Some churches apparently have “topical sermons” every week. Apparently some preachers think they are easier to prepare and easier to listen to. Yes and no. A topical message is easier to prepare if you are simply wanting to say your own thing and bounce off a couple of verses along the way. A topical message is easier to listen to if people have a taste for anecdotal soundbites. However, true topical preaching, what you might call expository-topical preaching, this takes time.
(Incidentally, people may have a taste for lite-topical preaching, but often this is only because they’ve not heard decent expository preachng. It’s never a fair contest to pit engaging topical messages by good communicators against dry and tedious lectures falsely placed under the label of “expository preaching.”)
By topical preaching, I mean preaching that is not initially birthed out of a passage or passages, but rather birthed out of the concept or title. A good expository-topical approach will then select appropriate passages and do the exegetical work in those passages so that the part of the message coming from that passage actually comes from that passage. Hence expository-topical. Rather than using or abusing a bit of a text to say what I want to say, the onus is on me to let that text really speak for itself.
It may be easy to jump through my five favorite verses and link them together with anecdotes, but genuine expository-topical preaching requires me to wrestle with each passage chosen, in context, so that the text itself is boss over that part of the message. True topical takes time.
I’m not of the opinion that every message should be from a single passage (I do think that is a healthy staple diet approach). This week I finish a mini-series on the ‘christian virtues’ of faith, hope and love. A broad title like “Love” takes time. Time to select which of the hundreds of passages to use. Time to understand them and develop a coherent message. Time to cut out and drop material that could so easily fill a series on the subject. If the subject were not so thrilling, I’d be tempted to say that I’m looking forward to preparing a non-topical message again next week!
Biblical Preaching 
Hey!
firsty, nice website. you might hear this quite often, but always nice to hear it again 🙂
yeah, i totally agree. im a youth pastor at a local church in South Africa. We recently got the kids to ask as many questions as they had, and we got almost 100 separate genuine questions the kids had. most of it was topical issues, and we dealt with some of them. its difficult, because the Bible does speak about these issues. its a matter of finding them and then doing the expository work, while still addressing the topical issue.
we have to work really hard at avoiding proof-texting what we have to say. because sometimes it might seem that we have found a verse, but its not really speaking about what we are speaking about.
on the other hand, i really enjoy giving topical talks more than expository bible passage ones. it gives you more freedom to explore the culture, do some interesting research, etc.
I love this post. You make the key point in dealing with passages in an exegetical way even in the topical message. Have you written a post on “When” to preach a topical message?