What Should You Leave Out When You Teach the Bible? - Mark Ward
My most influential mentor always told his charges that Bible teachers come to the text with one of two questions: either 1) “What can I say about this?” Or 2) “What does this say?” He saw these questions as a continental divide, and he urged us to be guided by the latter question. I completely agree. But “what does this say?” can be answered at various levels of depth. One fantastic little book on the Song of Songs , Ruth, Lamentations , Ecclesiastes , and Esther, a book in the NSBT series called Five Festal Garments , lasts 151 pages. This little volume says what those five Bible books say at a level of depth appropriate for 151 pages. But there are commentaries on every one of those five Bible books which are 200 pages plus. (Hey, there’s even a 500-page commentary on the tiny epistle to Philemon !) Is Five Festal Garments, then, “ dumbing down the Bible ”? How many times did this mentor of mine finish his own richly expository sermons without getting to the end of his notes?