The Danger of Patchwork Preaching by Dennis Regling
Like a patchwork quilt, many preachers take a piece of scripture here and a piece of scripture there and sew them together into what passes as a sermon.
The method is simple and common. The preacher decides what topic he would like to preach on. He decides what points he wants to make. Then, he goes through the Bible(or uses his concordance) and finds verses on that subject which he can use to make his points.
For example, he may decide his church needs to hear about hospitality, so he’ll look for verses about hospitality and build a sermon about them. Taking them out of context, but because he is quoting scripture, his audience will believe they have heard a message from God’s Word.
Almost every sermon about hell includes Jesus’ account of the Rich Man & Lazarus. Yet, if you look at the context, you will see Jesus was not warning about hell. He was teaching about, and exposing the religious leaders’ hypocrisy. Yes, hell is real and is mentioned, but hell is not the message.
Does this mean we can’t learn anything about hell from this account? No. But, we also need to teach what is being taught, and not build messages around the periphery.
When writing a sermon, or doing a study, verses need to be looked at in their complete context. It must be established what the topic of the passage the verse is found in is. The audience needs to be identified, and how they would receive the message. Other portions of scripture where the writer uses the same phrases should be examined, in order to understand what the writer is saying.
One of the worst types of patchwork preaching only uses one patch. This is called textual preaching. A textual sermon allows you to teach themes that are important to you, but that the Scripture does not specifically address.
Textual preaching will take one verse, or one small section of scripture, and turn it into a message that has no relationship to the context of the scripture. One example, and sadly a popular one, is 1 Samuel 17:29 “And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?” One example of this method is here: Is There Not A Cause ?
Preachers will take this one verse and then preach for an hour on whatever cause is dear to them at the moment. Perhaps raising money for a building project or starting a new ministry in the church. Maybe teaching men they need to find their cause. All these things may be noble, but they in no way reflect the message of 1 Samuel 17.
This type of preaching is very dangerous to the listener and to the health of the church. It can cause the preacher to hold onto pre-conceived ideas, even if they are wrong. These ideas are then passed on to the congregation.
Many times when patchwork preaching is used, the preacher will ignore the parts of the Bible that are messy and not as clean as “life topics”. Not only does the quality of the preaching suffer, but the depth of the preaching, too.
When patchwork sermons are regularly preached in a church, people may think that this is how you find God’s truth. If you’re struggling with something, you open the concordance, grab five verses and try to apply them even if they don’t fit.
Weird theology develops as a result, and the individual has only learned how to improperly read the Bible. As preachers, pastors and teachers, our goal should be to give people the tools to study the Bible themselves and learn the truth that God intended there to be.
Patchwork preaching also presents the danger of people not relying on the Bible for truth. Too often, patchwork sermons rely on humorous stories, anecdotes, and cute illustrations for the meat of a sermon.
If most of what is said is coming from sources outside of the Bible, then the person listening is probably hearing that it’s okay to look outside the Bible for truth for their lives.
We see way too many Christians getting their theology from Christian best-sellers rather than from the Bible. The pastor is quoting extra-biblical authors, so that becomes the method used by the congregation. The best illustrations for preaching will always come from the Bible itself, not from the local Christian bookstore.
Additionally, patchwork preaching creates a congregation that is Biblically illiterate. Fifty years ago, talking about a Bible story would have instant familiarity in our culture.
Today, that is no longer the case. People do not know about certain stories, histories, or even famous biblical characters.
As preachers stop preaching scripture, in context, with appropriate background instruction, Bible illiteracy grows in the church. We end up with anemic Christians, never growing in the Spirit and failing to have a rock-solid scriptural foundation for their lives.
When the preaching suffers, the entire church suffers. We see churches start compromising on truth and individuals compromising on sin. We see churches become nothing more than social clubs, tossed around by the waves of popular culture, rather than standing firm on truth.
Let us put away patchwork preaching.
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