I grew up in a city that features the second longest beach in the world—the Marina Beach in Chennai. Marina Beach, one of the busiest in the world, is also one of the deadliest. Though the waters seem friendly and inviting, even experienced swimmers can quickly find themselves caught in a dangerous undertow, pulled out by rip tides, and buried in a watery grave.
Sounds ominous, but that’s an image I often think about when I’m trying to preach the Gospels. Wide-eyed preachers approach these books with a sense of familiarity and excitement, ready to unveil these portraits of Jesus for their congregations, and then unexpectedly find themselves tossed about and struggling, crying out “Someone, help me!”
The Gospels give us beautiful portraits of Jesus; they give us rich theology. But they come with their own set of hermeneutical and homiletical challenges—challenges we must know how to navigate to faithfully proclaim Christ. Here are five “no swim zones” to avoid, five ways not to preach the Gospels:
1. Don’t preach the Gospels as a set of isolated “pericopes” without reference to their larger story.
The Gospels include a number of events and discourses from Jesus’ life, woven into a coherent
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