We are committed to expository preaching at Bethany Community Fellowship, because this is the challenge of Christian ministry today, to communicate God’s Word in a meaningful way that enables them to: understand God’s truth, ascribe significance to it, and to apply it to their lives with faithful obedience.
Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context.
Through expositional preaching, the biblical preacher must recognize and represent the timeless truth of God’s Word and then relate that truth to his audience. The goal, then, is to demonstrate both the authority and the relevance of God’s Word, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, so that contemporary listeners understand what God has said, why that is important, and how it relates to one’s personal life.
Expository preaching derives its authority from being rooted in and tethered tightly to God’s Word, the Scriptures. The truth and power of God is found in his Word, and not in what our opinions or impressions might be. Therefore, it is our aim and obligation to make the Bible clear. Thus, biblical exposition must find its substance in the text such that the main point of the biblical text being considered becomes the main point of the sermon being preached.
Any power to affect change in the hearts of men and women comes from the Scriptures as influenced by the Holy Spirit. And so we have no desire to be witty or clever, or to bend the message of the Bible in any way to fit what secular culture might want to hear, but rather, we desire to herald God’s message that mankind needs to hear. So we preach Christ and his Word in clarity and with power.