Preaching: Content

One of the tricky parts about teaching the Bible or preaching is that to do it effectively you need to be able to CLEARLY communicate biblical CONTENT in a way that CONNECTS with the listener. There's sort of this unspoken assumption that, if you're a good Christian communicator, you're good at pulling truth from scripture, studying, and generating content. The reality is that they're two different skill sets.

Some people are great at exegesis (interpreting scripture by pulling meaning from the text), studying, reading, and putting concepts together. Other people aren't.

The problem is that preaching isn't preaching without biblical content.

Without Content Preaching Becomes...

• Motivational Speaking
• Stand Up Comedy
• Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
• Moralism (treating Bible stories like Aesop's Fables, with a moral to the story)
• Heresy

It's not wrong to teach concepts besides scripture, but it's not preaching. Also, if you're an engaging and clear speaker, but lack Biblical content, people won't necessarily know what you're teaching isn't scripture. In children's ministries in particular, I've seen curriculum which completely misses the entire point of Bible teaching (teaching what passages were originally intended to say).