All too often, new / “modern” / “contemporary” (hate those last 2 terms and others like it, by the way!) churches are criticized for not “going deep” (hate THAT term, too).
And what people are really trying to imply is that they are not preaching the Gospel or at least its “full account.”
But as I am preparing my 2010 preaching calendar, I reflected back (and looked forward) at the books of the Bible we have already walked through since our inception OR are going to walk through by the end of the year, and I was blown away by what I discovered…
We hit both the New Testament AND the Old Testament and 99.9% of the time we stayed in the same book for an entire series. And more often than not we ended up walking through the entire book all the way through.
Old Testament
1. Genesis – “Welcome to the Jungle”
2. Exodus – “No Freakin’ Way”
3. Joshua – “Gametime”
4. Ruth – “Desperate Housewives”
5. Ezekiel – “Xrated”
6. Song of Solomon – “Lets Get It On”
New Testament
1. Matthew – “Freakonomics”
2. Luke – “Inked” & “Tis the Season”
3. John – “Revive ALIVE”
4. Acts – “90’s Rock”
5. Romans – “Confessions of a Pastor”
So in a period of 11 months, we will have covered 11 different books of the Bible. How about that?! A book a month. Isn’t it amazing how that works?!
And it looks like we ARE preaching the “full account of God’s Word” as we are INTENTIONAL about covering both OLD and NEW in a balanced format. Obviously for you Bible scholars out there, one will outweigh the other simply because of the sheer size difference… but regardless, you “deep folks” probably didn’t pick up on that either.
There you have it ladies and gentleman. A church not even a year old by the time December rolls around and already we have preached 11 of the 66 books of the Bible. So imagine what those of “us” who are already 5-6 years old (and even a little older) have already accomplished. How’s that for “going deep”?!
Point being, please quit criticizing the SAME CHURCH you claim to serve! Jesus died for the ENTIRE CHURCH, not just your’s and your momma’s.
And speaking of your momma, why don’t you take some of her advice…
If you don’t have anything nice to say, then PLEASE do all of us a favor, and just DON’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL!!!
