I think anyone who can read can interpret the Bible for themselves. The teachings of Jesus in the Gospels are straightforward and easy to read. Just hard to follow. Especially without a support group. And most churches don’t have classes, sermons, or Bible studies on the Gospels. They focus on the Old Testament and Revelation.
I have been to Covenant churches, Mennonite and other Anabaptist churches, a few flavors of Baptist churches, the Churches of Christ, instrumental and non-instrumental, some non-denominational churches, and even a Hutterite community, and the focus has been on the New Testament, with the Old Testament viewed as background, historical, or preamble information. In my experience, a lot of pastors don't like to spend a lot of time in Revelation, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it confuses people or it takes too much work to prepare a sermon on Revelation.
Bobby, it’s easier to list the church that did focus on the teachings of Jesus than to list all those that didn’t. Many years ago I did a two year survey of various mainstream churches and some non-denominational churches by attending Sunday services and reading their printed literature. My purpose was to find a social group to join, but a Christ centered church was my preference. The only church I found with a sermon on the teachings of Jesus and a Bible study on the Gospels was the Lutheran church. However the church members of all the churches I attended thought they were a Christ centered church even if the teachings of Christ and Bible studies on the Gospels had been eliminated from the curriculum. You can do your own survey and see what you come up with. I just took a quick look at First Baptist website in Indianapolis. Couldn’t find any teachings of Jesus on the home page or in the first sermon of the new year.
I do not know why your experiences are so vastly different than my own because I have yet to go to any main stream or non-denominational churches which Didn’t teach the gospels. Perhaps I have just been lucky but I have taught and preached all across the United States and not once have I had an occasion when I felt that the Gospels weren’t welcome and well practiced teachings. Now, I have heard preachers akin to the Joel Osteen style of preaching who are pretty wishy-washy but none thus far that I can say were against teaching the Gospels. Maybe that’s the type you’re referring to.
The Methodist church formally refuses to preach from Revelation, claiming "It's only John's dream." But the UMC also teaches that Mary was transported to Heaven (without dying) because "She was a key figure, and the Bible doesn't say that she was not transported." Lots of license taken there... I met a preacher from Louisiana (don't know if he was with a mainstream denomination), and he said he almost exclusively preaches from Revelation. I wish I had had time to ask him some questions. That would be an interesting church to attend. I don't know why many churches avoid the book that tells of God's final triumph. Maybe they get hung up in the symbolism. Maybe there's too much Final Judgement in it for modern tastes. Or maybe it just opens itself up to too many current conspiracy theories and The End Is Near arguments.
Especially teachers of the Gospel, teachers are supposed to know their material and be certain of what they are speaking of. Otherwise, one could be leading someone astray which by itself, is a sinful position to be in. The Bible gives some pretty stern warnings about false teaching ergo if something so open for personal interpretation as the symbolism we find in Revelation causes confusion, some should rightly avoid teaching most of the book. Note: Several years ago, I heard Haggie give a 4 week symposium on Revelation and everything in the timeline he said was going to happen……didn’t. Personally, I have outlined and performed whole expositories on verses and chapters within the book and managed to get extra credit for my work and though I do not mind discussing Revelation, I will not allow the book to be the center of any class I teach.
Perhaps you could name some that have Bible Studies on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and have upcoming sermons posted that are on the Gospels.
From the only three churches in Millinocket with websites... Millinocket Nazarene Church St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Faith Baptist Church Nearly all of it is from the New Testament, and much of it is from the Four Gospels. I have never attended a church that didn't base most of its sermons on New Testament scriptures, although the Old Testament isn't ignored, nor should it be. There are some differences between denominations and individual churches, which is probably why there are different denominations and churches, but most Protestant churches spend most of their time in the New Testament, although pastors might do periodic sermon series on Old Testament books, which is not inappropriate. Given their emphasis on salvation by grace alone, Baptist churches tend to ignore the Book of James because James speaks of the importance of works, and even that faith is dead without works.
