Why We Preach Expositionally — Pastor James Bell on Verse-by-Verse Bible Teaching
Every Sunday at FBC Fenton, we preach through books of the Bible verse by verse. This is a deliberate choice — and it shapes everything about how we do church. Here's why.
## Why We Preach Expositionally
Every Sunday at First Baptist Church of Fenton, we open the Bible and work through it passage by passage — book by book, verse by verse. We call this expository preaching. It is a deliberate choice, and it shapes everything about how we do church.
I want to explain why.
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## What Expository Preaching Is
Expository preaching means that the point of the sermon is the point of the text. The passage drives the message — not the other way around.
The alternative is topical preaching, where the preacher chooses a subject, collects relevant verses, and builds a sermon around his theme. Topical preaching is not inherently wrong. But if it becomes the primary diet of a congregation, something quietly shifts: the preacher's agenda begins to shape what people hear from God, rather than God's agenda shaping what the preacher says.
Expository preaching reverses that. When we open Romans 8 this Sunday, the question is not: "What do I want to say this week?" The question is: "What is God saying in Romans 8, and how do I explain it faithfully?"
That is a very different posture. And I believe it is the right one.
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## Why We Choose It
There are several reasons FBC Fenton is committed to expository preaching. Let me give you the three I find most compelling.
**First, it ensures the whole counsel of God gets preached.** When you preach topically, you naturally gravitate toward your favorite subjects and away from the ones that are difficult, controversial, or personally convicting. You preach on joy easily. You preach on judgment reluctantly. You preach on grace frequently. You avoid the hard passages about sin, judgment, money, and sex.
Expository preaching forces you through all of it. When we reach a passage I would not have chosen, I have to deal with it faithfully — because the congregation sees me sitting in the same text they do. I cannot skip past it. That discipline is good for me. And it is good for the church.
**Second, it teaches people how to read the Bible themselves.** When a congregation hears the same method modeled Sunday after Sunday — observe the text carefully, understand its context, interpret it faithfully, apply it specifically — they begin to do the same thing on their own. Expository preaching is not just a sermon format. It is a discipleship method. It produces people who know how to open their Bible and understand what they are reading.
**Third, it protects the authority of the text.** Every week, the congregation and I are both under the authority of the same passage. I am not the authority in the room — the Bible is. My job is to explain it clearly, not to improve on it. That keeps me humble. And it means that when you are sitting in a pew and you disagree with what I'm saying, you know that I'm not offering my opinion. I am explaining what the text says. We can both look at it together.
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## What This Looks Like in Practice
On any given Sunday at FBC, we are somewhere in the middle of a book of the Bible. Right now we are in a series called BELIEVE, working through questions about God, faith, and evidence. Before that we were in other passages. Next we will move somewhere else in Scripture.
Over the years, a congregation shaped by expository preaching develops a deep and coherent knowledge of the Bible — not disconnected verses, but a whole-Bible understanding of the story of God, the character of Jesus, and the shape of the Christian life. It is one of the slowest methods of discipleship. It is also one of the most powerful.
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## A Personal Note
I came to faith in Christ as an atheist. My conversion was not an emotional experience — it was an intellectual one. The evidence for God, the coherence of the biblical story, and the explanatory power of the gospel eventually became impossible for me to dismiss.
That history shapes how I preach. I do not assume that everyone in the room believes what I believe. I assume that some of you are skeptical, some are struggling, and some are sitting in a church building for the first time in years wondering whether any of this is real.
So I preach as though it matters — because I believe it does. And I preach the text because I believe that the text, not my personality or my communication skills, is what is actually capable of changing a life.
Come and hear for yourself.
**Sundays at 10:30 AM | 860 N. Leroy St., Fenton, MI 48430**
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*— Pastor James Bell, Lead Teaching Pastor, First Baptist Church of Fenton*