A Simple Idea for Your Midweek Service
One of the most difficult things about having three services every week is knowing what to teach or preach in each one. I know Spurgeon used to pick a different text for Sunday on Saturday night — but I'm no Spurgeon. The idea of coming up with something out of the blue scares me to death. And preparing a full sermon three times a week is difficult for anyone, but it's especially difficult for us bivocational pastors.
Wednesday nights are a particular challenge.
Over the years I've tried lots of different things during our midweek service. For a few years I taught through the Psalms. I've done various series. I have friends who don't do a sermon at all on Wednesday nights and instead do something like a Sunday School class or even an open discussion of a Scripture passage.
A few years ago I had one of my best ideas, and it has completely solved this problem for me. I preach through the stories of the Bible.
Here's how it works:
I have a list of stories I follow — this list comes from the book All the Stories of the Bible. I don't actually use the book as a source (although it's a fine book) — I only use the index to plan out the stories I'll be preaching on. It breaks down into four books of 52 stories each, covering stories in chronological order from Genesis to Revelation. So it will take me four years to work through all the stories in the Bible.
Consider the benefits of a series like this:
Preaching Bible stories is less cognitively demanding. I find narrative preaching to be a lot easier on my mind than preaching through the didactic and doctrinal passages I tackle on Sundays. This is a good thing, because both me and my people are a lot more tired on a Wednesday evening.
Preaching Bible stories means easier prep. While I do manuscript my midweek sermons just like Sunday, I don't usually even come up with a formal outline. I break the story down into sections, summarize each section, and draw out a few principles of application. I'll typically listen to several good preachers on the story during the week and might read one or two commentaries — as opposed to six or seven for a Sunday sermon.
Preaching Bible stories raises biblical literacy in the church. Our people get to know all of the Bible. They don't just know about David and Goliath and Noah's Ark — they know about Phinehas, Absalom, Athaliah, and Jehosheba. Bible stories do a particularly good job of raising Old Testament literacy and helping people keep the Bible in context.
Preaching Bible stories is fun and exciting. God's Word is not a boring book, and the stories it contains are the most exciting stories you can read. When you understand them, they equal and surpass anything in literature — and they're true. Children and teenagers enjoy them too.
Preaching Bible stories provides unlimited room for application. I'm not saying you're free to make a Bible story say whatever you want — ultimately they're all about Jesus, and any application needs to be driven by the text. But narrative passages do provide room for applications you wouldn't normally come across. There are lots of morals to these stories that just jump off the page. For example, when I preached on Athaliah last week, I had ample opportunity to warn about the dangers of marrying the wrong person and the effects it can have on your family.
If you're a pastor struggling like I was on Wednesday nights, why not give this a try? You don't need some complicated system — just a list of stories and a willingness to let the Bible speak for itself. In four years your people will know their Bibles better, and you can probably just go back to Genesis 1 and they won't mind one bit.