Your thoughts here are so much more thoughtful and helpful! Thanks!

You also pointed out a potential pitfall: The use of educational media in preaching makes it easy to focus more on educating people about the text and less on appropriating law and gospel through the text. The former is certainly useful and will often lead nicely to the latter, but the former by itself is not the gospel — and only the gospel, the good news about Jesus’ redeeming work on our behalf, can strengthen faith.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Positives:

More actively engaged in following along in the sermon (less daydreaming).

At home, I picture the powerpoint screen in my head and the fill-in the blanks and can remember the main points better. I also remember the sermons months later.

My children also seem to pick up on points highlighted on the screen and participate in answering questions.

Negatives:

Raising hands and blurting out answers, while engaging seems to lose the reverence of the service.

Agree that sometimes it seems too fact based and not enough law and gospel.

At first, I liked the fill-in-the blank style. Now it seems like the depth of the sermon is missing at times and it is too basic, more of an outline.

I agree with what you said – which means that I probably didn’t state my points as well as I could have. Ironically, one pastor-friend who reviewed this article before I posted it said that the title, “Sermon vs. Bible Class,” might be perceived as either provocative (which is what I was aiming for) or misleading. It looks like I hit the latter instead of the former!

I used 2 Peter 3:18 as a springboard to discuss the matter, particularly since I cited it in my comments at conference. But I agree that the verse doesn’t imagine or encourage a separation of growth in faith from growth in knowledge. Grammatically, the verse makes it look like they belong together — and they do. So the verse was meant to be more of an introduction into my discussion than exegetical proof of a distinction.

We are encouraged to grow in grace and knowledge, and although Peter mentions two things (grace and knowledge), that does not mean that there is no overlap between the two — I agree with you on that. But my fear (and yours, too) is that some sermons head in a direction where the education aspects are removed so much from the gospel that “growth in grace” suffers as a result. The distinction as I’ve described it is one that comes in faulty preaching or teaching, and that’s my main concern. My apologies for any confusion.

Look, for example, at the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It’s one long (self-interrupted) prayer for a growth in knowledge – so that they might also grow in grace.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you… (1:17,18).

Paul then goes on to remind/reveal/proclaim/anamnesize them of the grace of God in Christ and how it applies to Gentiles. He starts to bring his prayer to a close with these words:

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (3:16-19).

Growth in grace leads to growth in knowledge which leads to further growth in grace, etc.

My point is that the “knowledge” spoken of by Peter and Paul is not related to geography, archaeology or linguistics. Certainly a sermon that spent much time on such topics would be out of place. But, in my opinion, so would most such Bible studies. As you say, it’s important that we understand contexts and cultures, but in the life of the church both sermons and Bible studies should be focused on communicating the gospel (good news, i.e. knowledge) of Christ (grace).

I myself am not considering offering Bible study style sermons in my congregation’s worship, partly because of the offense/confusion you talked about above, and also for other reasons. I too think the sermon style is eminently more appropriate for corporate worship. But I have used the Bible study style while church-planting in a world mission setting, and I believe that there was just as much proclamation and anamnesis going on as in a traditional sermon style. In the humble situation I was in originally, a traditional sermon style would have felt unnecessarily formal and probably beyond the capabilities of the congregation to follow. Later, as the mission congregation grew and matured, I gradually switched to a normal sermon style for worship. What didn’t change was the focus on the message of Christ and its appropriation by the hearers.

So what I’m trying to say is that my personal beef is not necessarily with “Sermon v. Bible Study” styles (although I have my preference), but with any time the church spends with the Word that doesn’t lead us deeper into Christ and his love. Unfortunately, I’ve heard both sermons and Bible studies that have failed or faltered in that regard.

Again, thank you for your insights!

See you around the manger!

God’s blessings on your preaching and teaching tomorrow!

Here are some quotes from The Sunday Lectionary: Ritual Word, Paschal Shape by Normand Bonneau (The Liturgical Press, 1998) that address some of your previous questions.

The first hints of a liturgical year begin to appear in the second century with the emergence of an annual commemoration of the death and resurrection of the Lord at Passover time. By the third century, there is evidence that Christians had begun reading certain scriptural books, or selections from books, to celebrate Easter. (p. 11)

In the fourth and fifth centuries, lectionaries, in the sense of separate books containing prescribed selections from scripture, had yet to make their apperance. … It was only in the sixth and seventh centuries that actual “books containing full texts of lessons arranged calendrically” began to proliferate. These early lectionaries were called comites (in the singular, a comes, Latin for “companion”) because such books accompanied presiders and celebrants in their liturgical functions. They were a form of “user-friendly” liturgical Bible — instead of carrying around a copy of the entire Bible, a presider needed only a book or two containing the assigned passages. … As a rule, comites primarily contained the readings specially selected for the major feasts of the liturgical year. For the “green” Sundays, or Sundays of the Year, some comites offered a collection of readings from which the presider selected a few for each Sunday. (pp. 12-13)

The members of the committee [of Vatican II in charge of revising the lectionary] examined and discussed proposals for cycles of two, three, four, and five years. At first, the majority of the committee favored a four-year cycle. In time, however, the three-year proposal emerged as the solution best able to respond to the several concernes mentioned above. The committee finally accepted a three-year cycle organized around the designation of a different synoptic gospel for each year of the cycle — Matthew for Year A, Mark for Year B, and Luke for Year C. Simple and elegant, it has left its imprint as perhaps the most immediately recognizable trait of the revised Sunday Lectionary. (p. 36)

Why not a four-year cycle, with a fourth year for John’s gospel? There were two main reasons for not doing this, one having to do with tradition, the other with the literary nature of the Fourth Gospel. Ancient tradition privileged John’s gospel during Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide. The members of [the committee] felt it was more important to respect this hallowed tradition than to assign John’s gospel its own year. Besides, one of the most distinctive features of this gospel is its long dialogues and discourses, which do not easily lend themselves to being divided into small passages. It would be very difficult, not to mention exegetically unsound, to break the gospel into a sufficient number of small pericopes to fill up an entire year of Sunday gospel readings. (p. 36)

Finally, not only did the three-year cycle best realize the mandate of the council — offer the essential parts of scripture, foster familiarity with scripture, provide a flexible, elegant, and simple structure — it also enjoyed a favored place in many ancient and recent traditions. The Church in Milan instituted a three-year cycle of readings at the end of the fourth century. Soon after, Spain and Gaul adopted the pattern. Rome used it until the fifth century, the Byzantine Church until the seventh century. There were precedents for a three-year cycle of readings in a number of contemporary Protestant Churches, and the ancient Palestinian synagogue Lectionary cycle of Torah readings also featured a three-year cycle. Except for assigning a different synoptic gospel to each year of the cycle, the committee had in a sense invented nothing new. (pp. 36-37)

For all the variety that a three-year cycle of readings brings, there is nonetheless a high degree of continuity from year to year. The same pattern of feasts, of festal seasons, and of Sundays in Ordinary Time is repeated every year, for the fundamental cycle of the liturgy is a yearly one during which the most important facets of the mystery of Christ are celebrated. If over the three-year Lectionary cycle the readings change, the same yearly calendar provides a stable, recurring structure. (p. 37)

The cross offends. The cross saves.