There are many ways for a pastor to divide a church. While it cannot prevent all of them I do believe faithful expository preaching can assist a pastor in strengthening the church and help them maintain unity. And when I say “faithful expository preaching” I’m particularly referring to verse-by-verse through one book at a time type of preaching. Here are four reasons I say this.

It helps you preach on difficult topics without making the congregation suspicious.

Last Sunday I preached on Mark 10. That’s a sticky topic. As soon as I mentioned the “D word” (divorce) it was dead silent. Now imagine if I had just decided one Sunday morning that I thought I ought to preach on divorce. Many would be wondering what event in the life of the church caused me to preach on this topic. People could easily assume that I was picking them out and preaching directly at them.

But in our church everyone knew why I was preaching on Mark 10:1-12. It was simple. I had just finished Mark 9. Nobody, at least I hope not, felt as if I was singling them out or had picked this topic because of some issue within the church.

It forces you to deal with difficult topics the church needs for growth

Some pastors might enjoy preaching on difficult or controversial texts. I don’t. If I got to “pick the text” every week I really believe I’d be a pretty one-dimensional preacher. I wouldn’t be challenged with difficult texts but I’d only preach what “came to me”. And I’m convinced our church would suffer because of it.

Our churches need the whole counsel of God’s Word. I could more easily convince myself that I wasn’t shrinking from this task if I just preached all over the Scriptures. But if I chose to just skip a section (like Mark 10) our people would notice—and so would I. I’m confident this way that I’ll at least cover everything if given a lengthy stay in ministry.

A church which is biblically shallow is a church which is ripe for a split. Humbly and yet boldly dealing with difficult topics as they come up not only teaches the church it also models how to navigate through choppy waters.

It models biblical interpretation

Context is King. Well, it’s actually Jesus, but you know what I mean. In reading the Scriptures we have to be sure to keep a text in its context—otherwise we interpret the Scriptures wrongly. Slowly plodding through a book of the Bible helps our people learn how to do faithful exposition on their own. It trains them to consistently think about the context and how to deal with the Scriptures.

Nothing causes church splits like terrible exegesis. Actually I think what happens more than often isn’t that the Bible is wrongly applied—its that it isn’t applied at all. But a steady diet of God’s Word will help us to approach life the way we’ve learned to approach the Scriptures—surrendered to God’s intention.

It makes us servants of the Word

If you want to see your church split, labor to create a following for yourself and teach others to do the same. When a pastor stands before a congregation and says, “God gave me this message last night”, he doesn’t know what he is subtly doing to the culture of the church. I’m not saying that God doesn’t in some very real sense “give me this sermon” but I’m wary of this type of thinking because it makes the people to sit under the preacher when what ought to be happening is that together we are trembling at God’s Word.

Listen, there are many weeks when I’d much rather preach something else. I didn’t particularly want to preach on Mark 10 right after the Thanksgiving holiday, but that is what was up and so that is what I preached. And I didn’t preach it in the way that made me comfortable. I simply said, as boldly and as passoinately as I could, “here is what God’s Word is saying to us”. I believe this creates a culture where we are sitting under the Word together. Few things will keep a church from splitting like laboring together to tremble at God’s Word.

There are other reasons for expository preaching and for doing it in a verse-by-verse fashion. I will occasionally preach on topics for a brief season, but I believe a steady diet expositional preaching will feed the sheep and strengthen the church.

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