Making Time for Joel and Jude
Jack Archibald has an extra Bible in his office that doesn't get read much—in fact, he mainly scribbles in it. It's his running log of texts preached at his church, St. Columba Presbyterian in Belleville, Ontario.
"Each week I mark the particular passage with a yellow felt-tip pen," he explains. "I bought an inexpensive Bible soon after I came here solely to mark it up. The result is that, over the course of several years, I can tell at a glance which passages I have expounded and—more importantly—which ones I have neglected."
This past winter from Christmas to Easter, for example, he preached through the Book of Mark. "I had also preached a series from Luke a couple of years ago, and so this time it was useful to look back and see which incidents of Christ's life I had omitted."
Eventually, of course, Archibald will return to preach some of the Bible's most strategic texts a second time at St. Columba, and these he will mark in a contrasting color. But as a general rule he will keep searching the non-yellow sections for sermon potential.
"This is a helpful way to avoid having one's personal 'canon within the Canon,' " he says, "and to preach what Paul called 'the whole counsel of God.' "
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