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Cover: Let the Passage Preach — people seated on a hillside in daylight, listening.

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Let the Passage Preach

Expository sermons shaped like a Discovery Bible Study: read it, tell it, preach what it shows, and send them out for coffee with a Bible open.

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Leading this class

You preach most Sundays, and your people tell you they’re blessed. This class offers you a good way of preaching to try alongside what you already do: a sermon that lets the passage do the teaching, so a congregation that hears it done every week can learn to do it themselves. Try it for a few Sundays and see what happens. You take one passage and cut it into three or four sections. Each section takes the shape of a Discovery Bible Study: you read it, tell it, and then preach what it shows us about God, about us, and what we will obey. The questions are your outline; you never ask them of the room. You open by asking how last week went, and you close by sending everyone out to open the same passage with a friend over coffee.

Every Sunday, your congregation hears a passage handled the way a discovery study handles it, at a level they could copy. By the time they get home, they can do it themselves.

Ten short chapters, with one sermon on John 4 as the worked example throughout. Recommended first, if you haven’t done one yourself: How to Do a Discovery Bible Study.

Chapters

  1. Why try preaching this way?Not the only right way. A good way, worth a few Sundays.
  2. The shape of one sermonSeven movements, thirty minutes.
  3. Look back, look ahead, prayAccountability from the pulpit, without shame.
  4. Read it, then tell itThe text opens every section. Then you tell the story, without saying so.
  5. Preach what it showsThe questions are your outline, not the congregation's exercise.
  6. Send them out for coffeeGather the changes, send them to a friend, and ask God for the growth.
  7. Cutting a passage into sectionsFollow the text's own seams.
  8. Preparing to preach itYou eat before you feed anyone.
  9. Keeping it on trackEight ways the format drifts, and what to do instead.
  10. Your first few sermonsTry it for a few Sundays, and see what happens.
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Leading this class

For Leaders

How to use them

Who this class is for

The people in the room already preach. Some have done it for decades, some once a month. None of them came to be corrected, and the class never tries to. It offers one good way of preaching to try for a few Sundays, next to whatever they do now. Keep that posture yourself, from the first minute to the debrief.

Practise more than you explain

Each chapter is short on purpose. The teaching fits in a few minutes; the session is for doing it. Read aloud, tell a passage from memory in pairs, preach one move standing up, cut a scene together and compare. A preacher who has done each step once in a safe room will try it in the pulpit. One who has only discussed it usually won’t.

Hold three lines

Almost everything in the format can bend to a church’s habits: the timings, the wording of the check-in, the length of a section. Three things can’t.

  • The questions shape the sermon and are never asked from the pulpit. No slide, no “now, the first question”, no pause for answers.
  • The retelling is never announced. The reading flows straight into the story.
  • The notes sheet is never mentioned from the pulpit. It is handed out and left to the congregation.

Gifted preachers drift on all three out of enthusiasm, so name them early and gently, every time.

Go first, every time

Whatever the class asks of a preacher, do it before the session: the study, the sketch, the coffee with a friend, a sermon in the format. Tell the room how it went, including what was awkward. Your own honest report persuades more than any argument.

Set up the trial and the debrief

The class ends with a trial, not a vow. Before the last session closes, every preacher should have a first Sunday, a passage, a study partner and the next two or three passages. Set a debrief four to six weeks out and open it with a check-in, exactly as a sermon opens. What happened at their check-ins and over coffee is the evidence that decides what each one keeps.

Using the two books

The workbook belongs to each preacher. It holds the sermon sketch in chapter two, the drills checklist in chapter eight, the John 4 study bound in after it, and a page to fill in at the debrief.

The leader book carries the full teaching, timings, preparation and notes on each exercise. Keep it in front of you while you lead, and hand out the workbook, never this one.

This class

10 chapters

Expository sermons shaped like a Discovery Bible Study: read it, tell it, preach what it shows, and send them out for coffee with a Bible open.

Time needed

Per session
40 to 50 minutes per chapter
In total
Ten sessions, then a debrief after a few Sundays

Before you lead

Preach at least one sermon in this format yourself before you lead anyone through it, and do the John 4 discovery study with a friend. Watch the John 4 sample sermon from start to finish, then sketch your own next sermon on the seven movements so you have a real one to show in session two.

What to bring

  • A printed workbook for every preacher
  • A Bible each, and the John 4 preaching plan open in teacher mode
  • A way to play a few minutes of the sample sermon