One of the biggest struggles I have is not what to preach, but what format to preach. Let me explain...ultimately, all preachers only preach the same ten sermons. Yet how we preach those sermons and teach our classes varies. Do we start exegetically and go from there? Do we preach topical sermons based upon our systematic knowledge of Scripture? Do we overlay various human schematics in trying to make sense of it all? None of us get this right all the time.
So I have a hole in my Wednesday night class schedule in a few months, and I am praying and thinking and agonizing about what ought to be taught. Do I use another writer's book as a starter? Do I simply go back and do another exegetical class? Do I formulate my own plans?
I'm not sure, exactly...but I did have a crazy, radical idea while going for a walk earlier today...what if I took a Bible website and simply asked it to give me a random verse? Could I do a series of 8 classes on 'random verses from the Bible and what that means for us all?' It would have to be wholly electronic to be random, because most of the time I can at least guess where we are just by feel from a Bible. At dailyverses.net the first one to pop up was Mark 12:30, about loving God comletely...the next was Psalm 119:130, about having my heart set upon God's laws. A third was Psalm 112:5, about how God come to the aid of the righteous, and finally Hebrews 12:14 about the need be peaceful and holy to all. You know, I don't think it was truly random...I really expected that some list of genealogy or some obscure OT law was going to pop up. But no, each of these were easily readable, without much context; likely they were pre-selected, then made random. Too easy.
Or, could I open up a Bible dictionary of some sort and randomly pick out a topic to teach about? For instance, if take my Harper's Bible Dictionary and close my eyes and open a page and put my finger on something my first class would be on..."Literature of the Old Testament". Meh, let's try it again. "The Revelation to John." OK, maybe these topics are too big. "Guard, bodyguard." Two paragraphs, maybe not big enough. "Bitumen." "Sociology of the New Testament." One more... "Jesus Christ."
So, that didn't work. Maybe it's the wrong dictionary, maybe it's the wrong concept. What if I did this with my 'Little Kittle', the Theolgoical Dictionary of the New Testament? "Pneuma", section C, Spirit in Judaism. "Kainos" (newness). "Stoma" (mouth). Again, hit or miss. Maybe this isn't the best idea in the world.
I don't know...maybe I just need to go back and do what I used to do all the time, simply work my way through a book of the Bible. I enjoy that, and I've done it with the entirety of the NT and most of the OT. Fortunately the word of God is ever-powerful, even when I stink as a preacher.
