with the text. Once they develop the skills, there is greater liberty to pursue some of the other forms of biblical preaching.
I’ve been in many mission contexts where the preacher simply quotes their favorite author or favorite tv preacher, without having done their own homework in the text.
Such activity may have biblical authors being represented as saying something they have never intended to say.
By encouraging students to master the skill of expository preaching, I think they grab a deeper appreciation of the Scriptures and “rightly divide it” more appropriately.
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
June 7th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I am going to have to disagree somewhat with you Chris. Something I don’t lightly do because I respect you so much.
I think “exposition” is an important skill for ministers to have, but doubt that all need to learn to preach expository sermons.
Lazy scholarship rubs both ways, some ministers are convinced that because they have mastered some skills in seminary that they are “rightly dividing the word” because the preach expositionally.
When you study these “scholars”, you see them knocking-off the work of some Puritan theologian…or Piper, etc. My experience is some people are as likely to preach a sermon by Rick Warren as they are to rip off a sermon from MacAurthur. There are a few differences between the scholarship in the pastors in your illustration and mine IMHO.
Speaking of hermeneutics, the Bible is a document that requires sound cross-cultural understanding and some anthropological skills to interpret properly. I find it ironic that people who are ready to go to the wall for expository preaching are often wise in understanding the people in the first century and the worst at being able to appreciate cultural issues that affect ministry communication in this century.
Expositors need to show me how Jesus, Peter, and Paul made it through without expository preaching. Expositional preaching is great. I tend to enjoy it because it fits my communication preferences…but it is not more biblical than other forms are,
June 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Those who fail to see the limitations of expository preaching are deluding themselves. It is very common to find people spending years and years and years in books like Romans, John, and others. I hardly consider this an exposition. Very little was ever exposed at any one time. My goal has always been biblical literacy because I would much rather have people know what the Bible says than know what someone else thinks it means. My OT prof. in Bible College was very much a CBS and I learned more in his classes than I ever did in my Systematic Theology classes. Why? Because I already knew what I believed and Systematic Theology only armed me to defend what I already knew. In OT, I was pretty muck illiterate outside the Sunday School stories. I had to STUDY in those classes.
I’d heard dozens of “expository” sermons on Cushi and Ahimaaz from 2 Samuel 18, and I knew what the story “meant.” However, it wasn’t until my class on the Historical Books that I finally found out what the story was about. Curiously, it had very little to do with what I’d been taught the story “meant.”
June 7th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I agree with you Chris W. What is the author’s point? Too many times the text is read (or many proof-texts) and then some feel-good devotional point is made the main point. What I learned in preaching class was the three points to the sermon.
Explanation
Illustration
Application
Many times what I hear as preaching is going right past the Explanation part straight to the Application part.
I also think that topical preaching can be done expositionally. It doesn’t have to be proof-texting!
June 8th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Thanks JAB. I think your comments may say more about your references and biases toward literate communication methods. Literacy is not as wide spread as people tend to believe and functional illiteracy combined with post literacy means that ministers who think they are communicating in the pulpits may actually be talking to themselves. It may feel more like good communication when the sermon is your preference, but if it doesn’t connect with the oral learner…
I wonder if this might be the problem facing the church, the communication forms we using are not connecting with the least reached people.
Check out this manual on CBS http://tinyurl.com/4×96qn I am not saying literate communication is wrong. But I think to quote Chris,”is a skill that every preacher should master”
June 8th, 2008 at 6:36 am
I also need to add. CBS preaching is not telling made-up stories with feel-good applications and CBS doesn’t avoid Bible’s message.
In fact it recounts the actual Bible stories in a format that is useful to oral communicators. People who are oral learners actually end up with more Bible than the person who sits under the average expositor.
Take a look at CBS and consider adding it to your communication tool belt.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Wow. Did you really blog that outloud? And here in Indy, no less? That’s gotta be a first. LOL. But praise God, it does need to be said.
I love all our solid expository preachers in the city, but it seems that too often it’s a style that is touted as something of a ‘competitive advantage’ for THEIR church to lure attenders from some OTHER church.
Btw, surely with all the ‘expository preaching’ in our city, there would have been many sermons on John 17, the book of Ephesians, Philippians and so on… all of which are clear about the unity/harmony of the body, vs. “no divisions among you!”. Yet we have the standard set of ‘independent churches’ (or independent denominations) that any city has. So where’s the impact of expository preaching?
Do our expositors just choose which (favorite) passages to exposit?
And btw, does expository preaching somehow cover what is NOT mentioned in scripture? Eg… denominations, politics, etc.? Thus by default, expository congregations are free to do whatever they want with such ideas?
