When it comes to Sunday service there are two primary methods pastors employ to teach their congregation: Expositional preaching and topical preaching. In this article, I hope to analyze some of the shortcomings that I've found associated with both approaches and offer up possibilities for reconciling the two approaches so that they would be used to cover each other's weaknesses.

Expositional Preaching

Dealing with large arguments:

I don’t see any fix stemming from the pulpit. In a world of time constraints, this is an issue that will ultimately find its resolution in the recipients of the preaching via familiarizing themselves with the text that is being handled, for example, reading entire books thoroughly prior to sermons. Pastors could also be more careful with their preaching by making sure they’re dealing with the entire argument of the book sermon to sermon, rather than just abstracting points within a limited couple verse context.

Addressing specific congregational needs:

Probably the biggest pitfall of expositional preaching is its inability to consistently deal with congregation-specific issues. The simple fix would seem to be instituting breaks for topical style preaching, similar to when expositional churches stop their typical service in favor of doing a series on Advent. Not exactly a difficult issue to address, which is a good thing.

Topical Preaching

Proof-texts everywhere:

This usually stems from the need to prove a conclusion that is already presupposed before coming to that specific text. There is a time and a place to act in such a way, like in systematics. But that only occurs after Scripture has informed our presuppositions and we’re seeking to topically address certain presuppositions (ie. Christology, Pneumatology, etc.) A good example of this is the uprising in Prosperity Gospel Theology–God desires His people to be rich, healthy, and prosperous and here are some proof texts that support that idea. Even though some proof texting can be well intentioned, it should generally be avoided. A method of avoiding this is simple: come to conclusions through exegesis of a passage in a manner that is displayable for the congregation.

Exegesis isn't being taught in topical sermons.

The pastoral office has the responsibility to care for the flock in a variety of ways, one of them being to teach the congregation how to read and understand God’s Word. The issue with topical preaching is that it’s usually—and in a sense rightly so—focused with the conclusion of the topic it’s presenting and not the methodology in which it arrived at its conclusion.

The difficulty with this is that it leads to learning via indoctrination rather than being taught methods in which to understand and form their own conclusion. This often leads to a congregation easily unsettled at rivaling or false teachings due to the inability to discern proper methodology from improper which results in existential crises. The other side of that same coin are the people who adamantly defend their pastors’ teaching without actually understanding the methodology, ultimately becoming an unteachable disciple to anyone who differs from their own pastor.

Like the previous point, the cure to this is for the pastor to exemplify the methodology of understanding the text to some degree in front of his congregation.

Scripture is divorced from its immediate context.

Within topical preaching, not much is attention is paid to the context of specific books. Since so much time is spent on what is essentially systematics there is a lack of development spent on where those systems came from.

While we may pull from Isaiah in order to show Jesus was the coming Messiah, we ultimately end up lacking a framework in which to understand who this Messiah is. Can we understand messianic categories without knowing and understanding the narrative that makes those categories necessary?

The only method to fix this is actively preaching through entire books for the sake of understanding those books and providing careful exposition for the sake of the congregation coming to a biblical understanding of them.

Conclusion

Expositional preaching seems to function best as a primary mode of preaching and could benefit from topical as a supplementary style. Generally speaking however, I don't see topical being beneficial as a single or primary mode of preaching due to the issues listed. I do see topical preaching as an invaluable asset in its ability to supplement preaching though.