Feeding for a day - teaching to self-feed for a lifetime

Today in our worship gatherings I taught another week in our new series "Sin City: Being the Light of Jesus in a Darkened Culture". We are going through most of 1 Corinthians which will take us right through October in finishing it.

We're breaking the letter into three primary mini-series within the whole. The next mini-series within the whole will be "Theology Gone Wild" which will look at the sections of 1 Corinthians which deal with confusion on theological issues such as women in the church or abuses of how communion was taken etc.

The first part of this series we are calling "Sin City" playing off the culture of Corinth at that time, and comparing it to culture today. Today I taught through 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, next week will be 1 Corinthians 7:1-24. I focused the beginning today showing that although Paul was making some strong statements of correction to the Corinthian church, it wasn't about rules and legalism. He started the letter instead of with rebukes and a list of what not to do, he reminded them of who they were. They were "sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be His holy people" (1 Corinthians 1:2). They were a church birthed for mission in a darkened city and unfortunately they were compromising to culture. So Paul reminds them of who they are to start, as their identity in Jesus is at the core of what their actions should then be.

Since Vintage Faith Church started in 2004, we have a done a mix of topics and books of the Bible. We have taught the 7 "I AM" statements of Jesus, gone through some of His parables etc. We have gone through Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Romans 6-8, 1 John, Daniel, James, Song of Songs, highlights from the book of Acts,  and now going through 1 Corinthians. The rest of the time we do various topical studies. I like to think of them as theo-topical where you are striving to teach not just a topic but a God-centered theological topic even if a felt need.

Even though right now we are going through a book of the Bible, I always find the arguments about verse-by-verse preaching vs. topical preaching not important. To me, the important thing is no matter what you are teaching, to make sure it is expository.

Haddon Robinson defines expository preaching as "the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in it's context."

So, we can do that whether we are preaching a book of the Bible or a topical study. To me being truly expository and well studied is more important than "verse by verse", because you can go "verse by verse" but not be expository. I have listened to several sermons which were given by strong verse by verse advocates, but they were really topical. They read the verse or two in the beginning, but then preaching a totally topical sermon based off those verses for the next 30 minutes exactly like a typical topical sermon would be given.

This all relates back to the role of how we see the role of the sermon and teaching in the local church. We just taught about the role of teaching and leadership on Saturday in our "Church and Mission" class. In the class I took the Chinese proverb which says:

"Give a person a fish and you have fed them for a day. Teach a person to fish; and you have fed them for a lifetime."

We changed that into this for the class as we taught about the dreams for our church in what we see as our role in teaching the Bible:

"Teach a person the Bible in a sermon and you have fed them for a day. Teach a person how to study the Bible on their own and you have fed them for a lifetime."

I hope this is the culture we develop as a church. I am more concerned that people will learn good hermeneutical study skills themselves and be able to study the Scriptures on their own. I always want to be expository, but as Haddon Robinson defined that, it doesn't necessarily means going through books of the Bible. But this all changes how a preacher sees themselves and their ultimate goal as a teacher.

Are we primarily setting a culture where the expectation is that the church leaders are responsible to feed people on Sundays? Or does the church leaders feel the responsibility of training people to learn how to feed themselves throughout the week instead of relying on sermons?  Which if we do this correctly, will ultimately lead to people not needing their "preacher" as much as perhaps preachers like to feel needed. I don't know if this makes sense or not. Perhaps I am not properly communicating a correct expository blog. But I am thinking about this as we go through 1 Corinthians. Verse by verse. Expository. Exegetical. Extraterrestrial. Topical. Tropical. Hebrews 5:11-14..."who by constant use have trained themselves.."