June 8th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Thanks Chris! You’re right…I probably do have a bias, but only because I think expositional preaching is preaching that focuses upon the MEANING of a particular text or even texts of scripture. For example, one wouldn’t have to preach through the four chapters of Jonah verse by verse to be expositional. I think expositional preaching is taking the three parts of a sermon (explanation, illustration, application) and developing that around a passage of scripture or perhaps an entire book. You don’t have to take 19 years to preach through the book of Revelation (as I heard one preacher did) to preach expostionally the book of Revelation, or any other book of the Bible. So, I don’t see us really disagreeing much about the basic premise of your thoughts here.
Going back to my example…the entire book of Jonah could be preached through in one setting in and the themes could be many.
I also agree with Chris W. above about the skill thing because I think it’s necessary to proclaim God’s Word. I’m not advocating verse by verse, expositional preaching every Sunday…but if expositional means preaching the MEANING of the text, then your example of CBS is correct also, in that it is communicating to illiterate people but it is doing so based upon the text and not some kind of proof-texting.
I also think that there is a basis of expositional preaching based upon the synagogue pattern that obviously one finds in the history of Israel. There usually was an OT text quoted and some kind of explanation of that text in the synagogue. Does it mean that the synagogue was going through a particular book (like Isaiah)? Probably not! However, there seems to be more to the expositional pattern than some want to acknowledge! Jesus himself, many times, (as well as the NT writers) comment on and reflect upon certain passages of OT. See Earle E. Ellis’s works about this, which are:
The Old Testament in Early Christianity: Canon and Interpretation in the Light of Modern Research
Paul’s Use of the Old Testament
P.S. I agree with much of what you write on here! :)
jab
June 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I guess what I was getting at in my comments is that in the mission contexts that I teach in, I hear so many sermons based on favorite proof texts and quotes from tv preachers.
Topical sermons are fine and appropriate. Narrative sermons are fine and useful.
No problem with these. I do them and use them when I preach.
But I think that the skill of preparing and delivering an expository sermon prepares one to deal faithfully with the meaning of the text, which then informs your topical and narrative or other styles of sermons.
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
June 13th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I understood you perfectly Chris and I understand your point of view is a commonly held one. I don’t happen to agree with that point of view though.
Missionaries(and pastors) need become more familiar with orality issues and more aware of their literary biases. In many places of the world communication formats are mismatched to the audiences because of the biases of missionaries and ministers.
BTW: CBS is not narrative preaching.
June 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Here’s a note from the http://www.oralbible.com
The gospel is being proclaimed now to more people than at any other time in history, yet many of those are not really hearing it.
Unfortunately, most evangelical leaders do not realize the magnitude of the problem. Those affected by it include the 4 billion oral communicators of the world: people who ’t, don’t, or won’t take in new information or communicate by literate means.
Oral communicators are found in every cultural group in the world and they constitute approximately two-thirds of the world’s population! Yet we are not communicating the gospel effectively with them. We will not succeed in reaching the majority of the world unless we make some crucial changes.
Here’s a PDF on the topic
http://tinyurl.com/5z2bb5
June 14th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I’ve spent some time reading the materials and funny thing is I don’t think we disagree that much.
When I’m teaching pastors to preach a sermon, I push them to do the exegetical work in the text to formulate an expository sermon.
If it is overly academic and dry, then the communication has failed to present the Word of God as living and active.
The communicator needs to improve the skill.
A good expository sermon respects the living word and is capable of powerfully applying the principles to today.
Of course, I’m thinking of a Sunday sermon context, in a American church, where most people are listening, and in most cases are converted anyway.
The same exegetical skill set can help them formulate their stories cross culturally in a manner that communicates.
Reading the materials you have linked to, there is great concern about reproducing the stories accurately.
Page 53ff gives a list that presumes some kind of skill set necessary to be faithful interpret the Biblical story and faithfully present it in the current world view.
The skill required for an expository sermon set helps keep them anchored in the text, so that they can communicate biblbically faithful accounts: sermons, stories, dramas, songs.
In my evangelistic sermons, evaneglism story telling, or street dramas, I don’t use an expository style. It doesn’t fit.
I think this is where we do agree, particularly after reading the links you put. I tell Bible stories.
However, my exegetical work in the text, the skill set I learned for expository preaching, all help me to stay biblically true in the story.
I learn how not to make the story say what it wasn’t meant to say. I learned how to respect the story for the authors intent, which suggests to me how to use the story.
Please understand. I’m not restricted to expository preaching, but at the same time, I do think that it is a skill that preachers should acquire.
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
June 14th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Thanks Chris. As I said above, “I think “exposition” is an important skill for ministers to have, but doubt that all need to learn to preach expository sermons.”
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:32 am
[...] ministry in the church were merely showing up reading the Bible and preaching expository sermons to people, they might have a point. These books spend a lot of time decrying the business of [...]
Leave a Reply