Going Deep With the Bible

Most Sundays, I am the one who listens to sermons, not the one who delivers them. Listening is definitely the easier job! Of the thousands of sermons I’ve heard over the years, only a few are imprinted in my long-term memory: a handful for being stellar, a few more than that for being horrible. The vast majority were apparently fair to middlin’ because they are now completely unmemorable.

Since I am ordained and a Bible professor, perhaps I am not a typical listener, but I suspect most churchgoers would agree: We remember a precious few sermons, forgetting the rest. I have some suspicions on why this is the case, and they have to do with the place of in-depth Bible study in preaching and teaching; or, perhaps more accurately, the absence of such in-depth study.