I think I understand what you mean. When I was going to a Methodist church, the template was to have a passage read from the Old Testament, a passage read from the New Testament, the sermon was "allegory story telling," and we sang in between. The pastor started Bible Study classes but were on topics such as "forgiveness" (which opened up a predictable can of 1stPerson Victim Story worms.) It was amateur therapy with minimal Biblical context. I asked if we could do something like a spin-though each book, giving folks an overview of the context of the times in which it was written, who the author was, who the audience was, what the general message is. I also felt that the little O.T. and N.T. snippets had zero context with folks, and thought that maybe a quick 20 second context before the passage was read during services would be highly instructional. Heck, I even put together a Liturgical Calendar to be passed around, because when the pastor mentioned where we were in the Year, I could tell that folks did not know what he meant. I could get no traction with it. Of course, much of this falls on the shoulders of the members, who should be reading on their own time. But church should be Bible-centric.
Name the city where you live and I’ll be glad to make a few calls. So far as my own classes and messages, I’m pretty much retired and I have never recorded for my own use. Now, just to clear the air a bit, are you insisting that churches should only teach out of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and leave the other 23 books and letters in the New Testament alone or do you feel that they are only teaching from the 23 and nothing from the 4?
Make calls in your own city and post the results if you want to make calls. Just to clear the air and your confusion, I've never insisted churches teach anything. I just stated some results of my research which was in more than one city..
Looked at the websites and here's what I found. If I overlooked something you can send me the file path to it. Millinocket Nazarene - Most sermons are from the Old Testament. Only 21% from the Gospels. No Gospel Bible Study St. Andrew's Episcopal - Did find one sermon on the Gospels. No Gospel Bible Study. Faith Baptist - No sermons on the Gospel. No Gospel Bible Study.
My dear Rose, I am not here to debate with you and I do not know why you seem to be so cranky with my replies. Other than the aforementioned, the only confusion I am facing is that you challenged me to find a church that teaches the gospels. Since I am perfectly satisfied with the churches around me, it would only stand to reason that you wished me to find churches for you which I am more than happy to do. Yes, you said you did some research to which I replied fully confident that my own information is quite the opposite of yours hence my offer to help you. There is indeed no doubt that there are some churches that are stuck on stupid and spend more time tickling the ears but to me, those are in a minority. Just as a suggestion: Perhaps you can talk to your pastor and ask him or her if the church could start another class on Sunday mornings based solely on the Gospels. Or Perhaps ask if the church could be made available on another night when a group of you can study together.
Ah, now I see what might be the problem. You’re doing your research using the websites rather than having actual conversations and having the information sent to you. Most churches aren’t really in the advertising business and from what I have seen in the past, some of those sites are rarely kept up to date. Heaven knows that some of them do not even list a mission statement on their website.
Not true. I can see why you're not finding anything, but there's not much that I can do about that because your research is faulty. Not one of these sites tells you the subject of their Bible studies, by the way. I listed them because your original statement wasn't specific to Bible studies. Sermons are not Bible studies. Generally, a sermon consists of a Bible passage and then a message. References for recent sermons include a good percentage of New Testament and Gospel references. Some church websites might list Bible study subjects but I think most don't, while they do tend to list sermon references. I'd suggest attending a church to see what their Bible studies are on, and I am confident you'll find the New Testament and the Gospels to be well represented because it's been that way in every church that I have attended, and I have been in many. It's interesting since you say that there is one sermon on the Gospels listed on the St. Andrew's site, given that only one sermon is listed, and it's from Matthew. You could have said that all of them were from the Gospels. All of the sermon references from Faith Baptist are from the New Testament. The Nazarene Church does include a lot of OT references because he had recently completed a Psalms for Life sermon series, but it also includes a lot from the NT, including 13 from Matthew, 2 from Mark, 10 from Luke, and 10 from John, as well as other NT references. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the Gospels. Also, the Nazarene Church's 5-part He Chose the Nails study was from a book by Max Lucado about the life of Christ. Seventy percent of the Bible is made up of the Old Testament, so of course there are going to be OT references, and I'm not sure what you have against the Old Testament. You suggested that every church in the world only covers the Old Testament and Revelation. Not true. Again, I have attended several churches, including two of these three, and given that the New Testament makes up only 30% of the Bible and the four Gospels make up a small percentage of the New Testament, both are very well represented in sermons, Bible studies, and classes. Again, not true. Most churches focus on the New Testament to a level far greater than its volume, and the Gospels are covered more thoroughly than Revelation. Some Christian churches do focus more on Revelation than others. Sometimes referred to as End Times churches, these would include the Adventist churches, such as the Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Davidians, and others.