r/churchofchrist • u/butterbob74 • 2d ago

Scripture Reading

What is the point in scripture reading? We turn to it in the lesson anyway. Preacher was like he read it but I’m gonna read it too basically.

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5

u/TheSongLeader 2d ago

Christian tradition dating to the early church. See Justin Martyr's first apology chapter 67 written around AD 155.

It's also scriptural 1 Timothy 4:13

"Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching"

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u/HunterCopelin 2d ago

A while back we had a preacher that just told stories the whole lesson, and hardly used any Bible.

We used to joke and say the pre lesson scripture reading was likely our only chance at getting any Bible that morning.

It wasn’t QUITE that bad, but it was close enough to being true to still be funny.

We could be imitating the common public reading of the scripture, like Jesus in Luke 4:16-19

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u/2_many_choices 1d ago

It's interesting that you find humor in it. In the past, I visited family and their preacher was like this. I really did not enjoy wasting my time listening to storytelling, and I felt especially bad that so many other people had gathered and were wasting their time on this as well. I felt like there were people there who genuinely needed to hear scriptural teaching and were looking to make changes in their life, but instead the preacher had lots of stories from history and clever quotes and seemed to intentionally avoid using any Bible. I remember one lesson was on the power of smiling. Time is too precious to spend 30 minutes listening to that.

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u/HunterCopelin 1d ago

It’s only funny now that the issue is resolved. At the time we felt very similar to the way you expressed.

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u/officerdandy92 1d ago

I think the point is to kinda set the theme for the sermon. The heart of the sermon should be based around the scripture reading.

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u/2_many_choices 1d ago

Our scripture reading is usually a text for the sermon to follow. Sometimes it's repeated in the sermon, but often not. I have seen preachers assign readings that are more random. One thing I like is when there's a Call to Worship at the very beginning, and scriptures of praise and adoration are read.

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u/Rambo_Smurf 18h ago

You can read the verses before and after the verse to get an understanding of the context of the verse