Are today’s preachers actually studying for the content of the passage? In far too many cases, it seems that the text becomes a point of departure for some message—again, no doubt well intended—which the pastor wishes to share with the congregation. Beyond this, the text of Scripture is often emptied—evacuated—of biblical content when, regardless of a passage’s textual form or context, the content is uniformly presented as a set of pithy “points” that come together in a staple outline form.
